LondontoOakville

Hello all, I have just joined. We are currently in Greater London and have PR Visas for Canada. We got the Visas in November 2017 and we have been on the fence about moving. We're reaching the point where we need to decide whether we take the plunge or our visas will expire. My husband and I are planning a fact finding trip in May without the kids so we can spend the whole week visiting neighbourhoods, prospective employers and schools.

Could anyone recommend schools in Oakville that I can then look into and hopefully arrange to visit? Any views on neighbourhoods would be welcome too.

Many thanks

Zoe Bell

just checking , have you landed and activated your PR ?
you say you got the visas in 2017, they are usually only valid for one year from the date of your medicals.
Hopefully you just misspoke and you have actually landed and have COPRS

LondontoOakville

We did a "soft landing" in December 2017 when we got the visas. We were just there for 2 weeks though and have not been back since.

Zoe Bell

ah Okay. I was starting to panic on your behalf.

HGerchikov

The schools in Oakville are all pretty good, you don't mention the age of your children - are you looking for elementary (primary) or secondary school levels? Similarly with neighbourhoods, it depends on your budget and the type of property you like. Closer to the lake tends to be older neighbourhoods, on the East side you get either 1950s ranch bungalows and sidesplits on 100 foot wide lots or mega mansions where the original properties have been replaced. On the West side same type of original properties, lots are generally smaller (75 feet) and same thing with replacing older homes with much larger new builds is happening there too. As you head north, the properties get newer until you get to the very north of town where they are still building. Here you get very nice houses (inside) on minuscule lots. Middle ground would be neighbourhoods like Riveroaks and Wedgewood Creek where you get good sized family homes on reasonable sized lots, but not a huge amount of character to the houses.
The most expensive neighbourhood is SE (Morrison and Old Oakville districts), here building lots go for in excess of $1.5mi but you can get a liveable original for about $1.7mi. Best value is probably Riveroaks, Wedgewood Creek and West Oak Trails where 4 bedroom family homes go for around $1-1.3mi. Similar sized houses on the newer developments are around $1.5mi.
If budget is not a problem there is a lakeside estate - 43000sq ft house, plus gatehouse, pool house and chapel, on 10 acres in Morrison for $59mi.

I think you would be better placed to pick your neighbourhood and then check out the schools as the general rule is that your children will go to the school where you live, there are exceptions to this and you can apply to send your child to an out of area school but its not common and far from guaranteed. There were 2 kids in my son's year that were out of area, one of them was the Vice Principal's son and the other one was due to some extreme family circumstances.

sean75

This.

Oakville being Oakville, even the schools that aren't considered the 'best' in the town are still very good. My daughter is scheduled to start junior kindergarten in September, and while the school she'll attend isn't top-rated among those in Oakville, I have no concerns that she'll be disadvantaged because of it.

I suppose the major choices parents here have to make are state vs. private, and Catholic vs. public.

Oakvillian

What HGerchikov says - she knows well of what she speaks! I'd add the neighbourhoods just south of River Oaks and Wedgewood Creek - respectively, College Park and Falgarwood - to the list of places to check out. To my mind, there are reasonable compromises between house size and lot size without getting into wilder realms of multimillion dollar teardowns or McMansions built out to the lot lines.

As to schools, again I'd echo HG's comments - there's not the competitive pressure on schools that drives house prices up within particular catchment areas. One consideration will be, if you have elementary-school-age kids, whether you want to put them into French immersion schools, and what the options are for starting grades (most now start at Grade 2, i.e. the September of the calendar year the child turns 7, but there are a couple that I believe offer a late immersion starting at Grade 4). Otherwise, for high schools, there are different strengths and weaknesses for all of them. Our local school is White Oaks, which covers a huge diversity of education from life-skills classes for developmentally and cognitively challenged youth right up to the International Baccalaureate program for the academically capable and ambitious. We've found the creative and performing arts programming to be very strong, the sports programming less so - but that works well for us. I also know families with kids at Iroquois Ridge, TA Blakelock, OTMH, and Abbey Park; all seem to be reasonably normal and well-adjusted teenagers, as much as any teen fits that description. Oh, and outside the "regular" public school system, there's the Catholic board (for both elementary and high school) and many different private options if you choose that route.

Partially discharged

What would houses like this go for in Oakville. I guess greenspace is extra. To put it mildly it is an acquired taste. Hopefully nobody on this forum lives here !

https://goo.gl/maps/SDpGkUp1nb82

scilly

They're building similar to this in Vancouver ......... buy up 5 or 6 "old" houses on 33' by 120' to 130' lots, then build two rows of 8-10 "townhouses" between the street and the original lane. Add a lane between the rows just wide enough to allow a car to turn into or out of the garages, and then sell for $1.2 million plus.

Each house therefore is less than 50' deep and ca 15-20' wide

If you look at the floor plan, the garage is just deep enough for 1 car.

They usually have 2 storeys plus basement, 3 bedrooms. Each bedroom looks to be just about large enough to contain a queen bed with a narrow space on each side ............ no room for a decent bedside cabinet/table.


These are supposed to help the housing crisis here.

HGerchikov

Those particular ones between $1.5 and $1.8 mi depending on the exact location and size. They are relatively close to the lake and within walking distance of downtown Oakville for restaurants etc. Not my cup of tea at all but people seem to like them.

HGerchikov

These aren't really like that - they are in excess of 2500 sq ft and really quite beautiful inside, its the close proximity of the neighbours that I can't handle.

BristolUK

That's pretty ugly but to be fair it's only the back. If you scoot around to the fronts, they actually look pretty nice; one block fronts onto a park and the other faces grass and trees. Unfortunately they're all the same and that's what I don't like. Imagine coming home drunk and not knowing which one was yours. And where's the local Spar, Offie and newsagent?


That aside, Row/Terraced housing generally looks plain to ugly and those fronts look much better.

It's always struck me that the big luxury/executive style homes look like absolute mansions, but when you see the backs they often look incredibly plain, almost park hut like.
How can a place that looks like this


Look like this at the back



Or



and



The difference between front and back is just as pronounced as the Oakville ones.

Siouxie

ATTENTION!!!!


PLEASE keep the thread on topic.. it's about OAKVILLE not Vancouver or anywhere else.
Thank you.

Oakvillian

To be fair, the topic was kind of done in the first three or four posts.

In an aside still just about related to Oakville, the houses that Partially Discharged posted a picture of are built on land previously occupied by military housing that had been there since the 1950s. Poster Souvy lived in one of those many years ago, before moving to Gatineau. By all accounts they were past due for redevelopment when DND sold off the land; the new townhouses are not to my taste at all but, if you don't care for gardening and don't mind being able to spit on five neighbours' houses from your own terrace, I suppose they serve a purpose. Seems a ridiculous price to pay for something so cheek-by-jowl with your neighbours, though. This is the edge of downtown Oakville, not Knightsbridge...