East Downtown

If you're looking for homes for sale, Oshawa, Whitby, Guelph and the other outlying suburbs are your best bet for the Greater Toronto Area, if you want the type of home you find to be both spacious and affordable. However, if you've got the money, downtown Toronto can offer you great views, upscale neighbourhoods, and historic old mansions set right in the heart of the hustle and bustle of the busiest city in Canada. If you're thinking of looking into downtown real estate, we've created several sets of articles to help you familiarize yourself with the area. Under the downtown heading, we have no fewer than three divisions: west, central, and east, to break the bustle into digestible pieces.

The portion of downtown Toronto we'll be dealing with in this round is the eastern portion of downtown. For our purposes and the purposes of the realtors who have to keep the real estate listings organized, we define 'eastern' downtown by street borders. To the west, this district begins at the Don Valley Parkway and continues eastward until we hit Victoria Park Avenue. The northern and southern borders of the district are just north of Danforth Avenue and the shoreline of Lake Ontario, respectively.

The eastern portion of downtown as we have defined it contains a wide variety of land use types that make for a multitude of home and business ownership options. A large portion of the port lands are included in east downtown as are the Toronto beach homes in the Beaches neighbourhood and the retail stores of the Riverdale shopping center. There is also a lot of parkland including Ashbridges Bay Park, Monarch Park, Fairmont Park, Kew Gardens and Glen Stewart Park, which makes for nice views and great opportunities for relaxing or taking walks.

Sub-neighbourhoods within this area vary widely in style and character. You can buy a Danforth home for sale in the Player Estates neighbourhoods which has a Victorian or Tudor style. Player Estates has mainly detached homes with gardens, which is quite a shift from the more dangerous and unappealing areas around the industrial lands and rail yards. Other neighbourhoods in eastern downtown include Leslieville, Riverdale, Norwood Park, Greektown, and Moncur Park. Home types available occupy all points of the spectrum, from bachelor apartments to brand new high-rise condos, and small row houses to enormous manor homes that date back to the turn of the previous century.

The biggest market lies in central and west downtown where most of the huge office buildings and upscale shopping boutiques are located. Eastern downtown still has condos, especially along the waterfront, but in character the whole area has a much more laid-back feel to it. This is owing not just to the relative absence of busy subway stations and financial centers, but also to the presence of Woodbine Beach, Balmy Beach, and Beaches Park. Sand, rippling water, and opportunities for swimming and picnicking with friends have a way of mellowing people out. The area is still much busier and more crowded than the outlying suburbs, however.