The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that moving out of cities and urban cores seemed like the perfect decision during the pandemic -- then it was not. The Post's Garry Marr writes that with companies increasingly demanding more time in downtown offices, buyers who fled are now facing a difficult decision to move back to the city. At the height of the pandemic, prices soared across Canada's largest city, with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board reporting an all-time high average sale price of $1.19-million for 2022. Just three years before the pandemic, the average sale price for 2019 was $812,996. In the rental market, Julian Schonfeldt at Canadian Apartment Properties REIT said the trend was clear during the COVID-19 pandemic: People moved to secondary markets. "It is completely reasonable to expect that return to office mandates would see the inverse happen and bring ... rental demand to urban markets," said Mr. Schonfeldt. Moving back to the city could mean renting temporarily, but it will not come cheaply. In Toronto's core, a newer unit could be a $4 per square foot per month to rent. A 400-square-foot microcondo could cost $20,000 a year to rent, but at least you can avoid commuter hell.