555 Yonge St Condos: An Office Conversion with All Utilities in the Fee

555 Yonge is the building I show buyers who want to live on Yonge Street, at a subway stop, for the price of a suburban one-bedroom. It is a nine-storey office building converted into 120 condos in the mid-1990s, and its maintenance fee covers every utility, hydro included. That makes the fee look high and the suite cheap, and you need to understand both before you buy. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

An office building that became condos

555 Yonge was not designed as housing. It started life as an office building, and the bands of horizontal windows across all nine floors and the raised entrance atrium on Yonge still give that away. It was converted to residential use and registered as a condominium in 1996, three decades ago.

Conversions live differently from purpose-built condos. Floor plates designed for offices are deep, so some suites are long and narrow with the windows on one wall. Ribbon windows give you a continuous strip of glass rather than floor-to-ceiling walls, and the Globe and Mail described the building’s suites as offering extra space for the location.

The things to watch are the ones every conversion shares: how the plumbing and ventilation were retrofitted into an office shell, and how the corporation has maintained them since.

Small suites, wide range

condos.ca records suites from about 389 to 1,016 square feet, and at the time of writing the suites for sale were a studio and two one-bedrooms, one of them with a den. That is the core of the building: compact suites for one person, a first-time buyer or an investor.

There are larger two-bedroom, two-bathroom corner suites as well, some with balconies, but they come up less often. If you need a second bedroom, be patient, and look closely at how the second bedroom is lit in a deep office floor plate.

Because the suites are small and there are only 120 of them, a single unusual sale can move the building average a lot. I compare each suite against others of the same type and exposure, not against the building average.

Parking is in an underground garage, and suites with a space or a locker are worth more here than in many buildings, because a small suite benefits most from extra storage. Confirm whether any parking or locker is owned, leased or simply assigned before you count it in the price.

Yonge and Wellesley, and what is coming

The building sits on Yonge just north of Wellesley, across from the subway entrance, and street-level units have held a cafe and a bank, according to the Globe and Mail. The Church-Wellesley Village is a few minutes east and Bloor-Yorkville is a short walk north.

This stretch of Yonge is changing fast. Just to the south, between Wellesley and Maitland on the east side, a 68-storey tower with 663 suites is proposed at 543 Yonge Street by CentreCourt, Fitzrovia and Choice Properties, according to UrbanToronto. Expect years of construction nearby once it starts, and some south-facing views may change.

Yonge Street outside your window means buses, deliveries and late-night foot traffic. Suites facing the back of the building are quieter. Transit and walkability details are in the automatic panel on this page. Ask the seller which way the suite faces and what is directly outside the bedroom window.

Who lives here, and how it rents

With small suites, an all-in fee and a subway stop at the door, 555 Yonge draws a mix of owner-occupiers and renters. Students, hospital staff and young professionals working downtown are the natural tenant pool, and there was a suite for rent alongside the three for sale at the time of writing.

That mix shapes the building. Corridors and elevators see more move-ins and move-outs than in an owner-heavy building, and the board has to balance investors who watch the fee closely against residents who want the building improved. Read the minutes to see how those debates have gone.

For an owner-occupier, the appeal is simple: you buy a small home on Yonge with one predictable monthly cost, and you can walk to work, school or the Village. For a landlord, the appeal is a deep rental market, tempered by a fee that takes a bigger bite out of rent than it would elsewhere.

The fee covers hydro, so compare carefully

condos.ca puts the building average at about $665 per square foot, below newer towers nearby such as X Condos at about $877 and Couture at about $816 on the same source. For a subway-stop address on Yonge, that is low.

The fee is where buyers get confused. Across the current listings it works out to about $1.34 per square foot, well above the downtown norm. But condos.ca lists common elements, heat, hydro, air conditioning, water, building insurance and cable TV as included. Most condos make you pay hydro and internet yourself, and heat and cooling are often metered to your suite. Add those bills back onto a newer building and much of the gap disappears.

At the time of writing three suites were for sale, asking from about $360,000 to about $558,000, all under 700 square feet. A high all-in fee also reduces what an investor nets on rent, so run the numbers both ways before you buy.

Building specifications

Amenities at The Residences of 555 Yonge Street

Amenities are basic: a gym, a sauna and a rooftop deck, with security on site. You are not paying for a pool or a big party floor, which matters because the fee already carries every utility.

Jatin’s honest take on The Residences of 555 Yonge Street

The Residences of 555 Yonge Street — 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.