In terms of finding a place that's quieter, near nature/parks and also being able to travel or drive downtown, why choose Scarborough over places that are closer but still pretty quiet like: East York/Danforth, St Clair West, Bloor West/High Park, Leaside, etc? Just curious. 7 years ago many of those places were probably much cheaper than they are today.
While it's fine, I was not particularly interested in East York / Danforth. Bloor West / High Park was a bit inconveniently located for us. Leaside would have worked and I looked there. However the price premium there was quite high even back then. I also looked in other areas of central Toronto but some were even more expensive.
My favourite neighbourhood in Toronto is Fallingbrook which is also in Scarborough immediately to the east of The Beach, but the price premium there was/is also high. Eventually I found a very nice place a few km east in the Scarborough Bluffs for cheaper. Big house on a big yard in a quiet and pretty neighbourhood. Fallingbrook would have cost several hundred thousand $ more for a similar property.
EDIT:
BTW, a few years after I moved here, I came across this article about this area:
The Grid:
Toronto's most underrated neighbourhoods: #4
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If you’re priced out of Moore Park, take a look at…CLIFFSIDE
What residents of tony Moore Park get for their multi-millions is access to a placid natural setting, large houses and proximity to Rosedale. The streets south of Kingston Road in Cliffside can boast two of those three amenities. (So long, Rosedale.)
The Scarborough Bluffs on the southern border of Cliffside offer, by a landslide, the city’s most stunning view of the lake. Architect-designed mansions along the bluffs, some featuring private tennis courts and pools, are priced like townhouses at Yonge and Eglinton, and the more modest houses that make up much of the neighbourhood are even downright affordable. The winding streets of the surrounding area offer a variety of housing styles on landscaped lots, all within quick walking distance of the park system on the Bluffs.
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The above quote is just a snippet, but overall the stuff in the article is reasonably accurate. Affordable area but very nice. Beautiful walking trails and parks right near our home, amongst the best in the city. The views are spectacular. In fact, a friend from The Beach drives here with her baby and her dogs to go for walks with us on the
walking trails at the edge of the Bluffs. We're also a 5 minute drive to a Blue Flag
beach at Bluffer's Park.
Drawback is shopping/restaurant options aren't great and transit options in many spots suck. In fact, we are 1 km away from the nearest bus stop. No, not subway stop, but bus stop. In our case though transit wasn't an issue, because we are car dependent anyway due to our workplace. Even when I lived downtown I had to drive to work since my main workplace was not downtown. Actually, nowadays I do work downtown a few times a month but luckily the drive from here is reasonable. Well, not "luckily", but intentionally, since like I said before we had a proximity-to-downtown and proximity-to-work 30-minute requirement when we bought the place.
For our neighbourhood, FWIW the public elementary school and public high school are both rated in the top 15% for the province, although to be honest I didn't know that at the time we bought (since we didn't have kids back then).
I superficially considered the idea of a cottage at one point, but in the end decided they are money (and time) pits. We're not really cottage people to begin with, and weekend driving to most cottage country areas is a total PITA. If I really wanted to do the cottage thing, I'd just rent. I think a rather telling story is a colleague who bought a small cottage, spruced up the place, spent the weekends there for a couple of years, and then sold the place. He actually loved being there, but the driving time and the maintenance just weren't worth it. In contrast, another colleague has actually moved into her cottage, and her Toronto home is now effectively their secondary home. The difference there though is she's retired.