The Annex or Davisville Village? Where Your Money Goes Further

Last updated 10 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · Toronto neighbourhood comparison · 9 min read

Four stations and no highway, against ten stops and a benchmark that went up

I get this pairing more often than you would think, usually from a buyer with roughly $900,000 to $1.2M who wants to be on Line 1 and cannot decide whether to stretch for old Toronto or take the newer building further north. They are genuinely different bets. One is a Victorian house district with a transit problem it created on purpose. The other is a condo corridor with an oversupply problem and, unusually for 2026, a benchmark moving the right way.

The traditional Annex sits inside four streets: Dupont at the top, Bloor St W at the bottom, Bathurst to the west and Avenue Rd to the east. Davisville Village sits either side of Yonge St north of Merton, and the local retail spine is the Mount Pleasant Village BIA running Mount Pleasant Rd from Davisville Ave to just north of Eglinton.

Two names, four different products

Both names mislead, in opposite directions. The City’s #95 Annex kept its legacy number through the 2022 restructure but covers far more ground than anyone means by the word — it runs east across Avenue Rd to Yonge and takes in Yorkville. TRREB’s Annex community in C02 is drawn differently again. So before you accept any Annex statistic, ask which line was drawn.

Davisville is worse. The legacy City unit was #104 Mount Pleasant West, and in April 2022 it was split into #173 North Toronto and #174 South Eglinton-Davisville. Most portals and older City data still quote #104. And the built form flips hard at Mount Pleasant Rd: west of it, along Yonge, is overwhelmingly high-rise rental and condo; east of it is 1920s and 1930s detached and semi-detached brick. In the 2021 Census, #173 North Toronto recorded 8,475 apartment units in buildings of five storeys or more and fifteen single-detached houses in the entire neighbourhood, with 81.4% of households renting. #99 Mount Pleasant East, the low-rise side, is 29.9% single-detached with a median household income of $110,000 in 2020.

The money, quarter by quarter

These are TRREB community figures for Q1 2026 (January to March 2026) — the most recent quarter TRREB publishes at community level, so roughly six months old as I write this. Where a sample is small, I have said so in the same breath.

Read the condo row twice. The Annex recorded 48 condo apartment sales against 207 new listings — a sales-to-new-listings ratio of 23% — at 96% of list in 42 days. Mount Pleasant West recorded 89 sales against 226 new listings, 39%, at 97% in 40 days. Both are buyer-friendly. Davisville is simply deeper: there is more to choose from and more sold, which in practice means more comparables to argue with.

The freehold rows tell the opposite story. In the Annex, nine semi-detached sales cleared in an average of 20 days and five detached sales went at 104% of list — over ask. Five sales is a thin sample and I would not build a valuation on it, but the direction is unambiguous and it matches what I see on the ground: houses there are scarce and contested while units are not.

The one benchmark in midtown that went up

For trend I use the MLS Home Price Index, not averages, because averages at these sample sizes move with what happened to sell. In August 2026, the City of Toronto HPI composite was $918,400, down 3.73% year over year, with the apartment benchmark at $547,400, down 6.88%.

C10, the district containing Davisville, ran against that. Its composite was $929,600, up 2.56% year over year — the only rising district benchmark in midtown or north Toronto. Its apartment benchmark was $597,900, down just 1.53%, by far the least-bad apartment segment against the city’s 6.88% fall. Detached was $1,978,100, down 2.43%. C10’s August district numbers were 35 sales, 199 active listings and 3.8 months of inventory against 4.6 city-wide, at 97% of list in 33 days.

I would not oversell this. A 2.56% composite gain is not a boom, and it sits on top of a condo segment with visible oversupply. But if you are buying a unit and you care whether the segment you are entering has stopped falling, that is the strongest evidence available in midtown right now. You can sanity-check a specific building against it with the condo value estimator, then argue the number with real comparables.

Getting around: four stations against a ten-stop run

The Annex is served by four subway stations — Spadina, St George and Dupont on Line 1, and Bathurst, Spadina and St George on Line 2 — and both St George and Spadina are Line 1/Line 2 interchanges. On the surface you have the 511 Bathurst and 510 Spadina streetcars on the flanks and the 26 Dupont bus. There is no GO station; UP Express Bloor is roughly 2 km west along Line 2.

Davisville has Davisville station at 1900 Yonge St, opened 30 March 1954 and accessible since 2002, plus Eglinton and St Clair. Line 5 Eglinton opened 8 February 2026, adding the Eglinton interchange and Mount Pleasant station at Mount Pleasant Rd and Eglinton Ave, which reuses the catalogued, brick-by-brick-disassembled façade of the 1928 Imperial Bank of Canada building. Buses at Davisville include the 11 Bayview, 14 Glencairn, 28 Bayview South and 97 Yonge; at Mount Pleasant, the 34 Eglinton, 74 Mount Pleasant and 103 Mount Pleasant North. Davisville to Union is ten stops on Line 1; Eglinton to Union is eleven.

Neither has a GO station and neither has expressway frontage. Davisville reaches the DVP via Bayview or Bloor St E and the Allen via Eglinton Ave W. The Annex has no expressway at all, and that is not an accident of geography — the neighbourhood stopped the Spadina Expressway, which would have cut it in half. It is the single most consequential piece of local history in Toronto planning, and you inherit it every time you try to drive out of the city on a Friday.

Schools, and what I can and cannot tell you

Schools serving the Annex include Huron Street Junior Public School at 541 Huron St, JK to 6, roughly 270 students with an on-site daycare; Jesse Ketchum Junior and Senior Public School at 61 Davenport Rd, JK to 8, with more than 500 students; Harbord Collegiate Institute at 286 Harbord St, established 1892, over 900 students, offering French Immersion and a Math and Science Focus programme; and Central Technical School at 725 Bathurst St, founded 1915, a composite high school with a dedicated Art Building and a pool.

On the Davisville side the Fraser Institute figures, data year 2023/24, put North Toronto CI at rank 46 of 742 with a rating of 8.4 (five-year rank 17, rating 8.8) and Northern SS at rank 65, rating 8.2, improving. Lawrence Park CI, immediately north, is rank 15 with a rating of 9.1. On the elementary side Davisville JPS sits at rank 1,426 with a rating of 6.2 against a five-year rank of 461 and rating of 7.5 — but the school was displaced by the site rebuild, which may well confound the data, so I would not treat that single-year number as a verdict. Maurice Cody JPS, Hodgson Senior PS and Eglinton JPS are not ranked in the current report, which is not the same thing as being rated poorly.

Two caveats that matter. The TDSB and OPSBA both dispute the Fraser methodology, and OPSBA has called it a flawed picture; cite it, do not worship it. And I cannot tell you which school a given address attends — that is not publishable from any source I trust. Check the TDSB “Find Your School” tool by address before you write an offer that depends on it.

What I would want you to know before you commit

• The Annex: crime runs well above the city. In 2025 the break-and-enter rate was 387.1 per 100,000 against 189.5 city-wide, assault 1,080.9 against 767.9 and auto theft 116.9. That is a double-the-city burglary rate in a neighbourhood full of ground-floor entries and rear laneways.
• The Annex: the condo segment is soft and the freehold entry is brutal. Units took 42 days at 96% of list on a 23% sales-to-new-listings ratio, while detached median was $2,171K and semi median $1,430K in Q1 2026. There is very little middle.
• The Annex: heavy conversion and transience. A large student and rental population means rooming-house conversions, absentee landlords and variable upkeep block to block. Two houses that look identical from the street can be maintained completely differently.
• Davisville: measurable condo oversupply. Mount Pleasant West recorded 226 new condo listings against 89 sales in Q1 2026, at 40 days on market. That is a good thing if you are buying and a slow one if you are selling.
• Davisville: years of construction. The Davisville Community and Aquatic Centre runs to an expected completion of February 2027, Davisville Avenue is under active redesign consultation, and the Yonge and Eglinton node has been a continuous construction zone for over a decade.
• Davisville: the yard. Davisville Yard is the TTC’s main Line 1 maintenance yard, sitting right at the station — which is why the Beltline has to bridge over Yonge here. Some buyers never notice it; others notice it every morning.

What is actually being built

In the Annex the defining project 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, bar 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, park handover to the City was expected mid-July 2026, and the remaining buildings were due late summer or early September 2026. Leasing as of June 2026 had 748 Bathurst at roughly 85% and the 428-unit middle complex at roughly 80% leased or occupied. The years of disruption at that corner are finally winding down.

In Davisville the big one is the Davisville Community and Aquatic Centre on the former Davisville Junior PS site, built jointly with a rebuilt TDSB school — three storeys, a six-lane 25 m pool plus leisure and tot pools, a dance studio, teaching kitchen and rooftop fitness. Groundbreaking was 12 November 2024 with completion expected February 2027. The school gets pool access and the City gets the school’s double gym and parking garage outside school hours. Above that sit Midtown in Focus / Ready, Set, Midtown, the City’s Yonge-Eglinton secondary plan and zoning review, and the Improving Davisville Avenue street redesign.

Making the call between the two

Choose the Annex if the house is the point: if you want a genuine freehold with 1880s or 1890s bones on a subway interchange, if you are U of T faculty or staff, if you want the Bloor Street Culture Corridor — 24 partner organisations between Bathurst and Yonge, City-designated in 2016 — on your doorstep, and if you can carry a detached median of $2,171K or a semi median of $1,430K. Also choose it if you are buying student rental and you understand what that stock demands of a landlord.

Choose Davisville Village if you are buying a unit rather than a house, if you want a short and simple Line 1 run to work, if you value choice and negotiating room over scarcity, and if a benchmark that has stopped falling matters to your five-year plan. And choose the east side of Mount Pleasant Rd specifically if what you actually want is a 1920s semi — 12 sold in Q1 2026 at 106% of list in an average 20 days, which tells you that side is not soft at all.

If you are torn, the question I would ask is simpler than either neighbourhood: are you buying a building or a house? Everything else — how you bid, what your inspection finds, what you spend in year five — follows from that answer. If you want a straight read on your own numbers first, the current market report is a better starting point than any listing feed.

Common questions

Related reading

• Liberty Village vs The Annex: Which Is Better?
• High Park–Swansea vs The Annex: Which Is Better?
• King West vs Davisville Village: Which Is Better?
• Davisville Village vs Willowdale: Which Is Better?
• Free AI home value estimator
• Free AI condo value estimator
• This month’s Toronto and GTA market report

TRREB community figures are Q1 2026, the most recent quarter published at community level, and several segments here rest on fewer than ten sales. District and HPI figures are August 2026. Nothing above is an appraisal of any specific property. General commentary on two Toronto neighbourhoods, not investment advice and not a valuation of any specific property. Market statistics are as published by TRREB for the periods stated and change every month. School boundaries, transit service and development approvals all change — verify anything you are relying on before you make an offer.