The Kingsway vs Bloor West Village: Buyer Guide 2026

Published 10 September 2026 · By Jatin Dua, Broker of Record, RE/MAX Quantum Realty

Last updated 10 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · Toronto neighbourhood comparison · 8 min read

Quick answer

If you want to win a house without a bidding war, the Kingsway. If you want the deeper high street and are prepared to fight for a semi, Bloor West Village. In Q1 2026 Kingsway South recorded 23 sales at an average of $2,619,926, closing at 95% of list in 31 days. Runnymede-Bloor West Village recorded the same 23 sales at an average of $1,451,604 — but closing at 112% of list in nine days, with only eight active listings in the entire community. One market is a negotiation. The other is a contest. And a planning line now runs between them that changes what you can build.

Two high streets, and only one of them invented the model

Start with the retail, because in both places the strip is the reason people buy. The Bloor West Village BIA was the first Business Improvement Area in the world, founded in 1970 after the Ontario Municipal Act was amended to allow it. Alex Ling chaired it and went on to found the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas in 1980. It now runs over 400 shops, restaurants and services along Bloor St W from South Kingsway to Ellis Park Rd.

Here is the part almost nobody mentions: the BIA exists because the subway hurt the strip. The Bloor-Danforth line opened in February 1966 and let shoppers bypass local merchants for downtown. The merchants organised, invented a funding mechanism, and the idea spread worldwide from that block of Bloor.

The Kingsway BIA runs on Bloor St W between Prince Edward Drive and Mimico Creek: over 200 stores, more than 30 restaurants, a preserved 1939 Kingsway Theatre, median street gardens and hanging planters on wrought-iron coach lamps. Its signature event, Taste of the Kingsway, has run more than 15 years and draws over 100,000 attendees.

Both strips kept a cinema building

The Kingsway’s 1939 theatre is preserved on the strip. Bloor West Village’s Runnymede Theatre at 2223 Bloor St W is a 1927 atmospheric theatre by Alfred Chapman, designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1990, and now a Shoppers Drug Mart — a Chapters from 1999 to 2014 — with the vaulted sky ceiling still intact inside. Walk in and look up.

The planning line that runs between them

Bloor West Village sits in Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park, in the Toronto and East York district. The Kingsway sits in Ward 3, in the Etobicoke-York district. That administrative boundary now has real money attached to it.

Sixplexes. Council adopted the sixplex permissions on 25 June 2025 by 18 votes to 6. They apply to the Toronto and East York wards plus part of Scarborough. Etobicoke-York was excluded. Sixplexes are permitted in Bloor West Village; the same conversion is not available in the Kingsway.
Major Streets. Council adopted the Major Streets bylaw on 22 May 2024, passed the bylaws on 26 June 2024, and the Ontario Land Tribunal resolved the appeal on 11 September 2025, bringing OPA 727, By-law 1061-2025 and Zoning By-law Amendment 1062-2025 into force. Small-scale apartment buildings and townhouses are now permitted on properties fronting designated major streets in Neighbourhoods, Bloor W frontage included.
And a counterweight. The Bloor West Village Avenue Study sets a maximum eight-storey height on the strip. That is the constraint Council relied on when it refused a nearby 17-storey proposal.

COVENANTS ARE NOT ZONINGThe Kingsway looks the way it does because Etobicoke lawyer Robert Home Smith imposed private design controls in the early 1900s: construction required his approval and tree-cutting was prohibited. Those are private restrictive covenants, not planning protection. At 270 The Kingsway, Humbertown’s future phases are slated to add condominium towers from mid-rise to over 20 storeys plus townhomes. Do not assume low-rise character is guaranteed by the rulebook — in the Kingsway it never was.

95% of list against 112% of list

Q1 2026, TRREB community	Kingsway South	Runnymede-Bloor West Village
Sales, all types	23	23
Average price, all types	$2,619,926	$1,451,604
Median price, all types	$2,298,000	$1,390,000
Detached	15 sales, avg $3,260K, median $3,015K	12 sales, avg $1,629K, median $1,601K
Semi-detached	1 sale, suppressed	10 sales, avg $1,260K, median $1,220K
Condo apartment	6 sales, avg $1,501K	No sales recorded
Average sale-to-list	95%	112%
Days on market	31	9
New listings / active	76 / 24	46 / 8

Read the last three rows again. In the Kingsway the average sale closed below asking after roughly a month. In Bloor West Village the average sale closed twelve percent above asking in nine days, with eight active listings across the entire community at quarter end. These are the same number of transactions producing completely opposite experiences for the buyer.

DO NOT READ BLOOR WEST’S YEAR-OVER-YEAR AS A PRICE DROPSales went 18 to 23. Average went $1,587,509 to $1,451,604, down 8.6%. But the median went $1,370,000 to $1,390,000, up 1.5%; days on market halved from 15 to 9; and sale-to-list jumped from 106% to 112%. An average falling while the median rises, speed doubles and competition intensifies is mix shift — fewer top-end detached trades in the quarter — not a softening market. Anyone telling you Bloor West Village prices fell 8.6% has misread the report.

What the sale-to-list gap really means

At 112% of list you are not shopping, you are competing. Budget well above the asking price, expect bully offers before the offer date, and accept that you will lose houses. At 95% of list in the Kingsway you can make a considered offer with conditions and stand a chance of it being accepted.

What the same budget buys on either side

About $1.26M. Ten semi-detached sales in Bloor West Village, median $1,220K, 12 days on market, 112% of list. Predominantly 1910s to 1940s brick, many on the slope.
About $1.63M. Twelve detached sales in Bloor West Village, median $1,601K, seven days on market. That is roughly half the Kingsway detached average.
About $3.26M. Fifteen detached sales in Kingsway South, median $3,015K. Arts and Crafts in locally quarried sandstone with Tudor Revival elements, on Anglophile streets like Queen Anne Road and Kingsgarden Road.

The structural difference behind those numbers is stock. Kingsway South has 3,470 occupied dwellings, 2,320 of them single-detached (66.9%), and is 81.3% owner-occupied — the highest ownership share in west Toronto. Bloor West Village has 3,987 private dwellings at the 2016 Census: 53% detached, 20% semi, 19% apartment in buildings under five storeys, and zero apartments in buildings of five storeys or more. Owner-occupancy is 78%. Roughly 86% of the stock predates 1960.

Only one of these is a downsizing neighbourhood

Bloor West Village contains 20 condominium units in the entire neighbourhood — one percent of the stock. There is effectively no way to sell the family house and stay on the same streets. The Kingsway, for all its price, has 665 apartment units in buildings of five storeys or more (19.2%) plus 345 in smaller buildings. Elevator living exists there. It just is not cheap, and it trades rarely.

Trains, cars and the school run

Bloor West Village is a subway-first neighbourhood and unapologetic about it. Runnymede station opened on 10 May 1968 just east of Runnymede Rd and is fully accessible following a three-elevator retrofit begun in late 2018; Jane station serves the western end. Buses at Runnymede are the 71 Runnymede, 77 Swansea, 79 Scarlett Road and the 300 Bloor-Danforth Blue Night. There is no GO station — the nearest is Bloor GO and UP Express at Dundas West, roughly three kilometres east — and there is no direct highway access, only indirect routes to the Gardiner via South Kingsway or Highway 427 via Bloor W.

The Kingsway is better for drivers and worse for step-free transit. Royal York carries six routes including the 73 Royal York, 76 Royal York South and 300 Bloor-Danforth. Old Mill, at 2672 Bloor St W, is quiet to the point of being odd: 6,109 passengers in 2023-24, 64th out of Toronto’s 70 subway stations, one bus route, and elevators that will not arrive before a 2028 target — it will be the last station in the city to become accessible. The Gardiner and QEW are reached via Park Lawn or Islington, and Highway 427 is to the west. No GO station either.

On schools: Bloor West Village is served by Runnymede Junior and Senior Public School, Humbercrest Public School and Warren Park Junior Public School, with Humberside Collegiate Institute as the principal secondary draw and Runnymede Collegiate serving areas to the north. The Kingsway is served by Lambton-Kingsway Junior Middle School (JK-8), Sunnylea Junior School, Norseman JMS and Islington JMS, with Etobicoke Collegiate Institute at secondary level and the independent Kingsway College School. I do not quote Fraser Institute rankings here — the current data year is 2023/24 and both the TDSB and the OPSBA dispute the methodology. Check the TDSB Find Your School tool against the exact address instead.

Two honest lists of problems

What is wrong with the Kingsway

Break-and-enter ran at 271.1 per 100,000 in 2025 against a city rate of 189.5 — the highest in South Etobicoke. Assault was 513.1 and auto theft 125.9, with no homicides and no shootings recorded.
The market is thin. 23 sales and 24 active listings in a quarter means shaky comparables and a resale that depends on a small pool of buyers.
58.6% of the housing was built in 1960 or earlier, and only 10.5% since 2011. Old houses, old systems.
Humbertown’s later phases bring towers of over 20 storeys to the neighbourhood’s main shopping centre. That is a real change to what you are buying into.

What is wrong with Bloor West Village

112% average sale-to-list means budgeting well over ask and expecting bully offers. Buyers who cannot move fast lose here repeatedly.
With 20 condominium units in the whole neighbourhood there is no low-cost entry point and no downsizing-in-place option.
86% pre-1960 stock makes knob-and-tube wiring, galvanised supply lines, undersized panels and clay drain laterals routine findings. Price the inspection accordingly.
Parking on Bloor St is metered and scarce, and side-street permit parking is contested. Many streets fall steeply toward the Humber, which concentrates stormwater at the bottom of the slope.

Who should buy which

Bloor West Village if you are a move-up family who wants a detached house or a semi on a walkable high street with a subway stop, you are strongly end-user rather than investor, and you can compete on offer night.
The Kingsway if you want the same walkability at a larger scale of house, you value a designed streetscape and a mature canopy, you can carry $2.5M or more, and you would rather negotiate than bid.
The Kingsway also if you may eventually want to sell the house and stay in the neighbourhood in an apartment. Bloor West Village cannot offer you that.
Neither, honestly, if you need direct highway access or a GO train. Both are subway-and-arterials neighbourhoods, and Bloor West Village’s road connections are genuinely indirect.
Bloor West Village if the multiplex or Major Streets route matters to your plans — those permissions apply there and not in the Kingsway.

If you want the underlying quarterly numbers rather than my summary of them, the market report is where I put them, and I would rather you argue with the data than take my word for it.

Common questions

Which has the better shopping street, The Kingsway or Bloor West Village?

They are different in size and history. The Bloor West Village BIA was the first Business Improvement Area in the world, founded in 1970, and runs over 400 shops, restaurants and services. The Kingsway BIA runs over 200 stores and more than 30 restaurants between Prince Edward Drive and Mimico Creek, with a preserved 1939 theatre and an annual Taste of the Kingsway drawing over 100,000 people.

Can you build a sixplex in The Kingsway?

No. Toronto Council adopted sixplex permissions on 25 June 2025 by 18 votes to 6, applying them to the Toronto and East York wards plus part of Scarborough. Etobicoke-York, which includes the Kingsway, was excluded. Sixplexes are permitted in Bloor West Village, which sits in Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park within Toronto and East York.

Why did Bloor West Village homes sell at 112% of asking?

Because supply is extremely tight. In Q1 2026 TRREB recorded 23 sales against 46 new listings and only eight active listings at quarter end, with an average of nine days on market. Detached and semi-detached both averaged 112% of list. In practice that means underpriced listings with offer dates, competing bids and frequent bully offers ahead of those dates.

Are there condos in Bloor West Village?

Barely. The neighbourhood has 20 condominium units in total, about one percent of its stock, and zero apartment buildings of five storeys or more. TRREB recorded no condo apartment and no condo townhouse sales there in Q1 2026. If you want an apartment on the Bloor line in this part of the city, you will be looking at neighbouring communities instead.

How tall can buildings get on Bloor Street in Bloor West Village?

The Bloor West Village Avenue Study sets a maximum height of eight storeys on the strip. City Council relied on that limit when it refused a nearby 17-storey proposal. Separately, the Major Streets bylaw came into force after the Ontario Land Tribunal resolved its appeal on 11 September 2025, permitting small-scale apartment buildings and townhouses on designated major street frontages in Neighbourhoods.

Which neighbourhood is easier for driving?

The Kingsway. It reaches the Gardiner and QEW via Park Lawn or Islington with Highway 427 to the west. Bloor West Village has no direct highway access at all — the Gardiner via South Kingsway or Highway 427 via Bloor W, both indirect — and neither neighbourhood has a GO station. Bloor West Village is best understood as a subway-first neighbourhood.

Kingsway or Bloor West Village, one address

Send me the listing you are looking at. I will tell you what it should actually sell for given a 112% or a 95% market, what the inspection is likely to turn up in pre-1960 stock, and whether I would put my own money into that street. No pitch attached.

Book a 15-minute call or call or text 833-330-1925.

No pressure, no drip campaign. If the answer is “neither, wait six months”, I will tell you that.

The Kingsway vs Bloor West Village: The Honest Comparison