Brunswick Court, 403 Brunswick Ave: Six Annex Homes in a House Form

Brunswick Court is about as small as a Toronto condominium gets: six suites in a house-form building on one of the Annex’s best residential streets. You get the street, the trees and a suite of about 1,150 sq ft, with parking behind. What you also get is a corporation of six owners, and that is the part most buyers do not think through. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A conversion, or a new house?

Condos.ca describes Brunswick Court as a single Annex house turned into six suites. The City’s record tells a slightly different story. A 1999 staff report on the application describes a plan to replace the existing house at 403 Brunswick with a new house-form building of six units, designed by architect George Popper for Brunswick Court Inc., alongside converting the house next door at 399 into three units.

The corporation was registered in 2001, which fits a new or substantially rebuilt building finished after that process.

Why it matters: a new house-form building from around 2001 has very different plumbing, wiring, insulation and structure from a converted Victorian. Ask the seller or manager which it is, and look at the building’s original drawings if they can be found. A home inspection is worth doing here even though it is a condo, because the building systems serve so few suites.

Suites the size of a small house floor

The only recorded suite size is about 1,150 sq ft, which is large for an Annex condo and closer to the floor of a small house. With six suites over two storeys, expect layouts that run front to back with windows on more than one side, rather than the single-exposure plans of a tower.

Every suite will be slightly different, so do not assume a neighbour’s layout is the same as yours. Ask for the suite’s floor plan and the declaration’s description of it, including any exclusive-use outdoor space.

Heat and hydro are not listed in the fee, so ask how each suite is heated and metered and request a year of bills. In a small house-form building, a top-floor suite under the roof and a lower suite can have very different heating and cooling costs, even at the same size.

Ask, too, how noise travels between suites. Floor and wall construction in house-form buildings varies a lot, and a quick visit at a busy time of day tells you more than a listing ever will.

What a six-owner condominium means

A condominium with six suites works more like a shared house than a building. Every owner is likely to be on, or close to, the board. There is no concierge, no staff and probably no economies of scale, and every repair, from the roof to the rear driveway, is split six ways.

That can be a very good arrangement when the owners get along and the reserve fund is funded properly. It can be hard when one owner falls behind on fees or the group disagrees about work. A large repair in a six-suite building lands on each owner as a much bigger share than in a 200-suite tower.

Before you buy, read the status certificate, the reserve fund study, the budget and the minutes carefully. Ask how often the owners meet, whether there are any unresolved disputes about repairs, and how the management company and the owners split the work.

Financing is worth checking early too. Some lenders look more closely at very small condominium corporations, so have your mortgage broker confirm the building is acceptable before you firm up an offer.

Brunswick Avenue between Bloor and Dupont

This stretch of Brunswick is classic Annex: large brick houses, mature trees and a few carefully designed small condominiums. Two of them sit a few doors south of Brunswick Court: The Loretto at 385 Brunswick, a 50-suite building from 2007, and the School House Lofts at 391, a 19-suite building from 2010 that condos.ca describes as the former Loretto College.

Both show how much buyers will pay for a well-finished small building on this street, and both give you a useful upper bound when you price a suite here. For daily life, the Bloor Street shops and restaurants are a short walk south and Dupont is to the north. Transit, schools, parks and Walk Score are shown in the data panel on this page.

How to price a suite in a six-suite building

Condos.ca reports a building average of about $688 per square foot. That is well below The Loretto down the street at about $1,661 and School House Lofts at about $901. The gap reflects a much simpler building with no amenities, but also the thin data behind a six-suite average.

There were no suites listed for sale or rent when I checked, and with only six suites, a sale may happen only every year or two. That means the building average is a rough guide at best. I would price a suite here against recent sales of comparable Annex condominiums and houses split into suites, as well as against this building’s own history.

Ask me for the building sold report for the recorded sales, and treat any single past sale with caution because condition and layout vary so much in a building like this.

Building specifications

Amenities at Brunswick Court

There are no shared amenities beyond parking and a security system, and that is the point of a building like this. You are buying a large suite in a house on an Annex street, and the fee is not paying for a lobby, a gym or staff.

Jatin’s honest take on Brunswick Court

Brunswick Court — frequently asked questions

Looking at Yorkville, the Annex and Midtown more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.