Alexandra Gate, 2 Alexandra Blvd: 31 Suites Off Yonge in Lytton Park

Alexandra Gate is the kind of building most buyers drive past without noticing, and that is a large part of its appeal. It has six storeys and just 31 suites, with a stone and brick front on a side street off Yonge, inside one of North Toronto’s quietest house neighbourhoods. With so few suites, a listing here is rare, and when one comes up you need to know what you are looking at. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A 31-suite building in a neighbourhood of houses

Lytton Park runs from Mona Drive east to Yonge Street, and from Briar Hill Avenue north to Lawrence Avenue. It grew up as a streetcar suburb after the Metropolitan Street Railway reached the area in the 1880s, and most of its houses went up between 1890 and 1930. Today it is Georgian and Tudor Revival houses on big lots under mature trees.

Alexandra Gate is one of the few ways to live inside that setting without buying a house. Six storeys and 31 suites works out to roughly five or six suites a floor. In practice, that means a small lobby, an elevator you rarely wait for, and neighbours you will know by name within a few months.

The building has a stone and brick exterior that fits the street better than most condos of its era. Condos.ca lists the developer simply as Alexandra Gate, which tells you it was a one-building company set up for this project. I could not find a reliable source naming the architect, so I am leaving that out.

Suites sized for people leaving a house

Condos.ca puts the suite range at about 691 to 1,584 square feet. Even the smallest plans are larger than a typical downtown one-bedroom, and the larger ones are full two-bedroom and two-bedroom-plus-den layouts that suit people who are leaving a house and want to keep their furniture.

With a building this small, there are only a handful of floor plans, and each one comes up for sale only every few years. That makes it hard to price a suite by comparing it with recent sales of the same layout. I would rather look at the suite itself, sales in comparable boutique buildings along Yonge, and the per-square-foot trend in the panel than trust a single old comparable.

Before you book a showing, ask the listing agent for the floor plan and the exact square footage from the declaration. In older boutique buildings, advertised sizes sometimes include balconies or are rounded, and on a building priced near $900 a square foot, 50 square feet is real money.

A fee that covers hydro

The fee inclusions are the strongest practical point in this building’s favour. Condos.ca lists common elements, heat, hydro, air conditioning, building insurance, parking and water as included. Hydro is the unusual one. Most buildings meter electricity to each suite, so a fee that covers it removes the last big utility bill an owner normally pays.

That changes how you should compare fees. A higher monthly number here is replacing your heating, cooling and electricity bills, plus a parking charge. Add those costs back onto a building with a lower quoted fee before you decide which is cheaper.

The other side of bulk utilities is that every owner pays a share whether they use a lot or a little, and in a 31-suite building each owner carries a bigger slice of any cost increase. Ask whether the board has looked at suite metering, because that would be a capital project and a change in your monthly costs.

Yonge Street is starting to change around it

The stretch of Yonge between Eglinton and Lawrence has been one of the slower parts of the street to intensify, but that is changing. On the southwest corner of Yonge and Alexandra Boulevard, steps from this building, Amdev Property has proposed a nine-storey, 93-unit building designed by Studio JCI, with condominium suites, rental suites and retail at grade. UrbanToronto lists it as pre-construction.

For owners here, a project like that means a construction period close by, and then more people and shops on this block of Yonge. A mid-rise of that size will not tower over the street, but it is a sign that more applications are likely along this corridor.

Day to day, the draw is simple. You can walk to the shops and restaurants on Yonge north of Eglinton, and the neighbourhood around you is houses, gardens and schools rather than towers. The panel beside this review shows the nearest station, the zoned schools and the Walk Score.

Why the per-foot number here is high, and what it hides

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $881 per square foot. That is high for a 2001 building in North Toronto, and it reflects the address and the scarcity: a 31-suite boutique building in Lytton Park has no direct competition, and buyers pay for that.

There were no suites listed for sale when I checked, which is normal for a building this size. In a 31-suite building, a year can pass with only one or two sales, so the median in the panel can move a lot on one transaction. Read it as a rough guide, not a precise value.

When you weigh the fee, remember what it carries. With hydro, heat, air conditioning, water and parking included, the true monthly cost of owning here can be close to that of a newer building with a much lower quoted fee. Do the comparison with real utility estimates, not just the fee line.

If you want a firm number for a specific suite, I can pull recent sales in comparable boutique buildings along Yonge. You can book a call and I will walk you through them.

Building specifications

Amenities at Alexandra Gate

There is no pool or large gym, and in a building of 31 suites I would not expect one. What you get is a party room and meeting room, a security guard, an underground garage and visitor parking, which is the right package for a quiet building where people mostly want low fees for things they do not use.

Jatin’s honest take on Alexandra Gate

Alexandra Gate — frequently asked questions

Looking at York Mills, Don Mills, Lawrence Park, Bathurst Manor and midtown-north Toronto more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.