You can buy an entire Ontario mall for just over $47 million

If you needed a reminder that Toronto-area real estate has completely lost the plot, look no further than Richmond Hill, where a perfectly normal-looking shopping plaza is asking $47.5 million.

The property at 10620 Yonge St., sitting at the corner of Yonge and Oxford, has quietly gone up for sale — and while it may not look flashy from the outside, it's very much priced like it thinks it's a future skyline.

To be fair, this isn't some half-empty, sad strip mall desperately clinging to life.

Value Village and Shoppers Drug Mart at 10620 Yonge St.

According to the listing, it's a fully tenanted commercial plaza with major anchors like Shoppers Drug Mart, Value Village, and St. Louis Bar & Grill, spread across over four acres of land with ample parking and, naturally, that phrase developers love more than anything else: "great future development potential."

In other words, it's exactly the kind of place where people pick up prescriptions, donate old clothes, stress-eat wings, and accidentally spend $80 on candles they absolutely did not plan to buy.

And for the low, low price of $47,500,000, it can all be yours.

But is that actually a fair price? Let's do some math.

If you look at the land as a whole, the asking price works out to roughly $257 per square foot, which sounds almost reasonable — until you read the fine print.

The listing notes there's only about 50,000 rentable square feet, and at that size, the price jumps to nearly $950 per square foot, which is… bold.

The parking lot. 

Even by prime downtown Toronto standards, that's high.

Of course, it all depends on what kind of investor you are — and what you think this property really is.

Retail plazas like this don't trade on vibes. They trade on return. Investors typically look at cap rate, which is essentially how much money a property makes each year compared to what you paid for it.

Right now, Canadian retail properties are often expected to deliver around a six per cent annual return. 

On a $47.5-million purchase, that means this plaza would need to generate roughly $2.85 million a year in net operating income just to feel "normal."

Divide that by 50,000 square feet, and you're looking at about $57 per square foot in net income — which is extremely optimistic for a suburban plaza.

The list of tenants at 10620 Yonge St. 

That said, without seeing the rent roll, there's no real way to know how much this place actually brings in.

For context, average commercial retail lease rates in the GTA tend to hover in the low $20-per-square-foot range. Multiply that out, subtract operating expenses, and you start to see why the asking price doesn't quite add up if this is being marketed as just a shopping plaza.

Which is probably why it isn't.

What's really doing the heavy lifting here is the future development potential.

With over four acres on Yonge Street, it's not hard to see the appeal. A buyer could happily collect rent from Shoppers and friends today while quietly planning something much bigger for tomorrow — assuming zoning, approvals, and the City all cooperate.

Value Village at 10620 Yonge St. 

In that sense, the mall isn't the star of the show. The land is.

At first glance, paying nearly $50 million for a plaza anchored by a Value Village feels unhinged. But zoom out a little, and this starts to look less like a mall sale and more like a long-term land bet along one of the GTA's busiest corridors.