Toronto apartment building for sale at $45 million could be replaced by tall tower

An entire Toronto apartment building just hit the market for $45 million, and the listing pitches the opportunity to build a tall tower in its place as the main selling point.

A 76-unit rental apartment building at 89 Isabella Street was listed for sale last week, a 0.61-acre land parcel situated on a fast-changing block destined to host some incredibly tall buildings in the coming years.

The listing acknowledges these changes coming to the area, advertising the almost 80 homes on site as an opportunity for an investor to build roughly half a million square feet of new vertical development.

The language of the sales pitch suggests that the existing apartment building should be treated as little more than a placeholder on the site of a potential "tremendous upside through intensification...through rezoning on the back of recent height precedents achieved in the area and policy advancements."

And the listing is probably quite correct in this assessment.

Height precedents — like the approved towers set to soar to heights of 62 and 69 storeys immediately across the street at 88 and 90 Isabella Street— will all but guarantee a project of similar stature to proceed on this site at some point in the future.

This, in addition to planning policies that promote density in areas well-served by transit (the site is roughly equidistant from Wellesley and Sherbourne subway stations on Line 1 and 2), could translate to big bucks for any developer willing to shell out the asking price for this building.

The listing notes that any "future redevelopment of the property is contingent on Rental Demolition Applications and compliance with applicable rental replacement considerations and the Residential Tenancies Act," which would add costs in constructing replacement units for displaced residents.

Of course, development applications take time to navigate the planning and approvals process, and the listing promises that any purchaser would be acquiring "meaningful income in place with market rent and operating upside" in the interim.