Townhouses For Sale in Pickering

Pickering's townhouse supply has moved north of Taunton Road

For most of its history, Pickering's attached housing sat in the south: postwar suburbs around Frenchman's Bay, then 1970s and 1980s neighbourhoods north of the 401 around Liverpool Road and the City Centre. That's no longer where most new townhouses come from.

Seaton, on provincially assembled land in north Pickering, started building near Taunton Road in 2017 and had reached Whites Road and Highway 7 by 2023. It's planned for up to 70,000 residents and 35,000 jobs at build-out, across neighbourhoods including Lamoreaux, Brock-Taunton, Mount Pleasant, Wilson Meadows and Thompson's Corners. As of 2022, only a small fraction of its roughly 21,000 planned units had been built, so construction will continue for years.

Just south and east, Duffin Heights around Brock Road and Taunton Road filled in with freehold rows, condo towns and stacked units over the past decade or so. Between them, these two areas now supply a large share of the townhouses for sale in Pickering at any given time.

Pickering's townhouse areas at a glance

The fork in the road for a first-time Pickering buyer

First-time buyers in Pickering tend to end up choosing between two very different products at overlapping prices.

A new stacked or back-to-back town up north

You get new construction, modern layouts and a warranty. You usually give up a backyard, and you may be living on three floors with the main living space in the middle. Expect a condo fee or POTL charge, new-build closing adjustments if buying from the builder, and years of construction nearby in Seaton.

An older condo town in the south end

You get an established street, often a small fenced yard, and a shorter trip to Pickering GO and the lake. You take on an older building, a fee that funds roofs and windows, and the job of judging whether the corporation's reserve fund is healthy.

Neither is the safe choice by default. A new stacked town with a modest, realistic fee can be a better buy than an older complex heading for a special assessment, and a well-run older complex can beat a new build with a budget set artificially low before turnover.

Whichever way you lean, get pre-approved for the full monthly cost, including fee and property tax, not just the purchase price. Lenders count condo fees in their affordability math, so a high fee can reduce how much you qualify for.

A bridge over 14 lanes of the 401 to Pickering GO

Pickering GO is on the Lakeshore East line south of the 401, with local trains about every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends. In 2012, an enclosed pedestrian bridge opened across all 14 lanes of the highway, linking the station to the Pickering Town Centre side, with a Durham College and Centennial College joint learning site at its north end.

That bridge is the reason the City Centre is intensifying. The city's downtown program is adding condominium development near the station and the mall, and townhouses within walking distance of the bridge are some of the few ground-level homes in Durham where a daily commuter can skip the car entirely.

By car, the 401 runs along the south end of the city and the 407 ETR crosses its mid-north, with the Brock Road corridor connecting the two. The 407 is tolled.

Kingston Road is being rebuilt for rapid buses

The Durham-Scarborough bus rapid transit project is moving buses on Kingston Road into dedicated median lanes, with service every five minutes as the long-term goal and about 20 minutes saved on trips along the corridor. Pickering's planned stations include Whites, Fairport, Dixie, Liverpool, Glenanna, Valley Farm and Brock.

Construction on Pickering sections is scheduled between 2025 and 2028, depending on the segment. If you're buying along Kingston Road, expect lane changes and detours for a while, and ask how driveway or complex access will work during the work. Once it's finished, townhouses near a station should gain a fast, frequent link west to Scarborough and east to Ajax and Oshawa.

The Pickering airport question has been settled

For decades, north Pickering lived under a cloud. Land was expropriated in 1972 for a proposed second major airport for the Toronto area, and the plan was never built or fully abandoned. In January 2025 the federal government formally cancelled all plans for the airport, and most of the remaining lands are being transferred to Rouge National Urban Park.

For townhouse buyers in Seaton and Duffin Heights, that removes one long-standing unknown about what the north end could become. The city has also considered a further new community in the north-east, so growth is likely to keep moving outward.

What hasn't changed is the scale of what's coming. Seaton alone is planned for tens of thousands of homes, so buyers in the north should expect new supply to keep arriving for years, along with new schools, roads and shopping as each phase fills in.

What the fee should be paying for in an older Pickering complex

Pickering's older condo townhouse complexes, concentrated in Village East, Liverpool and the south end, mostly date from the 1970s and 1980s. A monthly fee in these complexes typically funds exterior maintenance, common-area insurance, landscaping, snow clearing and contributions to the reserve fund, and in some cases water or a bulk cable contract.

The question isn't whether the fee is high or low, but whether it's realistic. Read the reserve fund study for the next 10 years of planned work, compare it with the current balance and the planned contributions, and look for gaps. Ontario condo corporations update these studies every three years, so ask for the most recent one.

Then check the parts the fee won't cover: in many declarations, owners replace their own furnace, air conditioner, water heater and sometimes windows and doors. Those can be a large cost in a 40-year-old unit if they haven't been done.

South of the 401: Frenchman's Bay and the generating station

Pickering's southern neighbourhoods, West Shore and Bay Ridges, sit on either side of Frenchman's Bay. Suburban development here started after the Second World War, and the bay is now ringed with marinas, parks, a boardwalk and Nautical Village's restaurants and shops.

The Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, run by Ontario Power Generation, is on the lake to the east of Bay Ridges and has been the city's largest single employer. Its first reactors came online in 1971. Buyers are sometimes unsure what proximity means day to day; the province's nuclear emergency plan includes potassium iodide pills for households near the station, and Durham Region publishes emergency preparedness information for residents. Read it before you buy if it's on your mind. For many south Pickering residents the station is simply part of the skyline, and a major source of local jobs.