Perth

Perth was laid out in 1816 as a military settlement, and it kept its bones. The stone streetscape downtown is among the best preserved in Ontario — mostly built from the 1830s onward, in local sandstone, limestone and dolostone, by Scottish and Irish masons who had come out for the canal work. The Tay River runs right through the middle of town past Stewart Park.

Perth attracts a particular buyer: someone who wants character and is prepared to look after it. But let me clear up the thing most people get wrong, because the fear of heritage rules puts buyers off houses they would have loved.

The Heritage Conservation District covers the downtown core — Gore, Foster, Herriott, Wilson East and the streets around them — and it is largely commercial. Most residential streets are not in it. If a house is outside that boundary and not individually designated, none of it applies.

And inside the district, it governs the façade, not your life. Interiors are explicitly not covered — renovate the kitchen as you like. You do not need a permit to repair or restore windows and doors, to add storm windows, to replace soffit and fascia, to re-roof with the same materials, or to paint trim that was already painted. What does need approval is work that changes the street-facing face of the building: new construction, additions, demolition, replacing windows or doors, cutting a new opening, removing original brackets or shutters, painting brick or stone that was never painted, re-roofing in a different material, and signage. There is no fee for a heritage permit, Council has to decide within ninety days, and there is a restoration grant available to owners in the district.

Two things to check on any specific property: whether it is in the district under Part V, or individually designated under Part IV — because an individual designation can reach further, including interiors. And since 2005 these by-laws are registered on title, so it will show up in your lawyer's search.

None of which means an old house is a soft purchase. A beautiful limestone façade can sit in front of a roof that needs replacing, and doing that work sympathetically does not cost what it costs on a 1990s build. Any pre-war house anywhere deserves a proper electrical inspection before you go firm — insurers have views about older wiring, and you want to know before they tell you.

Beyond the heritage core there is a good supply of ordinary, well-built family housing — the majority of Perth's homes are 1960 or newer, whatever the postcard suggests — plus country properties on the roads leading out of town. There is a twenty-four-hour emergency department at the Great War Memorial site, though births go to the Smiths Falls hospital. There is an indoor pool, the Collegiate dating to 1876, and a downtown that is unusually alive for a town this size. That last part is a large piece of why people stay once they arrive.