Islington-City Centre West vs Liberty Village 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

These are the same kind of market at two price points, so choose on price and exit risk rather than on lifestyle copy. In Q1 2026 Islington-City Centre West sold 85 condo apartments against 257 new condo listings at an average of $540K; Liberty Village, filed under TRREB’s Niagara community, sold 111 against 337 new listings at $612K. Both cleared about a third of new supply — a buyer’s market by any reading. Islington-City Centre West is roughly $72K cheaper on average and sits on a subway terminus. Liberty Village is walkable and denser, with no school inside it and one main road in and out.

Two condominium markets clearing about a third of new supply

I want to start where most comparisons of these two end, because it is the only thing that matters if you are buying a condominium in 2026: both of these markets are producing far more listings than sales, and the ratios are almost identical.

Islington-City Centre West, Q1 2026. 85 condo apartment sales against 257 new condo listings. That is roughly 33% of new supply clearing in the quarter, at 40 days on market and 97% of list.
Liberty Village, Q1 2026 (TRREB Niagara). 111 condo apartment sales against 337 new condo listings — a 33% sales-to-new-listings ratio, at 38 days on market and 97% of list.
The wider context. Urbanation’s Q1 2026 GTHA data recorded no new condominium project launches at all in the quarter, the first time in at least thirty years, with 246 new condos sold, down 52% annually, a record 4,295 completed and unsold units, and 8,629 unsold units under construction. This is not a local story about either neighbourhood.

The short version of that

You are not choosing between a hot market and a soft one. You are choosing between two soft markets. That is genuinely good news if you are buying to hold, and it is the whole risk if you might need to sell within a couple of years.

The comparables trap on both sides

Neither of these neighbourhoods is what its name suggests on an MLS search, and in Liberty Village’s case the problem is severe.

There has never been a Liberty Village MLS code. Every listing there files under TRREB C01, community Niagara — a community that also takes in a chunk of King West on the Parkdale side. So any comparable set pulled by community name is contaminated unless somebody has geo-filtered it. On the City’s side, Liberty Village sits inside neighbourhood #163 Fort York-Liberty Village, which had a 2016 population of 17,445 and a Toronto Police Service 2025 projection of 25,723; the legacy identifier was #82 Niagara. The City’s own study area is described as generally bounded by King Street West and Douro Street to the north, the rail tracks to the south, Dufferin Street to the west and Strachan Avenue to the east — roughly 55 hectares.

Islington-City Centre West has a cleaner code — TRREB W08, City neighbourhood #14 — but a different confusion. The Eglinton Crosstown West Extension will add underground Islington and Kipling stations on Eglinton Avenue West, roughly 4 km north of the Bloor corridor and serving a different catchment entirely. Construction is under way and no opening date has been confirmed. Two stations named Islington, two named Kipling, on two lines, 4 km apart. Check which one a listing is actually near.

The quarterly numbers, with the caveat attached

These are TRREB community-level figures for January to March 2026, the most recent quarter published at this geography and roughly six months old as I write. The Liberty Village column is TRREB’s Niagara community, with the contamination caveat above attached.

	Islington-City Centre West	Liberty Village (TRREB Niagara)
Sales, all types, Q1 2026	115	134
Average price, all types	$762,943	$655,325
Median price, all types	$580,000	$599,000
Days on market, all types	37	37
Average sale-to-list	97%	98%
New listings in the quarter	340	396
Active listings at quarter end	180	175
Condo apartment	85 sales, avg $540K, median $515K, 40 days	111 sales, avg $612K, median $573K, 38 days
Condo apartment new listings	257	337
Condo townhouse	8 sales, avg $894K, 18 days	19 sales, avg $776K, median $760K, 41 days
Detached	19 sales, avg $1,686K, median $1,300K	0 sales
Semi-detached	not separately reported	0 sales

Two things in that table deserve more attention than they usually get. First, the all-types average is higher in Islington-City Centre West while the median is lower — that is the 19 detached sales at a $1,686K average pulling the mean up in a community that is otherwise mostly condominium. Liberty Village has no such effect because it recorded zero detached and zero semi-detached sales in the quarter. Second, on the like-for-like comparison that actually matters, a condo apartment averaged $540K in Islington-City Centre West against $612K in Liberty Village, with medians of $515,000 and $573,000.

Islington-City Centre West’s year over year is the cleanest decline in the west end: sales 140 to 115, average $800,331 to $762,943, median $620,000 to $580,000, days on market 32 to 37. Everything moving the same direction at once is unusual and I read it as a genuine price signal rather than a composition artefact.

The two GO stations that are not what buyers think

This section exists because I have had the same conversation too many times. Both neighbourhoods are marketed with GO service that does not work the way the listing implies.

KIPLING GO IS PEAK-ONLY. KING-LIBERTY GO WAS DEFERRED.Kipling GO runs on the Milton line, and its service is weekday rush hour in the peak direction only: eastbound before work, westbound after it. Nothing midday and nothing at weekends. The corridor is largely CPKC-owned freight track and the February 2024 provincial plan for dedicated tracks enabling all-day two-way service was unfunded at an estimated $6B or more. Separately, in December 2024 Toronto City Council deferred construction of two SmartTrack stations including King-Liberty for lack of funding. Do not buy in Liberty Village on the basis that a King-Liberty GO station is coming.

What Liberty Village does have, and it is real, is Exhibition GO on the Lakeshore West line immediately south across the rail corridor — roughly 966,400 passengers in 2019 — with the City confirming a below-grade pedestrian connection through the station linking Liberty Village to Exhibition Place. UP Express does not stop there. The King-Liberty pedestrian and cycle bridge over the rail corridor opened in April 2021 and materially improved the walk north.

Street transit is the other correction. The 504 King streetcar does not run through Liberty Village. Branch 504A runs Dundas West Station to Distillery Loop and branch 504B runs Dufferin Gate Loop to Broadview Station via Dufferin Street and King Street. Residents walk up to King Street West or over to Dufferin Street to catch it. The 511 Bathurst streetcar and the 29 and 929 Dufferin buses serve the edges, with Exhibition Loop and Dufferin Gate Loop bracketing the south end. Gardiner on-ramps are at Jameson, Dunn and Strachan.

Islington-City Centre West’s transit case is simpler and stronger for a driver. It holds two Line 2 stations, Islington and Kipling; Kipling is the western terminus with 10 TTC bus bays covering routes including 45/945 Kipling, 44/944 Kipling South, 46 Martin Grove, 49 Bloor West, 111 East Mall, 123 Sherway and the 900 Airport Express to Pearson, a regional bus terminal opened in 2021 serving MiWay and GO, and 1,067 commuter parking spaces. Highway 427, the Gardiner and the QEW are all close — the best highway position in west Toronto.

What each is actually like to live in

Liberty Village is a post-industrial district of mid- and high-rise condominiums and adaptive-reuse lofts carved out of 1880s to 1920s factory buildings; nearly all of the residential stock is post-2001 and the BIA was founded in 2001. The named heritage buildings are worth knowing: 947 King Street West, the former Massey-Harris factory; the Toronto Carpet Factory Building on Mowat Avenue; the Liberty Market Building at Liberty Street and Hanna Avenue, which is the retail anchor; and the Irwin Toy Factory, converted to lofts in 2003. Lamport Stadium sits in a public park built on the site of the demolished Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women, which opened in 1878.

Two facts about daily life there come straight from the City rather than from me. The City states that “Liberty Village is unique in that there is only one main road to get in and out”, compounded by event traffic from BMO Field, Lamport Stadium, the amphitheatre and the CNE — and traffic congestion was the single biggest issue raised in community consultation. And there is no public school inside Liberty Village. The nearest TDSB options are Niagara Street Junior Public School at 222 Niagara Street (JK to 6) and Jean Lumb Public School at 20 Brunel Court (JK to 8, capacity 550), the latter purpose-built for the CityPlace and Fort York condominium population. The City’s service strategy says needs are currently met for public schools, community centres and libraries, while residents in consultation reported a strong need for exactly those facilities. That gap is the honest story.

Islington-City Centre West is not walkable in the same way and I would not pretend otherwise — independent retail you can reach on foot is the weakest of any west Toronto neighbourhood. What it has instead is scale and public investment: Montgomery’s Inn, built in 1832, running as the Etobicoke Community Museum with a working farmers’ market; the Village of Islington BIA’s 28 photo-realistic murals covering roughly 15,000 sq ft across five blocks, funded from the BIA’s own tax levy since 2004; Tom Riley Park and the Mimico Creek valley trail. It also has schools inside it — Islington Junior Middle School, Bloordale Middle School, Wedgewood Junior School and John English Junior Middle School, with Etobicoke Collegiate Institute, Richview Collegiate Institute, Michael Power/St. Joseph High School and Bishop Allen Academy on the Catholic secondary side. Check any catchment by address with the TDSB “Find Your School” tool; I do not publish catchment assignments, and I have no verified Fraser Institute rating (data year 2023/24) for these schools to quote. Where Fraser figures exist, both the TDSB and the OPSBA dispute the methodology.

Rents, yields, and a gap I am not going to paper over

If you are buying either of these as an investment, here is what is actually verifiable. TRREB’s C01 district — which covers Liberty Village — recorded Q2 2026 average rents of $1,934 for a bachelor, $2,475 for a one-bedroom, $3,494 for a two-bedroom and $4,446 for a three-bedroom, and leased 4,233 apartments in that quarter alone. That is the deepest rental pool in the city, and it is a genuine argument for the downtown side.

There is no Liberty-Village-specific rent figure, and I do not have a verified rent series for Islington-City Centre West at all. So I am not going to build you a yield comparison out of numbers I would have to invent for one side of it. If you want that analysis done properly on a specific building, that is a conversation with actual lease comparables, not a blog table. The investment property page explains how I approach it.

The downsides nobody puts in a listing

Liberty Village

One main road in and out, in the City’s own words, plus event traffic from BMO Field, Lamport Stadium, the amphitheatre and the CNE. Congestion was the top issue in community consultation.
No school, community recreation centre or library inside the neighbourhood. The City acknowledges that most services serving Liberty Village sit outside its boundaries.
A condominium monoculture with no move-up ladder. Zero detached and zero semi-detached sales in Q1 2026. When your family grows, you leave.
Years of guaranteed construction from the applications listed below, and an Ontario Line terminus at Exhibition that Metrolinx will only describe as early 2030s.
A counterweight worth stating: Toronto Police Service 2025 rates for the neighbourhood show assault at 730.9 and break and enter at 124.4 per 100,000, both below the city-wide 767.9 and 189.5, with auto theft at 46.7 and robbery at 23.3. I have no comparable verified figure for Islington-City Centre West, so I am not going to imply one is safer than the other.

Islington-City Centre West’s weak points

The heaviest supply overhang in west Toronto — 340 new listings and 180 active across all types, with 257 of those new listings in the condominium segment alone.
The weakest walkable independent retail in west Toronto. If you are moving from a downtown district, this is the adjustment that will bother you most.
Arterial traffic and noise on Dundas, Kipling and Bloor, with much of the condominium stock fronting directly onto one of them.
Sustained construction around the Six Points area, with the New Etobicoke Civic Centre alone running to an expected 2028 completion.
It reads as a growing high-rise node rather than a neighbourhood with a centre, and that is a feature of the built form rather than a phase it will grow out of.

What each pipeline actually contains

Liberty Village’s pipeline changed materially this year. The Liberty For All Official Plan Amendment was adopted by City Council on 25 June 2026, redesignating the western half from Core Employment Areas to Regeneration Areas, introducing residential use and affordable-housing requirements, and requiring developments of 80 units or more to provide a minimum 40% two-or-more-bedroom units — a direct response to the small-unit monoculture. The same amendment identifies Liberty Village as a cultural heritage landscape, following the Toronto Preservation Board’s endorsement of the Cultural Heritage Resource Assessment on 27 April 2026. Named applications include 147-151 Liberty Street and 54-68 Fraser Avenue at 55 storeys and 732 units, appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal; 25-35 Liberty Street with 58 Atlantic Avenue and 51-65 Jefferson Avenue at 50 storeys and 514 purpose-built rental units; 61, 75 and 85 Hanna Avenue with 120 Lynn Williams Street at 32, 33 and 36 storeys and 963 units, rezoning approved; 80-86 Lynn Williams Street at 44 storeys and 520 purpose-built rental plus 13 affordable, with a public daycare and public park, rezoning approved; 1071 King Street West at 14 storeys and 227 units; and 68-70 East Liberty Street, a heritage restoration as a public art gallery.

Two of Liberty Village’s biggest pieces are gated on Metrolinx. Liberty New Street, the promised second east-west corridor, will be built only after completion of the integrated Exhibition GO and Ontario Line station, targeted 2031. The Exhibition Transit-Oriented Community at 1 Atlantic Avenue and 2-20 Jefferson Avenue — provincially approved in April 2022 for four towers of 19 to 22 storeys and 568 units, now proposed as three buildings of 54, 44 and 38 storeys and 1,450 units — will not proceed until Metrolinx completes the Ontario Line’s Exhibition terminus. Exhibition is the line’s southwestern terminus; Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay stated on 11 August 2026 that the project now costs $34 billion, up from $10.9 billion in April 2019, and Metrolinx says early 2030s without a firm date. Tunnelling began on 20 April 2026.

Islington-City Centre West’s pipeline is comparable in ambition and further along in places. Six Points was reconfigured and completed in 2021, putting back a pedestrian street grid the 1961 interchange had erased and freeing roughly 18 acres across seven blocks. The New Etobicoke Civic Centre stood at nine floors of concrete in August 2026 with completion expected in 2028, adding a library branch, pools, childcare, a public health clinic, an art gallery and a roughly 47,000 sq ft civic square. CreateTO’s Bloor-Kipling lands cover 17.91 acres and roughly 2,700 homes with about 900 affordable rental, with Block 1 at 5207 Dundas Street West already under construction at 725 rental homes. Bloor-Islington Housing Now, 4.9 acres at 3326 Bloor Street West and 1126 Islington Avenue, is planned at 1,415 units integrated with a rebuilt Islington station, still at development-concept stage.

The difference that matters in the pipeline

Liberty Village’s two largest moves are waiting on a $34 billion transit project with no firm date. Islington-City Centre West’s largest civic project is at the ninth floor of concrete with a 2028 completion. One pipeline is a promise; the other is pouring.

Who should buy which

Liberty Village if you want to live downtown without a car, you value walkability and the density that comes with it, and you are comfortable in a condominium district with no school inside it. You are paying roughly $72K more on average than the Etobicoke alternative for that.
Islington-City Centre West if price and highway access matter more than walkability, you want a subway terminus with parking attached, or you eventually want the option of a detached house in the same community — something Liberty Village structurally cannot offer.
Either, if you are buying to hold for a long time and you use the current imbalance to negotiate hard. At a 33% sales-to-new-listings ratio, list price is a starting point in both places.
Neither right now, if you might need to sell inside two or three years. Both markets take over five weeks to sell at below asking, and both are adding supply faster than they are absorbing it.

The version I would give a friend: these are more alike than either neighbourhood’s marketing admits. Both are condominium markets with a supply problem, both are transit-adjacent with a GO station that gets oversold, and both will look different in a decade. The real question is whether you want to pay a premium of about $72,000 on average for walkability, or bank that money and drive. Neither answer is wrong; only pretending there is no trade-off is.

Common questions

Which is cheaper for a condo, Islington-City Centre West or Liberty Village?

Islington-City Centre West. In Q1 2026 its condo apartments averaged $540K with a $515,000 median across 85 sales, against $612K and a $573,000 median across 111 sales in Liberty Village. Days on market were close — 40 against 38 — and both segments sold at 97% of list, so the price gap is not being bought with a faster or slower sale.

Is a King-Liberty GO station coming?

No. In December 2024 Toronto City Council deferred construction of two SmartTrack stations, including King-Liberty, for lack of funding. What Liberty Village does have is Exhibition GO on the Lakeshore West line immediately south across the rail corridor, with a below-grade pedestrian connection through the station to Exhibition Place. UP Express does not stop there. Treat any marketing that promises King-Liberty GO as wrong.

Why do Liberty Village comparables look strange?

Because there has never been a Liberty Village MLS code. Every listing files under TRREB C01, community Niagara, which also takes in a chunk of King West on the Parkdale side. Any comparable set pulled by community name mixes the two unless somebody geo-filters it. If an agent quotes you a Liberty Village average, ask whether it was drawn by community code or by actual address boundary.

Are both of these buyer’s markets?

Yes, and by a similar margin. In Q1 2026 Islington-City Centre West sold 85 condo apartments against 257 new condo listings, and Liberty Village sold 111 against 337 — both clearing roughly a third of new supply. Both ran about 97% of list at 38 to 40 days on market. Buyers have negotiating room in both; sellers on a fixed timeline are at a disadvantage in both.

Can I buy a house in Liberty Village?

Effectively no. Q1 2026 recorded zero detached and zero semi-detached sales there, with the only non-apartment activity being 19 condo townhouses averaging $776K and four attached or row properties averaging $1,295K. It is a condominium monoculture without a move-up ladder. Islington-City Centre West, by contrast, recorded 19 detached sales averaging $1,686K with a $1,300K median in the same quarter.

Which is better for families?

Islington-City Centre West, on structure rather than on charm. There is no public school inside Liberty Village at all — the nearest TDSB options are Niagara Street JPS and Jean Lumb PS — and the City acknowledges most services serving the area sit outside its boundaries. Islington-City Centre West has schools within the community and detached housing available. Confirm any specific catchment through the TDSB Find Your School tool.

Etobicoke condo or a Liberty Village loft?

Send me the two units you are weighing and I will tell you what I think each is worth today, how long I expect each takes to resell, and which building’s reserve fund I would want to read first. If my honest answer is that you should keep renting for a year, you will hear that.

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.

Islington-City Centre West vs Liberty Village: Two Buyer’s Markets