The Danforth

Character

The Danforth is the closest thing Toronto has to a proper European eating street, and it earns the comparison in August when the patios from Chester to Pape fill up and the whole strip smells like a grill. Greektown is the anchor, but the further east you walk the more the food changes — Ethiopian coffee houses, South Asian groceries, Caribbean takeaways, and a steady arrival of new bakeries and cafés.

Behind the main street it goes quiet almost immediately. The side streets are flat, tree-lined and tightly knit, the kind of blocks where the same families have been on the same porches for thirty years and the street-hockey nets stay out all summer.

It is the neighbourhood I most often recommend to people who tell me they want city life but cannot face a downtown condo. You get a real house, a real street, four subway stations, and a main street worth walking every day.

Housing stock

Mostly interwar and Edwardian brick semis and detached two-storey homes on compact lots, with mutual drives and garages off the rear lanes — less ornate than the grand Victorians further west, but solidly built and practical.

Prices climb steadily as you move west toward Broadview; the blocks east of Greenwood have long been the value play for buyers who want a freehold house near the subway.

A growing number of homes carry basement apartments or garden-suite potential, which matters to households counting on rental income to carry part of a mortgage.

Getting around

Chester, Pape, Donlands and Greenwood stations on Line 2 mean nearly every street in the neighbourhood is inside a twelve-minute walk of the subway, and Pape is set to become an Ontario Line interchange.

The GO train from Main Street is the underrated option — it puts you at Union in about a quarter of an hour, which beats the subway comfortably — and drivers are one ramp from the Don Valley Parkway.

Who it suits

• Households who want a house with a yard and a subway station without leaving city life behind.
• People who will genuinely use a main street — who want to eat, shop and run errands on foot rather than drive to a plaza.
• Buyers watching their budget who are willing to move a few blocks east for a materially better house.