A house starts falling apart as soon as it's put together... and it keeps falling it apart, and you have to keep putting it back together. The distribution of expenses is lumpier with a house than with a condo, but it's certanly an ongoing cash outflow.
Toronto is mostly made up of 100-year-old brick houses, so the maintenance is mostly soft stuff like painting, gardening, etc. unless you do major renovations.
My last house I did, essentially, zero maintenance over a 10-year span except for a drain replacement ($2K). Every other expense was month to month expenses like heating and electrical.
When I finally decided to sell, I replaced the crappy carpet, painted the walls beige and made a 5x profit.
