text: Never buy in a hot market. The corner cutting is your clue that you will get hosed one way or another. Had a friend who bought a place in Toronto - essentially a slapped together slum dwelling - and had to sink vast amounts into shoring it up and upgrading the house. He would have been wiser to tear it down and buy a pre-fab house instead. 
  
  Build quality in Toronto is all over the place. Some homes are very solid and Victorian; others are basically tar paper shacks from Toronto's slum days; still others are paper-thin developer's dreams that won't last the mortgage without needing huge repairs and upgrades. Toronto is a nice city but it ain't that nice. Get a job somewhere else where the market is not going crazy: build your wealth and savings and then move into Toronto when it dips or crashes.