Townhouses For Sale in Scarborough

Why so many first purchases in Toronto happen in a Scarborough complex

Ask around about who buys townhouses in Scarborough and the answer is usually someone moving out of a rented apartment or a downtown condo. The reason is the stock. When the former borough filled in after the 1960s, a big share of its family housing went up as condominium townhouse complexes: rows of two- and three-storey units around a shared roadway, with a parking pad or a garage, a small yard and a monthly fee.

That era of building is still the backbone of the market. A unit in one of these complexes is often the first property in Toronto proper where a buyer gets three bedrooms, a basement and a bit of outdoor space without paying detached-house money. You see them in Malvern, L'Amoreaux, Agincourt, West Hill and around the Scarborough Town Centre area.

What first-timers run into is that two complexes built the same decade can be very different purchases. One might have replaced its windows and roofs and kept a healthy reserve fund. The one across the street might be facing that work now. The building looks the same from the curb; the paperwork is where the difference shows.

Reading the status certificate before you fall for the end unit

In Ontario, the status certificate is the condominium corporation's disclosure package, and in an older Scarborough complex it deserves more attention than the kitchen. Have a lawyer review it before your offer goes firm, and read these parts yourself:

• The reserve fund study. It lists what the corporation expects to replace over the coming decades and when. Roofs, windows, doors, fencing, asphalt and, where they exist, shared underground garages are the big items in complexes of this age.
• Any special assessment, current or being discussed. Board minutes and the budget can hint at one before it is formally levied.
• Who owns what. In some complexes the corporation handles windows and roofs; in others owners are responsible for parts of their own exterior. The declaration spells it out.
• Parking. Confirm whether spaces are owned, exclusive-use or assigned, and how visitor parking works. A second car is a common pain point.
• Rental and pet rules, if either matters to you.

None of this is a reason to avoid older complexes. It is a reason to compare two or three of them side by side before deciding which one gets your offer.

What a Scarborough condo-town fee usually pays for

Fees vary a lot from one corporation to the next, and the live figure on each listing is the one to trust. The useful question is what the fee covers. In the older complexes here it typically includes some combination of:

• Building insurance for the structure (you still need your own unit owner's policy)
• Exterior maintenance of the items the corporation is responsible for
• Snow clearing on the internal roads, landscaping and garbage collection
• A contribution to the reserve fund for future replacements
• In some complexes, water, and occasionally cable or internet

A fee that looks low can mean an underfunded reserve. A fee that looks high can mean the corporation is paying for its roofs now rather than later. Neither is automatically good or bad. Compare the fee against what the reserve fund study says is coming.

Freehold rows, stacked units and the Kingston Road rebuild

Not every Scarborough townhouse comes with a condo board. Freehold towns, where you own the land and the walls and pay no monthly fee, show up in the subdivisions built from the 1990s onward, especially in the northeast toward the Rouge Valley and in pockets around Morningside Avenue.

Newer still are the stacked and back-to-back towns, mostly on infill sites. Kingston Road is the clearest example. The old highway's motel and strip-plaza lots through Birch Cliff, Cliffside and West Hill have been turning into low-rise townhouse developments for decades, and the pace picked up as the city encouraged more housing on main streets. These units are usually condominium-owned, with less space per floor than a 1970s row, but with newer mechanical systems and no roof replacement on the horizon.

When you compare listings, check the legal description. "Freehold" with a monthly fee can mean a parcel of tied land (POTL) arrangement, where you own your unit outright but share a road or amenities through a common elements condominium. That fee is usually smaller, but it's still a fee.

Getting downtown after the RT: Line 2, Line 5 and the GO

Commuting is the honest trade-off of living in Scarborough, and it shifted recently. The Line 3 Scarborough RT closed in July 2023 after a derailment, and riders between Kennedy and Scarborough Centre now use a replacement bus while a busway is built along the old right-of-way.

The long-term fix is the Scarborough Subway Extension, which carries Line 2 about eight kilometres from Kennedy to Sheppard and McCowan. It was targeted to open around 2030, but 2026 reporting pointed to later. Buy for today's commute, not the ribbon-cutting.

Two other changes help the south and west. Line 5 Eglinton opened in February 2026, giving the Kennedy area a direct crosstown line to midtown. And GO trains remain the fastest way downtown for many people. Lakeshore East stops at Scarborough, Eglinton, Guildwood and Rouge Hill. The Stouffville line stops at Kennedy, Agincourt and Milliken.

A city-led Eglinton East light rail line toward UTSC and Malvern has been designed but not funded. For drivers, Highway 401 cuts across the whole district, and access to the 404 and Don Valley Parkway is easiest from the west side.

Scarborough pockets side by side

Use the live counts and medians on this page to see where the supply actually is this week. They move more than the character of each area does.

A practical way to use the table: pick two areas with different stock types, say a Malvern complex and a Kingston Road stacked town, and tour one of each before narrowing your search. Most buyers find they have a strong preference once they've stood in both, and it saves weeks of scrolling listings that were never going to fit.

Moving up from a starter town without leaving the east end

A lot of Scarborough owners buy a two-bedroom complex unit, have a child or two, and start looking for more room within the same area. The usual next step is a three- or four-bedroom freehold town, which in Scarborough mostly means the newer subdivisions in the northeast or a resale freehold row in the established neighbourhoods.

The things families tend to weigh at that stage:

• A garage you can actually use plus a driveway, instead of a single pad and a visitor-parking scramble.
• A finished basement or one that can be finished, which in a freehold town is your call alone.
• School catchments. Scarborough is served by the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board. Boundaries can split a single street, so check the specific address with the board.
• Distance to a GO station, which matters more once two people are commuting.

Downsizers run the same math in reverse. They often look for a bungalow-style or end-unit town in an established complex, where the corporation looks after snow and landscaping and there are fewer stairs between the kitchen and the bedroom.