298 MACDONNELL ST - SOLD
The Essentials
A detached and rather lovely four-bedroom red-brick home with an old garage and sweet yard near the intersection of MacDonnell and Mack.
The Bigger Picture
If you want to live downtown, but have despaired in recent times at the low inventory and high prices (I know we certainly have), then 298 Macdonnell is going to hit you like a tall glass of lemonade. It's a very stylish and smartly laid-out home that sits square and proud on its lot. It gets you into a wildly popular neighbourhood, close to the downtown core, and the university, and Lake Ontario, at a price point that’s vanishingly rare these days. To us, it sometimes has the feel of a condo, only without the pesky monthly fees.
If, on the other hand, you’re looking for someplace special to house the kids when they begin a new school year, you're going to be over the moon. The price per bedroom (we’ve never stopped thinking that such an odd way to price a house) is $131,000, and in this location that’s remarkably low. What’s more, with two bedrooms and a bathroom on each floor, and a stylish rec room down below, there is the real potential to divide things here into two separate units by creating a brilliant in-law suite. Having said that, keeping it tied together makes good sense to us. It’s a home this way, rather than a couple of apartments.
If condo living isn’t to your liking, then think of this instead as a fairy tale sort of cottage, transported into the city from some distant forest and somehow retaining its ability to act as a refuge from the urban bustle and heat. The gas fireplace on the main floor, as well as all the light streaming in, and the strip maple floors as good as any we've seen, and mean that life at the heart of the city can be elegant as well as supremely practical.
The old garage out back, with its peeling paint and its window boxes, might be my favourite visual of the lot. And the old stone patio too. It means (and this is important) that there is somewhere to sit quietly with that lemonade we began with, somewhere to stir the ice down gently into nothing, contemplating all the good fortune that brought you here.
The Virtual Tour
The Gallery
