Live in Wexford-Maryvale
The second-cheapest detached benchmark in the City of Toronto, and a light rail line that opened along the bottom of the neighbourhood in February 2026.
Wexford was a hamlet at a crossroads on what is now Lawrence Avenue East, with an Anglican church built in 1848 and a name borrowed from County Wexford in Ireland. The farms between Eglinton and Highway 401 went under bungalows in the 1950s, and 28,345 people now live on the 10.26 square kilometres the City calls neighbourhood 119. In July 2026 the TRREB district it sits in, E04, carried a detached benchmark of $881,100 and an apartment benchmark of $419,100. Only Toronto W10, at $879,000, had a cheaper detached benchmark that month, and the gap between the two is $2,100 on an index that moves by tens of thousands, so calling either one the cheapest in the city reads more into the number than it holds.
Cheap detached ground, with a new railway along the bottom of it
Highway 401 on the north and Eglinton Avenue East on the south, between Victoria Park Avenue on the west and Birchmount Road on the east, with Lawrence Avenue East running through the middle.
The village came first and the city arrived seventy years later. An Anglican church went up at the crossroads in 1848, the settlement around it is dated to about 1850, and the name was carried over from County Wexford in Ireland. The farms between Eglinton Avenue East and what became Highway 401 stayed farms until Scarborough joined Metropolitan Toronto in 1953, and then went under bungalows in one decade. That is still what you buy here: a low postwar house on a wide lot, with apartment slabs on the arterials and 28,345 people spread over ten square kilometres.
The price is the reason to look. In July 2026 the detached benchmark in this TRREB district was $881,100. Only one district in the whole city was lower, Toronto W10 at $879,000, and the gap between them is $2,100 on an index that moves by tens of thousands in a month. So the honest claim is not that this is the cheapest detached ground in Toronto. It is that this is one of the two or three cheapest, and which one leads changes with the month.
It is also falling faster than the city. The composite here dropped 7.61% over the year while the City of Toronto composite dropped 3.83%. Detached fell 9.24%, apartments 8.27%. That is unusual: in most Toronto districts this year the apartment side fell much harder than the house side, and in the Annex's district apartments fell 14.65% against 2.15% for detached. Here both halves of the market moved together and both moved down. A buyer who reads the city-wide numbers and expects houses to be the sheltered half will be reading the wrong district.
The plan for what happens next is on the other side of the street. The Golden Mile Secondary Plan covers the lands along Eglinton between Victoria Park and Birchmount, which is the strip immediately south of this neighbourhood, not the neighbourhood itself. Council adopted it on 27 October 2020 and the Ontario Land Tribunal brought it into effect, as modified, on 13 December 2024. What that means for a house here arrives at one remove. The towers and the new streets go up across Eglinton, the bungalow blocks north of them keep their zoning, and the shops and the traffic change well before the housing does.
The transit is real, and it is new. Line 5 Eglinton opened on 8 February 2026 after about fifteen years of construction: nineteen kilometres, twenty-five stations, and surface stops at Golden Mile and Pharmacy along this neighbourhood's southern boundary. Kennedy station, where Line 5 meets Line 2, is roughly four kilometres away. None of that puts a train at the top of Lawrence Avenue East, which is where most of the housing is, so the practical commute for much of the neighbourhood is still a bus to a station. Ride it before you price it.
- Ride the bus you would actually take to Golden Mile or Pharmacy station at the hour you would take it, then ride Line 5 to Kennedy and change
- Toronto charges its own land transfer tax on top of Ontario's, and below $2,000,000 the two tables are identical, so budget the municipal cheque at the same size as the provincial one
- The 2026 residential rate is 0.767311% city-wide, charged against an assessment still frozen at 2016 values
- 1950s stock: ask about the furnace, the roof, the electrical service and whether a backwater valve was ever fitted
- The Golden Mile plan area starts on the far side of Eglinton, so check whether the address you are buying is inside it or looking at it
- Wexford Collegiate's arts programme auditions city-wide; an address in the catchment is not an admission to it
How Wexford-Maryvale got here
- 1848The Church of St. Jude is built at the crossroads, the Anglican church of a village the records date to about 1850. The church is older than the settlement it served, which is the sort of disagreement a rural parish leaves behind.
- 1850Wexford is established in Scarborough Township and takes the name of County Wexford in Ireland.
- 1941The federal government builds a munitions plant on the ground south of here that becomes the Golden Mile. At its peak 5,300 people work in it.
- 1953Scarborough is severed from York County into Metropolitan Toronto, and the bungalow subdivisions fill the farms between Eglinton and the 401 through the decade.
- 1986A fire on the Golden Mile speeds up the industrial strip's conversion into one of the largest concentrations of big box stores in the city.
- 2004The Wexford Heights Business Improvement Area forms along Lawrence Avenue East, from Victoria Park to Beacon Road. It now runs to about 245 members.
- 2020Council adopts the Golden Mile Secondary Plan on 27 October, for the lands along Eglinton between Victoria Park and Birchmount. The Ontario Land Tribunal brings it into effect, as modified, on 13 December 2024.
- 2026Line 5 Eglinton opens on 8 February, nineteen kilometres and twenty-five stations, with surface stops at Golden Mile and Pharmacy on the neighbourhood's southern boundary.
Wexford Park, Maryvale Park and the creeks beyond
The open space inside the neighbourhood is municipal and modest: Wexford Park in the south-west with its ball diamonds, and Maryvale Park at the north end with the city's outdoor pool on Trestleside Grove. Neither is a destination. The ravine systems that Scarborough is known for sit outside the boundary, at L'Amoreaux Park north-east of here and along the Don to the west.
What the map does not show: this street grid was drawn for cars, with arterials a kilometre apart and crescents that do not connect, so there is no continuous walking route through the neighbourhood. The practical daily walk is the Lawrence strip, and the practical weekend run is a drive to a creek.
Elsewhere in Toronto, not Wexford-Maryvale
22 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 22 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from a representative point on Lawrence Avenue East, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model: honest ranges, not routed times. Two rows deserve care. The Line 5 stops are measured to the platform, and the walk from a house at the north end of the neighbourhood is a good deal longer than the drive. The airport row runs the full width of the city on the 401.
Every gym within reach
The provision here is municipal rather than commercial. McGregor Park Community Centre on Lawrence has an accessible indoor pool and a gymnasium, and Maryvale Park has a free outdoor pool through the summer. Private gyms sit in the plazas along Lawrence and Victoria Park rather than in a single anchor building.
- The indoor pool is accessible by ramp, which is not true of every older Scarborough pool
- Maryvale Park's outdoor pool is free and runs through the summer
- Wexford Park is the nearest open ground for a loop, about twenty minutes on foot from the middle of the neighbourhood
- The nearest long trail run is L'Amoreaux Park, which is a drive rather than a walk
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| McGregor Park Community Centre open | The city recreation centre on Lawrence east of Kennedy, with an accessible indoor pool and a gymnasium. | 5–8 min |
| Maryvale Park Outdoor Pool open | The city outdoor pool on Trestleside Grove, free to use and open through the summer. | 5–8 min |
| Wexford Park open | The ball diamonds and the walking loop in the south-west, the closest thing here to a running route. | 5–7 min |
The free option is the city pools and the parks. In a neighbourhood with no continuous path network, they are also the only exercise that does not begin with getting in the car.
One arts collegiate, two boards, and no catchment you can assume
Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts on Pharmacy Avenue is the public secondary school here, and it runs two intakes at once: the ordinary catchment intake, and an arts intake that auditions students from across Toronto. Wexford Public School and George Peck Public School cover the elementary years. The Catholic board runs Precious Blood, on Pharmacy since 1954, and St. Kevin.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts | Toronto District School Board | The neighbourhood's public secondary school, on Pharmacy Avenue. It takes a catchment intake and an arts intake that auditions from across the city, so an address here does not by itself get a student into the arts programme. |
| Wexford Public School | Toronto District School Board | One of the public elementary schools inside the neighbourhood. Catchments here do not follow the neighbourhood boundary. |
| George Peck Public School | Toronto District School Board | The other public elementary in the eastern half. Which of the two an address feeds is a street-by-street question, not a neighbourhood one. |
| Precious Blood Catholic School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | Kindergarten to grade eight at 1035 Pharmacy Avenue. It opened in 1950 as St. Teresa School and moved into this building in 1954. |
| St. Kevin Catholic School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The second Catholic elementary serving the neighbourhood. The Catholic board draws its own boundaries, and they do not line up with the public board's. |
The two boards draw their boundaries separately and neither follows the City's neighbourhood line, so an address two streets apart can feed different schools in both systems. Check the specific address in each board's own boundary tool before you make 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.
- Inland Scarborough, so colder than the lakeshore guides on this site and with more snow lying
- The thinnest listing month of the year, and the one with the least competition on a bungalow
- Snow on a 1950s driveway is a real chore, and the city clears the arterials before the crescents
- The cycle that cracks postwar concrete steps, garage pads and the odd clay drain
- Ask the age of the furnace while the heating season can still be tested
- Line 5 runs its winter schedule now, which is the honest version of the service
- Listings climb and the spring market starts, usually in the week after the school break
- Snow off and leaves not yet on is the best fortnight of the year to read a lot's grading
- Golden Mile hoardings are easiest to survey before the trees fill in
- The busiest month for supply, and in this district the month the fall in price is plainest
- Ride Line 5 east and west at the hour you would actually ride it, not at midday
- Silver maples on these streets are seventy years old and want an arborist's eye
- Warm enough to walk the Lawrence strip end to end, which is how you learn this place
- Bungalow gardens show their age now: look for grading that slopes back toward the house
- Detached listings here sit longer than downtown ones even in a good spring
- The school year ends and family moves are arranged around it
- Storm season starts, and the flat postwar lots here drain slowly
- Patios open along Lawrence, which is the part of the neighbourhood people drive in for
- Humid and high twenties, with the year's heaviest rainfall totals
- The Taste of Lawrence closes the strip and draws crowds in the tens of thousands
- Basement backup in 1950s stock is the local insurance question; ask about a backwater valve
- Most family closings land now, ahead of the school year
- Air conditioning is the honest test of a sixty-year-old electrical service
- Contractors in this part of Scarborough are booked out into the autumn
- The autumn market runs to late November and is the quieter half of the year to buy in
- School catchments matter most now; check each board's boundary tool by street address
- Arts auditions at Wexford Collegiate are advertised in the autumn for the following year
- The best month for the ravine trails at L'Amoreaux and along the Don
- Assessment notices and the last tax instalments land around now
- Leaf fall on a deep 1950s lot is a couple of weekends of work
- Listings thin sharply and negotiating room opens on the detached stock
- Grey and wet rather than properly cold
- The month to buy in this district if you are buying in it at all
- The thinnest month for listings and for competition alike
- Closings cluster before the year end
- The Lawrence strip is at its busiest, which is worth walking before you commit
4 more photographs of the community and its surroundings
All freely licensed, via Wikimedia Commons. Filter by category.
Showing 1–4 of 4 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Wexford-Maryvale, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Toronto library.