Olde York Place I, 160 Frederick St: 63 Suites by St. Lawrence Market

Olde York Place I is for the buyer who wants a quiet, small building within a few minutes’ walk of St. Lawrence Market and is not chasing a glass tower. It has only 63 suites, a brick arcade at street level, and an indoor pool and squash courts that most buildings five times its size do not have. It also rarely comes up for sale, which shapes everything about how you buy here. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A small building on one of Toronto’s oldest blocks

This corner is part of the original Town of York, and the building does not let you forget it. Plaques by the entrance mark the site of William Lyon Mackenzie’s newspaper, The Colonial Advocate, which ran here from 1824 to 1834, and the birthplace of Robert Baldwin. Toronto Life picked up on that sense of history when it profiled a suite here.

The building itself is a nine-storey brick corner block with an arcade at street level and a coffee shop at grade. It reads as a mid-rise that belongs to the low-scale streets around the market, not as a tower dropped on top of them.

There is a sibling. Olde Yorke Place II at 25 George Street is a separate, 1989 corporation of about 40 suites. People confuse the two, so make sure the listing you are looking at is the building you think it is.

Sixty-three suites, and how to buy well in a small building

With only 63 suites, this building behaves differently from the towers nearby. Owners tend to stay a long time, few suites come to market in a given year, and at the time of writing there were none listed for sale or lease.

That cuts both ways. A small, owner-heavy building usually means quieter halls, fewer move-ins and a board that knows the residents. It also means there are few recent comparables, so pricing a suite here takes more judgement than in a 500-suite tower.

Suites lean large. The suites that have come up recently have been bigger plans, such as two bedrooms plus a den, and at least one recent listing described a fireplace, which you rarely find in a downtown condominium. If you need a studio or a compact investor one-bedroom, this is probably not your building.

For a building this small, the amenity list is unusual. Listings describe an indoor pool, hot tub and sauna, an exercise room, squash courts, and an outdoor terrace with barbecues, with a party room, visitor parking and 24-hour concierge and security. Toronto Life also mentioned a basketball court.

Spreading a pool across 63 owners is expensive. The upside is a quieter pool than in a big tower; the downside is that every repair is shared among few people. That is the key thing to understand before you buy.

Buying well in a 63-suite building

Small buildings reward homework. Ask for the last two years of board minutes along with the status certificate, and read them for repeated topics: the pool, the garage, the roof, windows and any talk of fee increases. In a 63-suite building, each owner’s share of a large repair is roughly eight times bigger than in a 500-suite tower.

Parking in the fee is a genuine advantage at this location, where a separately rented spot near the market costs real money each month. Confirm that the suite you are buying has a parking space and whether it is owned or assigned, because that affects both your costs and your resale.

Because so few suites trade, plan your timing. If you are selling a house to buy here, it can take months for the right suite to appear, so register your interest early and be ready to move when one does.

Daily life at Front and Frederick

St. Lawrence Market is about five minutes on foot, and the Distillery District, the St. Lawrence theatres and the Financial District are all walkable. Front Street East is a residential, low-rise stretch here, with a mix of older condominiums, heritage commercial buildings and new mid-rises.

The area has been filling in with new development for more than a decade, and Toronto Life noted towers planned across the street back in 2011. Assume there will be construction somewhere nearby in most years and ask which views are protected from the suite you are considering. The panel on this page covers transit and Walk Score.

Pricing a building that rarely trades

The building has averaged about $512 per square foot in the data available, which is low for a location this close to the market. Treat that number with care: with so few sales, one or two trades move the average a lot, and the suites are large, which pulls per-foot figures down.

Parking and water are included in the fee, along with common elements and building insurance. Heat is not listed as included, and listings describe heat pump and electric heating, so your hydro bill carries your heating and cooling. Ask the seller for a year of hydro bills.

There were no active listings at the time of writing, so I can’t give you a current asking range. If you want to know what has traded here recently, my building sold report pulls the actual results, or book a call and I will set up an alert for when a suite comes up.

Building specifications

Amenities at Olde York Place I

A pool and squash courts in a 63-suite building is rare, and with so few residents the facilities are rarely busy. Look closely at their condition, because the cost of maintaining them is shared among very few owners. Ask when the pool equipment was last replaced. In a building this size, the condition of the pool says a lot about how carefully the corporation plans ahead.

Jatin’s honest take on Olde York Place I

Olde York Place I — frequently asked questions

Looking at Church–Wellesley, Corktown, Moss Park and Cabbagetown more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.