In a Toronto neighborhood where the average single-family home costs nearly $4 million and the price is up 50 percent from last year, finding a home like 659 Huron St. is a wonder.
Listed for $3,100,000, this home looks like an abandoned frat house at first glance.
You have the rickety chain-link fence, lawn furniture lying around, a pile of boxes on the porch, and generally no signs of life.
The front of the house with two terraces.
But that doesn't matter because this property is not being sold for its appeal or its interior features.
There aren't even any shots of the house's interior because it's “not in the best condition,” as agent Rachel Keslassy told blogTO.
But that doesn't matter either, because the property is sold in its current condition and what really counts is the location and the size of the property.
The view towards Dupont St.
First of all, 659 Huron St. is right in the heart of the Annex, close to the University of Toronto, Yorkville and Casa Loma.
The backyard.
The house is a spacious three-story home with 12 bedrooms, four bathrooms, two kitchens and four parking spaces.
The house was previously used by numerous tenants as an income property, but Keslassy said that apart from the owner, only two tenants still live there.
It also sits on an incredibly spacious (for downtown) lot measuring 35' x 115' with enough space to build a single-family home.
The current doorbells for the multiplex.
The interior will likely need to be completely gutted, but the house was probably built in the late 19th or early 20th century for a wealthy family, so it is probably structurally sounder than any new construction.
No matter what you do with it – whether you convert it into apartments and rent it out to students or convert it back into a family home – you will get a return on your investment.
The parking pad could easily fit into a single-family home.
What the return is is unknown, but similarly sized renovated homes in the area have sold for up to $5.3 million, so do the math.
Photos from
Jamie Erlick and Rachel Keslassy