Even before all that, this address was once home to playwright, poet, journalist, and pioneer of women’s rights, Sarah Anne Curzon.
The kitchen with custom cabinetry.
Curzon is best known for her writing about Laura Secord, which helped make her a beloved heroine in Canadian history.
The family room on the second floor.
The heritage home clearly has a fascinating past and has gone through many iterations, including one with a three-storey spiral staircase.
The primary bedroom.
But since its purchase in 2017, the three-storey semi-detached house has been fully renovated and is now an award-winning dream home.
The living room with a fireplace.
“It has just won the Peggy Kurtin Excellence in Restoration Award,” realtor Sherille Layton told blogTO, while detailing some of the restorations that were done, such as rebuilding the facade and porch, as well as installing a marble reproduction of an 18th-century gas fireplace.
The primary bedroom dressing room has 11-foot ceilings.
The home, as Layton puts it, “manages modernity and contemporary taste, while being respectful to its role as an architecturally significant home in Toronto’s past and present.”
The basement walkout has heated steps and the apartment has its own laundry, premium caterer’s kitchen, and spa-like washroom with heated floors.
274 Carlton St. boasts five king-sized bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as a legal basement apartment.
The open concept main floor.
The main floor of the house is open concept with the living room flowing seamlessly into the dining room and kitchen, thanks to the light wood flooring throughout.
The butler’s bar and kitchen.
The kitchen is “Brazilian-inspired” with a butler’s bar and top-of-the-line appliances.
The dining room.
Everything in the home is bright and airy, due in large part to the soaring 10-foot ceilings and the light materials used throughout.
The second bedroom features a picture window with a bench overlooking the lush garden.
The second floor has three large bedrooms, one of which overlooks the garden and another has views of the CN tower.
The primary bedroom.
The third floor is reserved for the primary bedroom, which is soaked in natural light from the large staircase skylight.
The primary bedroom deck overlooking the garden.
This heavenly third floor has a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling doors that open to the deck overlooking the city garden.
The backyard.
Speaking of the garden, it’s professionally landscaped with an irrigation system and is the perfect city retreat.
The large primary bathroom features a soaker tub below skylights, multi-jet double shower with two entrances, double sink, coffered ceiling, and designer wallpaper in the private water closet.
The primary bedroom also comes complete with a six-piece ensuite bathroom with heated floors, as well as a dressing room with custom closets.
The wine cellar.
The basement, in addition to having a 700-square-foot legal basement apartment with a caterer’s kitchen that’s fully separated from the main house, also includes a wine cellar, mud room, and laundry area.
The second-floor bath in the hallway features wallpaper by Christian Lacroix.
Speaking of laundry, the home actually has three laundry areas, because we all know lugging laundry up and down stairs is the worst.
A heat- and hydro-supplied two-car parking garage featuring additional storage.
Further, the home has a Cabbagetown rarity in the form of a a two-car garage with a green roof.
The primary bedroom dressing room.
“This home is a masterpiece of aesthetic and functional design,” said Layton.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
