Guildwood Townhomes, 26 Livingston Rd: A Pool Near the Bluffs

Guildwood Townhomes is a rare thing in this part of Scarborough: a condo townhouse complex with its own outdoor pool, a short way from the Guild Park bluffs. It is a summer-and-family building, and the questions I would ask before buying are about the garage and the pool, not the homes themselves. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A townhouse complex with a pool and a garage

Most condo townhouse complexes from the mid-1990s give you a front door, a parking space and a strip of lawn. Guildwood Townhomes adds an outdoor pool, a party room and BBQ areas, according to condos.ca, which is a better amenity package than many apartment buildings of the same age.

Parking is in a garage rather than on driveways, and parking is included in the monthly fee. Visitor parking is listed as well. For a family, an outdoor pool you can walk to from your own front door is the feature that sells this complex every spring.

Both of those features carry a long-term cost. A shared garage needs its waterproofing, drainage and structure maintained, and an outdoor pool needs a filtration system, a liner or finish and lifeguard or safety arrangements. In a 1996 complex, all of that should be visible in the reserve fund study.

Who built it, and what condos.ca records

Condos.ca lists the builder as Balmoral Ventures, spelled there as Balmoral Ventuers, and I could not find another source that describes the company or its other projects. Treat the builder name as a record rather than a reputation signal; at 30 years old, how the corporation has been run matters more than who poured the foundation.

Condos.ca records only one size for the homes, 1,736 square feet, which suggests the data is thin rather than that every home is identical. Ask for the floor plan of the specific home you are considering, and confirm what is finished below grade and how many parking spaces are assigned.

The complex is a little under a third of the size of Markham Gardens in Malvern, which has 450 homes, and nearly three times the size of 8 Cromwell Road a short distance west in Guildwood, which has 55. At 143 homes it is large enough to fund a pool and a garage, but small enough that owners can still know their board.

What to look at inside a 1996 townhouse

At 30 years old, most homes here have had at least one round of updates, but rarely all at once. Walk through with a list: the age of the furnace and air conditioner, the hot water tank and whether it is rented, the windows and patio doors, and the condition of the kitchen and bathrooms.

Townhouses with a garage underneath or alongside are also worth checking at the lowest level. Look for staining, efflorescence or a musty smell near the garage wall or the basement floor, and ask the seller about any water history. A home inspection is money well spent in a complex of this age.

Finally, check what is attached to the home. In many townhouse complexes the patio, deck or yard is exclusive-use common element, so the corporation sets the rules for fences, sheds and changes. The declaration and rules in the status certificate will tell you what you can change.

Living in Guildwood

Guildwood is one of the most deliberately planned neighbourhoods in Scarborough. It grew out of land Rosa and Spencer Clark sold after 1954, and the Guildwood Village subdivision that began in 1957 was laid out with winding roads, cul-de-sacs, buried power lines and footpaths behind the lots. Trees were kept wherever possible, and the area still feels like it.

The neighbourhood’s centrepiece is Guild Park and Gardens, a 50-acre park on the Scarborough Bluffs. The Clarks ran an artists’ colony and inn here from 1932, and from the 1950s they salvaged pieces of demolished buildings, many from downtown Toronto. Remnants from more than 60 buildings now stand in the gardens, including the columns of the old Bank of Toronto that form the outdoor Greek Theatre.

The Guild Inn itself closed in 2001. The City adopted a management plan for the park in 2014, and the restored inn now hosts weddings, meetings and events, with the Clark Centre for the Arts in an expanded building next door. For residents, it means a heritage landmark and lakeside trails within the neighbourhood rather than a drive away.

Guildwood GO station serves the Lakeshore East line and VIA Rail, which makes this one of the few corners of Scarborough with a train downtown. The data panel on this page shows the exact walking distance from Livingston Road to the station and to TTC routes.

Price per square foot and fees

Condos.ca puts the average here at about $368 per square foot. That is higher than Markham Gardens at about $323, which fits a smaller complex in a more established neighbourhood with a pool, and well below the $490 to $517 per square foot of the apartment towers near Scarborough Town Centre.

At the time of writing, two homes were listed for sale, asking from about $699,900 to $709,000, with monthly fees of about $665 to $739. Against the 1,736 square feet condos.ca records, that works out to roughly 38 to 43 cents a square foot. That is roughly double Markham Gardens, and the difference is largely the pool, the party room and water being included.

With only two active listings and one recorded size, I would lean on the sold data in the panel above and on comparable townhouse sales elsewhere in Guildwood and West Hill before settling on a price.

Building specifications

Amenities at Guildwood Townhomes

The outdoor pool and party room give this complex a social summer that most townhouse rows do not have, and they are the main reason the fee is higher than at simpler complexes. If you will never use a pool, you are still paying to maintain one.

Jatin’s honest take on Guildwood Townhomes

Guildwood Townhomes — frequently asked questions

Looking at Scarborough Bluffs, West Hill, Guildwood, Woburn, Malvern and Rouge more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.