It’s scary to think that even in this dumpster fire of a housing market, the best you can do if you’re looking for a three-bedroom home in Toronto is 45 Strader Ave.
According to the listing, 45 Strader Ave. is the cheapest three-bedroom home in “C03“, which, for the uninitiated, is real estate jargon for the neighbourhoods of Oakwood-Vaughan, Humewood-Cedarvale, Forest Hill South and Yonge-Eglinton.
And while it might technically be the cheapest in that district, the home is still listed for $825,000 and the condition of the house is…questionable.
Touted as a “blank canvas,” this three-bedroom, two-bathroom home will need a full gut renovation to be livable, and not just because there’s a shower in what was once the dining room.
The home has clearly seen better days.
The walls are damaged, the floors look like they have burn marks in some places, and again, there’s a bathroom in the dining room with a sink in what looks like to be an old doorway.
Also, let’s not get started on how many code violations there are for that electrical work.
Sure, there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and there’s a decent-sized backyard.
But is the house worth the effort to renovate? A hard “maybe.”
Right now, semi-detached houses in this neighbourhood sell for an average of $1.1 million, but their value has been steadily increasing by almost five per cent year over year.
And it is likely going to keep going up because, one it’s Toronto and two, the Eglinton LRT should boost property values.
However, this house is going to need way more than $200,000 worth of work.
So if you’re looking for a quick flip, you’re likely not going to see a profit or even a return on your investment.
However, if you’re in it for the long haul, and we’re talking more than five years, you might see the profits from this project.
But the problem with that is you have to be up for a giant project and patient enough to wait for property values to go up more than you invested in the renovation.
This begs the question, is this house really the cheapest three-bedroom in the C03? Not really.