141 YORK ST - SOLD

The Essentials

The property attracted multiple offers and is sold firm.

A character-filled and very spacious residential triplex housed in a rather glorious red-brick building at the edge of the fruit belt and just east of Division on York St. Walk downtown from here, or over to the university. One four-bedroom apartment mostly on the main floor (and vacant), a two-bedroom unit up top and a studio apartment down below. Plenty of parking and storage, as well as a sweet garden.

The Bigger Picture

I remember a few years back they were renovating this building. They were at the left end of the porch for what felt like weeks. Whenever I drove by there was someone on a stepladder peering into the underside of the roof, as if into an unexplored cave, as if untold wonders were revealing themselves. I must have seen different things every day, progress being made, but it is that same stilled arrangement of people that stays with me. There was something classical about it, as if it mimicked a Renaissance painting I couldn’t quite bring to mind. I wanted, of course, to see inside the property. I imagined great things, cavernous rooms lit in unearthly ways. Fixtures rendered in gold and silver. Treasure spilling out of the plaster walls. A film with Harrison Ford.

You can imagine how pleased I was when we were asked to list the property for sale. I wandered the halls as eagerly as a boy driven for the first time to a country fair. I was wide-eyed, eager at every turn for more. I must have smiled too much.

And 141 York St doesn’t disappoint. It’s a marvellous place, well-renovated and well-organized. Really interesting. I came away feeling I needed to see it again. To buy another ticket. The experience was like that of listening to a new album by a favourite band: you enjoy it but know it’s going to be even better the second time through.

The same reaction holds, just slightly less fantastical, when you view the place through a real-estate lens. The income numbers and cap rate are impressive, especially with the main floor four-bedroom unit vacant and freshly renovated. There is ample storage. There is parking, a carport, even a garage you could rent out or just use as a landing area, a place to store all the gear that goes along with being a residential landlord. There is little in the way of ongoing maintenance and repair. The property, I think, needs little help from us.

The sellers lived for a while in the two-bedroom unit at the top of the building. It is a high-ceilinged set of spaces with light pouring in. You’re closer to the sun up there. There is subway tile wrapped around the kitchen walls. There are stainless appliances and a sliding barn door. The Ikea cabinets are the colour of storm clouds. The unit is leased until May 31st and the very good tenants would like to stay longer.

The main floor, and part of the basement, is taken up by a four-bedroom apartment. It’s just been painted throughout, and new countertops have been installed. The rooms are large enough for table tennis, I swear, or a call-all-your-friends movie night. The fourth bedroom is downstairs, a sanctuary from the world’s clamour. A family left recently and it certainly has the feel of a self-contained house, but I can see putting four grad students in here and thanking them for the significant dent they put in the mortgage each month .

The lower level has been painted white throughout (except for a splash of pink tile in the bathroom) and it is utterly charming. The back end of my grandparents’ house in the Cotswolds had similar feel. It was built into the side of a limestone hill and the sense of all that history hung in the air like chalk.

We’re really enthused by this listing. Everything pulls in the same direction - the aesthetics, the location, the math. It is an equation elegantly solved, a painting perfectly composed. It is also, perhaps, the investment or live-in opportunity you’ve been waiting for.