[URBAN NOTE] "Fifty years in the lives of Toronto homes"

[rfmcdonald]

Kate Shermack's feature in Toronto Life, with photography by Derek Shapton, examines the extent to which real estate prices in Toronto have spiraled upwards over the past decades.

135 Walmer Road

Imre Gero, hospital worker
Purchase price: $31,000 in February 1966
Gero was an employee at the now-defunct Workmen’s Compensation Hospital in North York. He bought 135 Walmer with his wife, Ilona, and—like so many Annex homeowners of the time—operated the property as a rooming house.

Therafields, therapeutic commune
Purchase price: $76,000 in June 1974
Therafields was an experimental psychotherapeutic commune founded by Lea Hindley-Smith, a woman with no therapeutic training, whose philosophy attracted poets, professors, students and other seekers. The organization owned approximately 20 homes in the Annex, including 135 Walmer, which it used as a shared residence for therapy groups. At one point, there were roughly 900 members, some of whom paid rent to live in Therafields-owned homes and share meals with other members.

Donald Evans, Professor, and Frances smith, teacher
Purchase price: $135,000 in December 1980
By the early 1980s, depressed home prices had reduced the value of Therafields’ real estate portfolio, exacerbating the organization’s financial problems and forcing it to sell off its holdings, including 135 Walmer. Evans and Smith weren’t a married couple, and they didn’t live in the house. It’s likely that they bought the property as an investment. In January 1982, they listed it for $219,000, but they dropped their asking price to $165,000.

Issie Lyon, policy analyst, and Carole Yellin, school psychologist
Purchase price: $160,000 in January 1983
The Lyons bought the house just before the murder of nine-year-old Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan shocked the neighbourhood. Their friends thought the area was dangerous, but the Lyons were smitten. They loved the tight-knit community and the annual Walmer Road block parties. “People became friends who are still friends today,” Issie recalls. “There were a lot of young couples with kids who scraped together enough money to get onto the street. We moved in right before prices got crazy.” Once their sons, Joshua and Matthew, grew up, the couple decided to downsize. In 2006, Issie gave the house to the boys, who sold it two years later.

Ted Betts, Lawyer, and Nathalie Foy, writer
Purchase price: $1.25 million in January 2008
Betts and Foy were living in Cabbagetown, but they wanted a change for their children, Griffin, Rowan and Gavin—all of whom were under seven at the time. By 2008, the Annex was a popular choice for upper-middle-class families. “We thought the neighbourhood would be safer for our kids to wander around as they got older,” Betts says now. As soon as the couple saw 135 Walmer, they had to have it. It was listed at $990,000, and they beat eight other bids with an offer of $1.25 million. This year, Foy helped organize the 30th anniversary edition of the annual street party that the Lyon family always attended.
Approximate present-day price: $1.8 to $2 million