28 HILLENDALE AVENUE - SOLD

The Essentials

A brilliant three-bedroom bungalow with a two-bedroom in-law suite down below. We’d be happy to just keep listing this house over and over again.

Not surprisingly given its charm, and the surprisingly buoyant market the last couple of weeks, this house received multiple offers and sold firm on March 24.

The Bigger Picture

It’s been mighty odd out there. Unpredictable doesn’t begin to describe the real estate scene in recent months. I thought for a while, right around the turn of the year, that I might be better hiding out in the office and writing another novel, something caustic about a realtor going slowly round the bend as another agent’s awful grinning mug pops up on his neighbours’ front lawns. There were good properties not selling at all, is how it looked to me, and ordinary spots selling for regal, unseemly amounts. Madness is what it’s felt like. Mere anarchy loosed upon the world.

But finally, in the last couple of weeks, patterns seem to be holding more or less steady, even on the surface of these unruly waters. It begins to feel that you could look away for a minute and come back to find the situation hasn’t changed much, or at least has evolved the way you expected.

Our feeling is that it’s a fine time to buy a house. Seriously. Prices are down considerably from a year ago. And due diligence in the form of offers loaded up with financing and inspection clauses is commonplace again. There is, dare we say it out loud, some measure of balance in the market, with neither buyer nor seller calling all the shots. We like that.

We also like 28 Hillendale Avenue. It’s a very pretty early bird in what we hope is a good spring market for all of us.

When I look at the photographs of this brilliant three-bedroom bungalow with its high-out-of-the-ground two-bedroom in-law suite I think, Yeah, those work, that’s exactly what we’re selling here. I say that because there’s none of the usual maddening exaggeration on show, the powder room that looks more like Wembley Stadium. In this case, it really is this good, this bright, this desirable.

The kitchen has been completely reworked in the last couple of years and is the open-plan hub around which the house flows. The quartz-topped island feels large enough that it might show up on the better maps, and the materials throughout feel carefully chosen, not slapdash. I like the idea of people actually thinking about texture and geography as they go about their renovations, and I am mighty appreciative when I come across indisputable signs of a coherent, attractive vision of what’s possible inside four walls.

The bedrooms at 28 are tucked away at the other end of the house, where it’s always quiet, so you can keep the dinner party going, even if it might be good to turn it down a bit. And out behind the house is a glammy sort of deck and a garden big enough for team sports. Finally, hidden deep inside the unassuming garage (and I tell you this half-wishing it could remain a secret), there is an insulated hideaway/studio/mountaintop cave fit for the rock star in you. It’s almost enough to keep you out of the house itself.

Call us and we’ll tell you more about the house. Or we can visit it together, stand middle of the living room and marvel at its stylish flourishes, its handsome get-ups.