26 Peach Tree Townhouses: 78 Etobicoke Homes from 1982, Four on Market

26 Peach Tree Townhouses is unusual for a small Etobicoke townhouse corporation in one way: at the time of writing, four of its 78 homes were for sale at once. That gives buyers real choice and real comparables, which older townhouse complexes rarely offer. It also shares its paths with an older corporation next door, which is the first thing you need to sort out. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

Make sure you are in MTCC-575

Two townhouse corporations share this cluster of paths. 26 Peach Tree Townhouses, MTCC-575, covers 1 to 91 Maple Branch Path and 1 to 26 Peach Tree Path. Islington Place, YCC-409, covers 60 to 161 Maple Branch Path, 1 to 21 Sweet Pea Path and 27 to 43 Peach Tree Path. The Maple Branch and Peach Tree numbers overlap.

Condos.ca lists GSA Property Management for both, which makes it easy to treat them as one place. They are not. Each corporation has its own declaration, board, budget and reserve fund, and a fee in one tells you nothing about the other.

On every listing here, I check the legal description and the corporation number before anything else. Your lawyer should confirm it early. If you are comparing two homes a few doors apart, they may belong to different corporations with different finances.

A 1982 complex, four years younger than its neighbour

MTCC-575 was registered in March 1982, about three and a half years after Islington Place. The different prefix, Metropolitan Toronto rather than York, reflects when and where the corporation was registered, not any difference in the homes.

Four years can matter when you are looking at roofs and windows. Building parts installed in 1982 are on a slightly later replacement schedule than those from 1978. That does not make this complex automatically better. It means the two corporations are probably at different points in their capital cycles, and you should know where this one stands.

The reserve fund study is the document that answers it. Look for the next roofing, window and paving projects, their estimated cost, and whether the fund can pay for them. With 78 homes sharing the bill, the per-home share of a large project is significant.

What four listings at once tell you

Four homes for sale out of 78 is roughly one in twenty, which is a lot for a townhouse corporation of this size. It may be coincidence and seasonal timing. It may also mean owners who bought decades ago are moving on at the same time. Either way, it puts buyers in a stronger position than usual.

The listings were all described as three-bedroom homes, some with an extra room, so this looks like a complex of family-sized townhouses. Condos.ca does not publish a size range. Measure the home you like, and ask whether the stated area includes the basement before you lean on any price per square foot figure.

Multiple listings also let you compare condition directly. Walk every one you can. Look at how the exteriors, fences and common areas have been kept, and ask each listing agent what the seller has updated inside. The spread in condition is often wider than the spread in price.

The neighbourhood around Dixon and Islington

This is north Etobicoke, in the City’s Kingsview Village-The Westway neighbourhood. The Kingsview name was applied to the housing north of Dixon Road in the 1950s and refers to the high ground. Westown Shopping Centre is the local plaza, Highway 401 runs along the north edge and the Humber River lies to the east.

Many of the original postwar houses in the area have been replaced by much larger homes, or their lots split for two or three new ones. That rebuilding tells you the land is valued, and it gives you a sense of what the surrounding streets are becoming.

Daily life is mostly by car and bus. The data panel on this page covers transit, schools, Walk Score and nearby food and parks, so I will not repeat those numbers here.

One practical point for families: a townhouse complex on internal paths, set back from the main roads, gives children somewhere quieter to play than a frontage on Dixon or Islington would. Walk the paths at different times of day before you buy, and see how parking, garbage storage and snow clearing are handled across the site.

Pricing at 26 Peach Tree

Condos.ca put the complex’s average at about $512 per square foot. The four active listings were asking between $720,000 and $774,999, which is a tight band for four homes. Monthly fees across those listings ranged from about $675 to $695.

A fee in that range is reasonable for a townhouse corporation if it covers what I would expect: exterior maintenance, the grounds, building insurance and the reserve fund. Condos.ca does not list the inclusions, so confirm them before you compare with any other complex. A lower fee elsewhere may simply leave more of the bill with the owner.

Some rough arithmetic helps. At the building average of about $512 a square foot, an asking price in the middle of that range implies a home of roughly 1,450 square feet. Treat that as a guide only, because the average may count basements differently from one listing to the next, and finished lower levels can swing the number either way.

Asking prices are not sale prices. Use the recorded sales in the data panel on this page, and compare with Islington Place next door and with freehold homes nearby. My building sold report pulls those comparables together.

Building specifications

Jatin’s honest take on 26 Peach Tree Townhouses

26 Peach Tree Townhouses — frequently asked questions

Looking at Downsview, Weston, York University Heights, Rexdale and northwest Toronto more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.