Roncesvalles vs The Annex: Victorian Houses in 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 are buying an old Toronto house to live in — and possibly to add units to — these are two of the most tempting neighbourhoods in the city, and they are not equally easy. The Annex gives you bigger houses, four subway stations and a century of conversion precedent, at a Q1 2026 detached median of $2,171K and a semi-detached median of $1,430K. Roncesvalles gives you a cheaper, smaller entry — seven semis averaged $1,578K — on a street rebuilt for walking. The number that separates them is 40%: the share of Roncesvalles dwellings already sitting in buildings under five storeys, almost all of it house-to-flat conversion. The Annex has been doing the same thing for longer, and the wear shows.

Same century, same idea, two different results

The Annex is the older of the two by a generation. It follows Simeon Janes’s 1886 subdivision, literally called “the Toronto Annex,” annexed to the city in 1887 with Seaton Village following in 1888. Its housing runs 1886 to the 1910s and produced a genuine named architectural type: the Annex style, a Toronto synthesis of American Richardsonian Romanesque and British Queen Anne Revival, recognisable by large rounded arches and Queen Anne decoration such as turrets. The template is E.J. Lennox’s Lewis Lukes residence at 37 Madison Avenue, completed 1887 — the architect who also designed Old City Hall and Casa Loma. Traditional boundaries are Dupont, Bloor Street West, Bathurst and Avenue Road.

Roncesvalles is largely 1900-to-First-World-War middle-class housing, with grander 1910–1930 homes on High Park Gardens and High Park Boulevard. Roughly 70% of the stock predates 1960. It runs from High Park east to Lansdowne Avenue and the rail corridor, Bloor Street West down to Queen Street West and the lake. The street is named after a battle, not a person — Colonel O’Hara named it for the Battle of Roncesvalles of 1813.

There is a data trap here. Roncesvalles is clean — TRREB W01, community “Roncesvalles,” City neighbourhood #86. The Annex is not. Both TRREB’s Annex community and City neighbourhood #95 Annex are much larger than the traditional Annex: the City’s version extends east across Avenue Road to Yonge and absorbs Yorkville entirely. So any Annex average blends Victorian semis on Admiral Road with trophy condominiums on Hazelton Avenue. Always ask which definition a number uses.

What conversion actually looks like in each

In Roncesvalles the 2016 Census counted 7,305 private dwellings: 40% apartments in buildings under five storeys, 24% apartments of five storeys or more, 15% semi-detached, 10% single-detached, 7% duplex, 5% row. That 40% is the number to stare at. It is not purpose-built low-rise. It is decades of houses cut into flats. Only 570 of 6,890 occupied dwellings are condominium, which is 8%, and tenure runs 56% renter to 44% owner — the only majority-renter neighbourhood in west Toronto.

The Annex did the same thing to larger houses and pushed it further. Its late-Victorian and Edwardian detached and semi-detached stock has been very heavily converted into multiplexes, rooming houses and student rentals, with low-rise apartment blocks along Bloor and Spadina and a small number of condominium buildings. The University of Toronto’s St George campus borders it to the south-east, and that is the engine behind all of it. The upside is deep, permanent rental demand. The downside is a heavy student and transient population, absentee landlords and genuinely variable upkeep block to block.

What that means for you

You are not buying the right to convert these houses. In both neighbourhoods the conversion already happened, decades ago, often without permits and rarely to today’s code. What you are buying is somebody else’s work — which is why the inspection matters more here than the comparables do.

The money: what actually traded

These are TRREB community figures for Q1 2026 (January to March), the most recent quarter published at community level and therefore roughly six months old as I write. Several of these segments are small samples, and I have put the sale counts in the table so you can weigh them yourself.

Q1 2026, TRREB	Roncesvalles (W01)	Annex (C02)
Sales, all types	24	64
Average, all types	$1,179,366	$1,352,721
Median, all types	$913,022	$948,000
Days on market	40	38
Sale-to-list	107%	97%
Detached	1 sale, suppressed	5 sales, median $2,171K, 104%
Semi-detached	7 sales, median $1,471K, 11 days, 112%	9 sales, median $1,430K, 20 days, 99%
Condo apartment	11 sales, avg $717K, 63 days, 99%	48 sales, median $818K, 42 days, 96%
Active listings at quarter end	17	175

The pattern is the same in both places and it is worth naming. In the Annex, semis sold in 20 days and detached houses went at 104% of list — over asking — while condos took 42 days at 96% on a 23% sales-to-new-listings ratio. In Roncesvalles, semis sold in 11 days at 112% while condos took 63 days at 99%. Within a single community, the freehold and condo markets are moving in opposite directions. A neighbourhood average that is not broken out by property type tells you nothing you can use.

The conversion maths: sixplexes and Major Streets

Two City decisions changed what you can do with an old house, and they are not the same decision. The Major Streets bylaw was adopted by Council on 22 May 2024, with bylaws passed 26 June 2024; 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. It permits small-scale apartment buildings and townhouses on properties fronting designated major streets in areas designated Neighbourhoods. Sixplex permissions are separate: Council approved them on 25 June 2025 by 18 votes to 6, covering the Toronto and East York wards plus part of Scarborough, with Etobicoke–York excluded. Roncesvalles is Ward 4, where sixplexes are permitted.

On paper Roncesvalles is one of the more plausible multiplex-conversion markets in Toronto: roughly 70% pre-1960 stock, only 10% detached, and a neighbourhood that already tolerates multi-unit living at scale. In practice heritage character and lot widths constrain what gets built, and the honest arithmetic is that you buy a semi at around $1.5M and then pay to bring an existing informal conversion up to code before you add anything.

The Annex version starts higher. A detached house at a $2,171K median is a different underwriting exercise, and most of the obvious candidates were converted long ago — you are buying a running rooming house or multiplex with tenants in place, not a blank canvas. That is an advantage if the income is real and documented, and a serious problem if it is not.

Run the numbers before you fall for the staircase

An extra unit is only worth having if the cost to create it legally, plus the carrying cost of the money, is less than what it will rent for. In neighbourhoods where the entry price is $1.5M to $2.2M that is a much tighter calculation than the headlines suggest. I would rather you did that arithmetic on a spreadsheet than on a hunch.

PERMISSIONS ARE WARD-SPECIFIC — CHECK YOURSCouncil’s sixplex permissions do not apply city-wide. They cover the Toronto and East York wards plus part of Scarborough, and Etobicoke–York was excluded outright. What is permitted on a given lot also depends on frontage, heritage status and whether the street is a designated major street. Confirm your specific address with City Planning before you buy on the strength of a conversion plan — including on the strength of this article.

Parking, and why adding units makes it worse

Parking is the defining constraint in Roncesvalles and the single most common post-purchase regret I see there. Much of the housing predates the car. Permit and laneway spaces are oversubscribed well beyond supply, and plenty of listings come with nothing at all. The 2009–2011 streetscape reconstruction rebuilt the avenue from the sewers up — narrowed roadway, widened sidewalks, transit platforms extended out to the streetcar doors with bicycle ramps behind them, street trees in soil trenches under the pavement — and added no parking at all. It is superb street design that made the parking problem permanent.

Now apply that to a conversion. Every unit you add is a household that may want somewhere to put a car, on streets that were full before you started. That is the part of the multiplex conversation nobody puts in a pro forma. On the direction of travel: Mirvish Village at Bloor and Bathurst is delivering roughly 900 purpose-built rental homes with 127 commercial parking stalls.

On the Annex side I will be straight about the limits of what I can verify: I have sourced parking-pressure data for Roncesvalles and I do not have the equivalent for the Annex, so I am not going to characterise it. Check the permit situation on the specific street before you assume anything. What I can tell you about the Annex and cars is structural — it has no expressway, because the neighbourhood stopped the Spadina Expressway that would have cut it in half. Highway access is poor by design, and by local choice.

Getting around

The Annex has the better transit position, and it is not close. Four subway stations serve it — Spadina, St George and Dupont on Line 1, and Bathurst, Spadina and St George on Line 2 — and St George and Spadina are both Line 1 and Line 2 interchanges. The 511 Bathurst and 510 Spadina streetcars run the west and east flanks, with the 26 Dupont bus across the top. There is no GO station; UP Express at Bloor is roughly two kilometres west along Line 2.

Roncesvalles has one subway station, Dundas West on Line 2, which opened 26 February 1966 and has been accessible since the 2002 reconstruction, with the 504A King and 505 Dundas streetcars there and 501 Queen and 506 Carlton on the southern and eastern edges. Its compensation is that the UP Express and GO stop is right there at Bloor GO — with the caveat that from the only Dundas West entrance it is currently a 500-metre walk outdoors, which Metrolinx has been building a tunnel since 2024 to shorten to about 200 metres, with no announced opening date. Roncesvalles has the weakest highway access in west Toronto. And to be clear, because marketing copy gets this wrong: the Ontario Line does not serve the Annex.

Schools, students, and what changed at Bloor and Bathurst

Schools serving the Annex include Huron Street Junior Public School at 541 Huron Street, JK–6, roughly 270 students with an on-site daycare; Jesse Ketchum Junior and Senior Public School at 61 Davenport Road, JK–8, over 500 students; Harbord Collegiate Institute at 286 Harbord Street, established 1892, over 900 students, offering French Immersion and a Math and Science Focus programme; and Central Technical School at 725 Bathurst Street, founded 1915, with a dedicated Art Building and a pool. Roncesvalles is served by Fern Avenue Junior and Senior, Garden Avenue and Howard junior public schools, with Parkdale and Humberside collegiates at secondary. Check assignment by address with the TDSB’s “Find Your School” tool; do not take it from a listing.

The biggest physical change in the Annex in a generation is Mirvish Village, on the former Honest Ed’s site at Bloor and Bathurst: roughly 900 purpose-built rental units across seven buildings of 8 to 27 storeys, 200,000 sq ft of commercial space, and direct access to Bathurst station. The Kitchen is a 19,000 sq ft food hall and live-music venue; Honest Ed’s Alley holds 25 micro-retail pods of 150 to 300 sq ft; ten restored heritage houses line Markham Street. Peterson Group took full control from Westbank in early 2026, and as of June 2026 leasing stood at roughly 85% at 748 Bathurst and roughly 80% across the 428-unit middle complex.

The Annex also has the Bloor Street Culture Corridor, launched in April 2014 and given City of Toronto cultural corridor designation in 2016, running Bloor West from Bathurst to Yonge with 24 partner organisations including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Gardiner and Bata Shoe museums, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and the Royal Conservatory. Roncesvalles answers with the Revue Cinema, open since 1911 and one of the oldest continuously operating cinemas in Canada; the 1916 Carnegie High Park Library; Sorauren Avenue Park on a former TTC bus garage site; and the largest Polish festival in North America, which drew an estimated 300,000 people in 2011 and closes the avenue outright.

The problems you will inherit

On the Annex side

Break-and-enter runs at double the city rate. Toronto Police Service 2025 figures: 387.1 per 100,000 against 189.5 city-wide, with assault at 1,080.9 against 767.9 and auto theft at 116.9.
Freehold entry is very expensive. Detached median $2,171K, semi median $1,430K in Q1 2026.
The student and transient share shows. Rooming-house conversions, absentee landlords and inconsistent upkeep on some blocks are a feature of the housing, not a rumour about it.
A soft condo segment at 42 days, 96% of list and a 23% sales-to-new-listings ratio, with the Yorkville trophy tail distorting every average you will be quoted.
Old-house costs and no highway. Victorian stock carries the usual burdens, and multi-year construction disruption at Bloor and Bathurst is only now winding down.

On the Roncesvalles side

Parking. The defining constraint and the regret buyers name most often.
A thin, slow condo market. Eleven sales in the quarter at 63 days on market, from a stock only 8% condominium. Quarterly sales slid from 31 a year earlier to 24, and days on market nearly doubled from 22 to 40.
40% of dwellings are converted flats, which means variable construction quality and real retrofit compliance questions — knob-and-tube, fire separations, egress, unpermitted work.
56% renter tenure means many trades are investor-to-investor with tenants in place. N12 notices and rent-control exposure belong in every conversation before you write.
Noise from two directions — the streetcar on the avenue, the rail corridor on the east side.

Which one you should buy

Choose the Annex if you want a large freehold house on the subway, you value walkable culture and the university, and you can fund a $2M-plus entry with old-house contingency on top.
Choose Roncesvalles if you want a genuine main street and a house at semi-detached money, and you are prepared to compete at 112% of list on offer night.
Choose the Annex if you are underwriting student rental income and want deep demand from a campus next door — with documented, legal existing units, not assumed ones.
Choose Roncesvalles if conversion is your plan and you want the cheaper entry, accepting that heritage character, lot widths and parking each shave something off the pro forma.
Choose neither if you cannot tolerate surprise costs in a hundred-year-old house. A valuation on the specific property beats any neighbourhood average — start with a home valuation and an inspector who has done converted houses before.

Common questions

Can I convert a house in Roncesvalles into a sixplex?

Possibly. Roncesvalles is in Ward 4, and Council approved sixplex permissions on 25 June 2025 by 18 votes to 6 for the Toronto and East York wards plus part of Scarborough. What is permitted on a specific lot still depends on frontage, heritage status and whether the property fronts a designated major street. Confirm your address with City Planning before you buy on that basis.

What is the Major Streets bylaw?

It permits small-scale apartment buildings and townhouses on properties fronting designated major streets inside areas designated Neighbourhoods. Council adopted it on 22 May 2024 with bylaws passed 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. It applies to Roncesvalles frontages on qualifying streets.

Why do Annex prices vary so much?

Because both TRREB’s Annex community and City neighbourhood #95 Annex are much larger than the traditional Annex and absorb Yorkville. The Q1 2026 Annex condo apartment average of $1,192K sits 46% above the median of $818K, which is a thin tail of trophy units pulling the mean up. Always ask which definition a quoted Annex number is using.

Is the Annex safe?

On the 2025 Toronto Police Service figures, property crime is the concern rather than a general one. Break-and-enter ran at 387.1 per 100,000 against a city-wide 189.5 — roughly double — with assault at 1,080.9 against 767.9 and auto theft at 116.9. If you are buying a house here, budget for proper locks, lighting and an alarm rather than assuming a quiet street stays quiet.

Which is cheaper to buy into, Roncesvalles or the Annex?

Roncesvalles, at the freehold level. In Q1 2026 Roncesvalles semis averaged $1,578K across seven sales while Annex semis averaged $1,671K across nine, and the Annex detached median was $2,171K against a single suppressed Roncesvalles detached sale. On condos the Annex is far more expensive because its numbers include Yorkville.

Do Annex and Roncesvalles houses have parking?

Often not. In Roncesvalles much of the housing predates the car, laneway and permit parking are heavily oversubscribed, and many listings have no parking at all — it is the most common post-purchase regret there. I do not have verified parking-pressure data for the Annex, so confirm the permit situation for that specific street rather than assuming it is easier.

Buying an Old House in Roncesvalles or the Annex?

Send me the listing and I will tell you what I think the conversion really costs — what is legal on that lot, what an inspector is likely to find behind the plaster, and whether the numbers work at all. If they do not, I will say so before you spend money finding out.

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.

Roncesvalles vs The Annex: Which Victorian Is Worth Buying?