Townhouses For Sale in London

Decoding North M, South U and the rest

London's real estate board divides the city into North, South and East districts, each split into lettered areas. Listings show the code, not the neighbourhood name, which is confusing for anyone moving from the GTA or Ottawa where listings carry familiar place names. The ten districts with the most townhouse listings on this site line up roughly like this:

District lines don't always match the names residents use, so treat the table as a starting point and check the street on a map.

Condo corporations everywhere: what the fee is really paying for

Because so many London towns are condos, the monthly fee and the health of the corporation behind it matter as much as the unit. In a typical townhouse condo, the fee goes toward the reserve fund, building insurance, exterior maintenance, landscaping and snow removal, and sometimes water. What's covered varies by declaration, so read it rather than assuming.

Age is the big driver. Older complexes tend to carry higher fees because they're funding large repairs such as roofs. Costs across Ontario have also climbed since the pandemic with insurance, utilities, materials and labour. In one northwest London case reported by CBC, a reserve fund study found the fund was too low; owners faced a special assessment and fee increases within the same year.

• Order the status certificate and read the reserve fund study and the latest budget.
• Ask whether a new reserve fund study is due, since that's often when increases arrive.
• Check for lawsuits, insurance deductibles owners may have to cover, and planned major projects.

When you compare two complexes, line up what each fee includes before comparing the amounts. A lower fee that leaves owners paying their own water, roofs or windows isn't necessarily cheaper than a higher one that covers them, and a fee that hasn't moved in years can mean a reserve fund that's falling behind.

Vacant land condos and the newest towns at the edges

Much of London's new townhouse supply is going up at the city's edges, and a common structure there is the vacant land condominium. In this model you own your unit, which typically means the house and its lot, while the corporation owns shared elements such as the private road, sidewalks and visitor parking. A recent application on Pack Road in the southwest, for example, proposed a vacant land condo of attached townhouses next to a standard condominium of stacked towns, sharing one private road.

The practical difference from an older standard condo is who looks after what. In many vacant land condos, owners handle their own roofs, windows and exteriors, and the fee covers mainly the common road, snow clearing and landscaping. Others assign more to the corporation. The declaration spells it out, and it's worth reading before you compare fees between complexes.

Buses now, rapid transit arriving in pieces

London dropped light rail in 2016 in favour of bus rapid transit and is building it corridor by corridor:

• Downtown Loop: construction finished in 2024; service start had not been set.
• East London Link: Wellington Street to Fanshawe College, targeted for completion and service in fall 2027.
• Wellington Gateway: south from downtown toward Exeter Road, with service between downtown and White Oaks Mall slated for 2029.
• North and west legs: voted down in 2019 and reinstated in the 2025 Mobility Master Plan, toward Masonville and along Oxford Street West to Wonderland, classed as near-term by 2035.

Several fast-growing townhouse districts, including Sunningdale, Fox Hollow and Lambeth, are far from any of these lines. Some north-end subdivisions have had little or no bus service at all, so check routes for the specific street.

Getting to Toronto without a GO train

GO Transit ran a pilot train to London from 2021, one weekday trip each way via Stratford and St. Marys, but service beyond Kitchener ended in October 2023. Today, London-to-Toronto trips mean VIA Rail or Highway 401, with Highway 402 heading west toward Sarnia.

For townhouse buyers who commute to the GTA or Kitchener-Waterloo even part of the week, the south end matters. Summerside, Longwoods and Lambeth sit closest to the 401 and 402, while the north-end districts trade a longer drive to the highway for proximity to Western University and Masonville.

Renting a townhouse in a university and college city

Western University and Fanshawe College give London a large rental market, and investors often look at townhouses near both. A few local rules shape the numbers:

• The city's residential rental unit licence is required for many small rental buildings, but its licensing page says a licence is not required for a rental unit in a townhouse or stacked townhouse.
• Zoning, property standards and occupancy limits still apply, and the city has separate rules for short-term rentals.
• Condo declarations and rules can restrict leasing, minimum terms and the number of occupants. Read them before you buy, not after.

Proximity to campus is only part of the picture. Bus access to Western or Fanshawe, parking, and how a complex handles turnover all affect how well a rental works.

Why the townhouse map follows London's annexations

Much of today's townhouse stock sits in places that weren't part of London until relatively recently. Byron and the land around Huron Heights were annexed in 1961. Hyde Park, a hamlet older than the city itself, was annexed in 1992, and Lambeth joined on January 1, 1993, when the short-lived Town of Westminster was dissolved.

That's where the open land was, so that's where builders went. A GTA buyer used to finding older condo towns spread through inner suburbs will find London's split more clearly: established complexes in the older districts such as Oakridge, Byron's Commissioners Road corridor and the northeast, and new towns concentrated in former township land at the edges.

It also means the newest townhouse districts are the ones furthest from downtown, Western and the rapid transit lines under construction, which is the main trade-off to weigh when choosing between an older complex in the middle of the city and a new one at its rim.