Live in Cedarbrae
A detached benchmark of $886,000, within $7,000 of the cheapest district in the city, in the district whose prices fell second fastest of Toronto's thirty-five.
Cedarbrae is a 1960s Scarborough subdivision that borrowed its name from a golf club and then lent it to a mall, a collegiate and a library, none of which agree on a boundary. The City does not draw a Cedarbrae either: since April 2022 the census unit here has been Golfdale-Cedarbrae-Woburn, neighbourhood 141 of 158, with 27,085 people on 6.03 square kilometres. In July 2026 the TRREB district it sits in, E09, carried a detached benchmark of $886,000 and an apartment benchmark of $429,800. That detached figure is $7,000 above the lowest in the City of Toronto and $569,200 below the city-wide one, and the same index says the composite here fell 8.82 per cent over the year, a drop only one of the city's thirty-five districts beat.
A name three institutions share and the census does not
Roughly the blocks either side of Markham Road and Lawrence Avenue East in south-central Scarborough. The City's own unit, Golfdale-Cedarbrae-Woburn, is larger than that and reaches north to Highway 401.
Cedarbrae is a mall, a collegiate and a library, and it is not a unit of anything the City counts. The name came off a golf club: the club founded in 1922 as Cedar Brook took the name Cedar Brae in 1939 and has since moved north to Mac Frost Way, leaving the older Scarboro Golf and Country Club, from 1912, playing through the West Highland Creek valley at the south-eastern edge. The mall opened with the name in 1962 and the library took it in 1966. What no City document records is the day the name stopped belonging to a club and started belonging to a district.
The City's own unit is Golfdale-Cedarbrae-Woburn, neighbourhood 141 of 158, which did not exist until 12 April 2022, when the 140 neighbourhoods became 158 and Woburn split in two. So the census figures shown here, 27,085 people on 6.03 square kilometres, describe an area drawn four years ago and named after three places at once.
The price is the whole argument. In July 2026 the detached benchmark in this TRREB district, E09, was $886,000. Two districts in the city were lower and both were within seven thousand dollars of it: W10 at $879,000 and E04 at $881,100. Against the City of Toronto detached benchmark of $1,455,200, a house here indexes at roughly sixty per cent of the city figure. That is the trade this address makes.
It is also falling, and quickly. The composite in E09 dropped 8.82 per cent over the year, and of the thirty-five City of Toronto districts in that table only C06 fell further. The apartment benchmark, $429,800, was down 13.61 per cent. Toronto's usual split has detached holding and apartments giving way, and that is what the Annex's district did. Here both ends fell, the cheaper one harder. Anyone buying here for the entry price is buying into the part of the index that has repriced fastest, which helps on the way in and hurts on the way out.
There is no station, and the one being built is not for this address. Line 3 is gone and the Scarborough Subway Extension, 7.8 kilometres and three stations from Kennedy to Sheppard and McCowan, began tunnelling in 2023 with major construction at Scarborough Centre from September 2025. Metrolinx publishes those milestones and publishes no opening date. What exists today is the bus to Kennedy or Scarborough Centre, and Guildwood GO on the Lakeshore East line to the south-east, which is the fastest way downtown and the row worth testing off-peak before anything else.
The closing cheque is the Toronto surprise. Ontario charges a land transfer tax and Toronto charges its own on top, and below two million dollars the two tables are identical, so the municipal bill is exactly the size of the provincial one. On the $886,000 benchmark that is $14,195 twice, or $28,390 before any first-time buyer rebate. The cheap end of the city pays the same doubling as the expensive end.
- Drive or walk to Guildwood GO and read the off-peak Lakeshore East timetable, not the peak one
- The subway extension has no published opening date, so nothing in the offer should depend on one
- Budget $28,390 of land transfer tax on a benchmark-priced house, provincial and municipal together, before rebates
- The stock is early 1960s: ask the age of the furnace, the roof, the electrical service, and whether there is a backwater valve
- Four units are permitted as of right on a residential lot city-wide, and the five and six unit permission is ward by ward, so check the ward
- E09 fell 8.82 per cent on the composite in a year, so pull comparables from the last quarter rather than the last spring
How Cedarbrae got here
- 1912Scarboro Golf and Country Club is founded. Its course, later reworked by A. W. Tillinghast, runs through the West Highland Creek valley on the south-eastern edge of what became this neighbourhood, and the Canadian Open has been played on it four times.
- 1939The golf club founded in 1922 as Cedar Brook renames itself Cedar Brae. The club now plays north of here on Mac Frost Way, but the name stayed on this ground and everything built afterwards took it.
- 1962Cedarbrae Mall opens as a plaza at Markham and Lawrence, anchored by Woolworth's, Zellers, Steinberg's and Simpsons. It is the first thing here to carry the name in public.
- 1966The Cedarbrae library opens at 545 Markham Road on 30 November, to the public the next day. It gains a two-storey extension in 1983 and reopens from a full renovation in December 2010.
- 2019The Walmart that replaced Zellers closes in January. The centre, now called Cedarbrae Centre, is anchored by a No Frills and a Canadian Tire instead of a department store.
- 2022On 12 April the City replaces its 140 neighbourhoods with 158. Woburn, number 137, splits into Golfdale-Cedarbrae-Woburn and Woburn North, and the statistics for this area start again from a new boundary.
- 2023Tunnelling begins on the Scarborough Subway Extension, 7.8 kilometres and three stations from Kennedy to Sheppard and McCowan.
- 2025Major construction begins at Scarborough Centre station in September. Metrolinx publishes the milestones and does not publish an opening date.
Highland Creek, Thomson Memorial and the Pan Am Centre
The open space here is a ravine rather than a lawn. Morningside Park sits in the Highland Creek valley three kilometres east and is one of the largest parks in Toronto, with trails along the water and the only real elevation anywhere near this address. Thomson Memorial Park to the west carries the playing fields, the cricket pitches and the Scarborough Museum. The Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, built for the 2015 Games on the university campus, is a fifty-metre pool and a fieldhouse open to the public on city rates.
What the map does not show: the ravine is the only continuous walking route in a district whose streets curve into cul-de-sacs and whose arterials are six lanes wide. That is also its weakness. If the property backs onto the creek, walk it in March when the melt is running and ask what the grading does with the water before you ask what the view is worth.
Elsewhere in Toronto, not Cedarbrae
20 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 20 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from a representative point in the neighbourhood, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model: honest ranges, not routed times. One row deserves care: the Guildwood GO row is short by road and long by timetable, because Lakeshore East service off-peak is not what it is at rush hour.
Every gym within reach
The serious facility here is public and it is unusual. Scarborough exercises in plaza gyms and city community centres, both of which line Markham Road, but the anchor is a Pan American Games pool four and a half kilometres away that anyone can join.
- Built for the 2015 Games and run jointly by the City and the university, so it is not a private club
- Thomson Memorial Park is the nearest walking loop and the nearest playing fields
- Morningside Park is where the running actually happens, because it has hills
- City community centres in this part of Scarborough are cheap, busy and worth visiting at the hour you would use them
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre open | Two competition pools, a diving tank, a fieldhouse and a track, built for the 2015 Games and open to the public on city rates. | 8–12 min |
| Thomson Memorial Park open | The nearest continuous walking loop, with playing fields and the museum buildings at the north end. | 6–9 min |
| Morningside Park open | Trails along Highland Creek through the deepest ravine in this part of the city, and the one route here with real elevation in it. | 5–8 min |
The free option is the Highland Creek trail network. It is the only route here that is not a sidewalk beside four lanes of traffic.
Two collegiates, one boundary, and no shortcut
Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute stands on Markham Road across from the library, with French immersion and extended French alongside the regular programme, and Woburn Collegiate Institute sits north on Ellesmere. David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute takes part of the area to the west. Which of the three an address is assigned to is a boundary question, and the boundary does not follow Lawrence Avenue or the neighbourhood name.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | The secondary school on Markham Road, with French immersion and extended French streams alongside the regular programme. Assignment is by address, not by the name of the neighbourhood. |
| Woburn Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | The other public secondary school serving this area, on Ellesmere Road. Which of the two an address is assigned to is a boundary question, and the boundary does not follow Lawrence. |
| David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | On Lawrence Avenue East to the west, and the assigned school for part of this area rather than all of it. |
| Toronto Catholic District School Board | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic board runs its own elementary and secondary schools across Scarborough on boundaries that do not match the public board's. There is no Catholic school named for this neighbourhood, so the assignment has to be looked up rather than guessed. |
| Toronto District School Board optional attendance | Toronto District School Board | Specialised and alternative programmes admit centrally rather than by catchment, and several sit within a short bus ride of here. Applications close in the autumn for the following September. |
The Catholic board runs its own elementary and secondary schools across Scarborough on boundaries that do not match the public board's, and there is no Catholic school named for this neighbourhood to anchor a guess. Look the exact address up in both boards' tools before you write an offer.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Colder than the bluffs and the lakeshore, because nothing moderates the air this far from the water
- The thinnest month for listings in a district that already sits longer than the city average
- Postwar driveways here are long, and the snow on them is the owner's problem, not the City's
- The cycle that opens cracks in 1960s poured foundations and garage slabs
- Ask what the furnace is and how old, while the heating season can still answer
- Spring listings are being photographed before the snow goes
- Listings climb through the month and the spring market opens
- Bare ground and no leaves is the one time a year you can read a lot's grading properly
- Highland Creek runs hard with the melt, which is what to watch if the property backs onto the ravine
- The busiest month for new listings, and in E09 the month the fall is easiest to read across comparables
- Drive the commute you would actually make, at the hour you would make it, before you price the subway
- The silver maples planted with these subdivisions are sixty years old and want an arborist's opinion
- Warm enough to walk the plazas along Markham Road and see what is actually open
- Cricket starts at Thomson Memorial Park, which says more about this part of Scarborough than any listing does
- Detached listings here take longer to sell than the city average even in a strong spring
- The school year ends and family moves get scheduled around the closing date
- Morningside Park and the Highland Creek trails are at their best and their busiest
- Storm season starts, and with it the question of where the water goes on a flat 1960s lot
- Humid and into the thirties, without the two or three degrees the lakeshore neighbourhoods get back
- Basement backup is the local insurance conversation, and a backwater valve is the local answer
- The quietest sales month of the year, and the one where a patient buyer has the most room
- Most family closings land now, ahead of the school year
- Air conditioning on a sixty-year-old electrical service is the honest test of whether it was ever upgraded
- Trades are booked through to the autumn, which matters if the purchase needs work before occupancy
- The autumn market runs from now to late November and is smaller than the spring one
- School assignment matters most this month; check the board's boundary tool against the exact address
- Construction on the subway extension is visible again once the traffic returns
- The best weeks of the year in the Highland Creek ravine
- Assessment notices and the final tax instalments land around now
- Leaves off a long driveway and a mature maple is a weekend, not an afternoon
- Listings thin quickly and the negotiating room in this district opens with them
- Grey and wet rather than cold, and the month a flat roof or a tired eaves shows itself
- If you are buying in E09 at all, this is the month the numbers favour
- The thinnest month for both listings and competition
- Closings cluster before the year end for tax reasons
- The mall and the plazas are at their busiest, which is the fairest week to judge how well they are doing
19 more photographs of Toronto and the region
Drawn from the site's shared, freely licensed Toronto photo library, not photographs of Cedarbrae itself. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 19 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images from the site's shared Toronto library, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. None of them is presented as a photograph of Cedarbrae.