Annex Loft Houses, 483 Dupont St: Three-Level Lofts With Rooftop Patios

Annex Loft Houses is the building I show buyers who want a townhouse but do not want a lawn, a roof or a furnace to worry about alone. It is a short row of 24 multi-level loft suites on Dupont, just west of Bathurst, where each suite has its own front door at grade and its own patio on the roof. It is also a building that rarely comes up for sale, so you need to be ready when it does. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A row of loft houses, not a condo tower

The format is the whole point here. Instead of corridors and a shared lobby, the suites are laid out like townhouses, with grade-level entries and private rooftop patios. One suite featured in Toronto Life spread its rooms over three levels, with the kitchen, dining and sitting room on the lowest floor and window walls on every level.

The project was cut down to size before it was built. The first proposal was for 55 units at about 19 metres; the developer revised it to roughly 20 residential units plus a ground-floor retail space at about 14.8 metres to fit the zoning. Condos.ca now counts 24 suites, so expect the final count to differ from the early planning numbers.

Sources disagree on the height. Condos.ca lists two floors, while the project forum describes four storeys. Both can be true in a sense, because a three-level suite with a rooftop patio reads very differently from a stack of flats. Ask the listing agent for the floor plan of the exact suite.

Eleven-foot ceilings and real outdoor space

The suite Toronto Life profiled had 11-foot ceilings, two balconies and an upper terrace. That combination of height, light and outdoor space is what separates this building from most Annex condos, where you usually pick one of the three.

Sizes run from roughly 610 to 1,677 sq ft. At launch the plans were sold as one-, two- and three-bedroom suites, so the larger ones work for a small family or for a couple who both work from home. The smaller plans are closer to a one-bedroom loft with extra stairs.

Those stairs are the trade-off. A three-level suite is wonderful at 35 and harder at 75. If you are downsizing, walk the stairs twice before you write an offer, and check whether there is any elevator access to the level you would use most.

Parking under the building, and a fee that covers it

Each suite was sold with one exclusive parking space in a below-grade garage reached from the laneway, and condos.ca lists parking among the fee inclusions. In this part of the Annex, where street parking is tight, a dedicated space is worth real money at resale.

The fee also covers common elements, water and building insurance. Heat and hydro are not listed, so budget for your own utilities, as you would in a freehold townhouse. Before construction the sales material projected fees of about $0.25 per sq ft; that was a pre-sale estimate, so check today’s budget in the status certificate rather than relying on it.

Living on Dupont west of Bathurst

This is the working edge of the Annex. Dupont is a busy road, and when Toronto Life wrote about the building, the view across the street took in a Beer Store, an auto body shop and several surface parking lots. That is the honest picture, and it is also the opportunity, because sites like those tend to be redeveloped over time.

Check the City of Toronto development applications map before you buy, because a new mid-rise across Dupont could change both your view and your value. The Devonshire, a nine-suite loft building a few doors east at 473 Dupont, is the closest comparable and worth looking at if nothing is available here.

Behind the busy frontage, the side streets north and south are classic Annex and Seaton Village housing stock, which is what keeps this pocket residential in feel once you step off Dupont. Bathurst gives you a straight run south to Bloor, and the data panel on this page shows the transit options. If you want a quiet bedroom, ask which side of the suite the bedrooms face, since a laneway-facing bedroom and a Dupont-facing one are very different nights.

What Annex Loft Houses costs

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $795 per square foot. That is modest for the Annex, and it partly reflects the Dupont location and the fact that larger multi-level suites tend to trade lower per square foot than small flats.

When I checked, no suites were for sale and one was for lease, which tells you how thin the market is here. With only 24 suites, a year can pass with one or two trades, so a single sale can move the average. I would rather price a suite here from the last few sales in the building plus nearby loft-townhouses than from a building-wide average.

Remember to compare total monthly cost, not just price. Here your fee covers parking, but you pay your own heat and hydro across several floors of tall ceilings, so ask the seller for a year of utility bills before you compare this with a flat in a full-service tower.

If you are weighing a suite here, I can pull the recent sold figures through my building sold report and compare it with similar stacked and loft townhouses in the Annex and Seaton Village.

Building specifications

Amenities at Annex Loft Houses

There is no gym, pool or concierge, and that is by design: the amenity here is your own front door and your own roof. That keeps the shared costs low, but it also means you will pay for a gym membership elsewhere.

Jatin’s honest take on Annex Loft Houses

Annex Loft Houses — frequently asked questions

Looking at Yorkville, the Annex and Midtown more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.