Live in York University Heights
North York on the map and W05 on the price sheet: a detached benchmark of $1.03 million, three Line 1 stations inside the boundary and a light rail terminus that opened in December 2025.
York University Heights takes its name from the campus that opened on 185 hectares of farmland here in 1965, and a large share of what sits inside its boundary is either that campus or the employment lands strung along Keele Street and Finch Avenue West. It votes and plans as part of the North York community council area, the same one as Willowdale, but the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board files it in district W05 with Humber Summit and Glenfield-Jane Heights rather than in C14. That filing is the whole argument. In July 2026 the W05 detached benchmark was $1,034,700 and the apartment benchmark was $480,000, against $1,914,700 and $559,000 in C14: the same city, the same 0.767311% tax rate, the same month, and a detached house that costs $880,000 less. What has changed underneath those numbers is access, because Line 1 has run past Steeles since December 2017 and Line 6 Finch West opened on 7 December 2025 with its eastern terminus at Keele and Finch.
The same community council as Willowdale, and $880,000 off the detached price
Steeles Avenue West on the north, Dufferin Street on the east, Sheppard Avenue West and the Highway 401 corridor on the south, and the Black Creek parkland on the west.
This neighbourhood is named after the thing that made it. York University was founded in 1959 and moved onto 185 hectares of farmland north of Finch Avenue West in 1965. The campus, its roughly 53,500 students and the employment lands that grew up along Keele Street account for a great deal of the 13.25 square kilometres inside the boundary, and the 28,255 people the 2021 census counted here live around all of that rather than in the middle of it.
What decides the price here is an administrative filing. York University Heights sits in the North York community council area, the same one as Willowdale, on the same city-wide tax rate of 0.767311%. But the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board files it in district W05, with Humber Summit and Glenfield-Jane Heights, not in C14. In July 2026 the W05 detached benchmark was $1,034,700 and the C14 detached benchmark was $1,914,700. That is $880,000 of difference inside one community council area, and it is the reason to read this guide against the Willowdale one rather than on its own.
The ratio between the two halves of the market is also narrower here than anywhere else on this side of the city. A W05 detached benchmark buys 2.2 apartments at the district's $480,000 figure, against 3.4 in C14 and 3.3 in the Annex's C02. That is not because apartments are expensive here. It is because the houses are not.
What changed underneath those prices is access. Line 1 was extended 8.6 kilometres past Sheppard West on 17 December 2017, the first TTC subway to cross the city boundary, and it put three stations inside this neighbourhood: Finch West, York University and Pioneer Village, with Downsview Park a short distance south. Then on 7 December 2025 Line 6 Finch West opened, 11 kilometres and 18 stops from Humber College east to a terminus at Keele and Finch. A neighbourhood that was a bus ride from everything in 2016 now has four rapid transit platforms within a few minutes of most of its addresses.
What the price has not yet done is respond to that. W05 fell 5.88% on the composite over the year to July 2026, faster than the city, and the detached benchmark fell 8.47%. Whether the transit eventually shows up in the price is the open question here, and nobody honest will tell you the answer. The mortgage calculator is worth running on this district's numbers rather than the city's, because the city average is not what anything trades for on this side of Dufferin.
- The TRREB district is W05, not C14: check any comparable against the district it was filed in before you use it
- Toronto charges its own land transfer tax on top of the province's, with a first-time buyer rebate of up to $4,475 on the municipal half
- Four units are permitted as of right on a residential lot here; the five and six unit permission is Toronto and East York only
- Much of the neighbourhood backs onto employment land, so ask what the neighbouring zoning allows before you offer
- Ask how much of a building's rental demand is student demand, because it turns over every August and empties in May
- The C. W. Jefferys catchment is the question people ask most and it does not follow the neighbourhood name
How York University Heights got here
- 1959York University is founded, teaching its first classes downtown and then at Glendon on Bayview Avenue.
- 1965The Keele campus opens on 185 hectares of farmland north of Finch Avenue West, and the neighbourhood takes its name from it.
- 1970sThe land between the campus and Dufferin Street is built out as employment land: warehousing, light manufacturing and truck courts on the Keele and Finch grid.
- 1998North York is amalgamated into Toronto. The community council keeps the boundary, and the City later numbers this neighbourhood 27.
- 2005The first phase of the Village at York University is occupied, one of the last large greenfield housing developments inside the city limits.
- 2017Line 1 is extended 8.6 kilometres past Sheppard West on 17 December, adding Downsview Park, Finch West, York University and Pioneer Village and crossing the city boundary into Vaughan.
- 2024Bombardier ends aircraft production at Downsview, freeing the 370 acre airport lands south of here for the Northcrest and Canada Lands redevelopment.
- 2025Line 6 Finch West opens on 7 December, 11 kilometres and 18 stops from Humber College east to Finch West station.
Black Creek, Derrydowns and the Downsview lands
The open space here is the Black Creek valley on the western edge, running through Derrydowns Park and past the conservation authority's reconstructed 1860s settlement at Black Creek Pioneer Village. South of the neighbourhood, Downsview Park is federal parkland on a former air base, with sports fields, a lake loop and several kilometres of path. East across Dufferin, G. Ross Lord Park wraps a flood control reservoir on the West Don.
What the map does not show: Downsview is about to change. Bombardier ended aircraft production there in 2024, and the 370 acre airport lands are being redeveloped by Northcrest with Canada Lands on the adjoining federal parcels. That is decades of construction traffic on the roads south of here, and eventually a neighbourhood where a runway used to be.
Elsewhere in Toronto, not York University Heights
21 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 21 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. Read the Union Station row against the train rather than the car. Line 1 from Finch West is about three quarters of an hour, and the Barrie GO line from Downsview Park is considerably quicker than either.
Every gym within reach
The City runs two centres from its free and lower cost list inside this neighbourhood, and the university runs a full athletics building next door, which is more public recreation than most of Toronto gets. Grandravine has an indoor pool and an ice pad, Oakdale a gymnasium and an outdoor pool, and the Tait McKenzie Centre on the Keele campus sells community memberships alongside the student ones.
- Pool, courts, track and a fitness centre on the Keele campus, about 1.6 km from most addresses here
- Grandravine Community Recreation Centre is on the City's free and lower cost list, with a pool and a rink
- Oakdale Community Centre adds a gymnasium and an outdoor pool a few streets west
- Downsview Park has sports fields and a lake loop, and no membership at all
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Tait McKenzie Centre open | York University's athletics building on the Keele campus, with a pool, courts and a fitness centre, and community memberships alongside the student ones. | 5–8 min |
| Grandravine Community Recreation Centre open | The City centre on Grandravine Drive, with an indoor pool and an ice pad, and free drop-in programming. | 4–6 min |
| Oakdale Community Centre open | A gymnasium and an outdoor pool a few streets west, also on the City's free and lower cost list. | 5–7 min |
| Downsview Park open | Sports fields, a lake loop and several kilometres of path on the former air base south of here. | 5–7 min |
The free option is the Black Creek trail system, which runs the whole western edge of the neighbourhood and joins the Humber further south. It is the least used good walk in this part of Toronto.
Two boards, two sets of boundaries, one address
C. W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute on Sentinel Road, open since 1965, is the assigned secondary school for much of the housing here, with Gosford and Shoreham among the elementary schools. The Catholic board runs James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School on Finch Avenue West, founded for the parishes around Keele and Finch.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| C. W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute | Toronto District School Board | The 1965 secondary school at 340 Sentinel Road. The TDSB assigns by address, and the boundary does not follow the neighbourhood line, so confirm the specific address rather than the postal code. |
| Gosford Public School | Toronto District School Board | An elementary school on Gosford Boulevard in the north-west of the neighbourhood, opened in 1969 and running from junior kindergarten upward. |
| Shoreham Public School | Toronto District School Board | The elementary school on Shoreham Drive at the edge of the campus, with an enrolment that moves with the rental and student housing around it rather than with births. |
| James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School | Toronto Catholic District School Board | The Catholic secondary school on Finch Avenue West, founded for the Keele and Finch parishes. The Catholic board draws its own boundaries, and being inside a TDSB catchment tells you nothing about them. |
| Toronto District School Board optional attendance | Toronto District School Board | Specialised programmes admit centrally across the city rather than by home address. Applications close in the autumn for the following September. |
Two cautions. The TDSB assigns by street address and the boundaries here do not follow the neighbourhood line, and the Catholic board draws entirely separate ones. Check the specific address in each board's boundary tool before you offer.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Daily mean around −6 °C, a degree colder than the lakeshore and windier across the open campus land
- The winter term starts and the subway platforms fill again after the holidays
- Condominium status certificates take ten days by statute, so order early if you are buying
- Freeze and thaw on the wide 1960s driveways, which is when the cracks show
- Reserve fund studies and budget notices circulate in the older apartment corporations
- The quietest month on Keele Street before the spring listings arrive
- Reading week empties the campus and the buses run half full
- The spring market begins and the listing count climbs across W05
- The best month to look at a bungalow lot with the snow off and the leaves not yet on
- The busiest month for new listings in the city, and W05 gets its share of them
- Exams end and the student rental market turns over for the summer
- Worth walking Keele at the afternoon shift change: the employment lands run on trucks
- Detached listings move fastest now, and the W05 detached benchmark is what they trade against
- Convocation fills the campus for a fortnight and the parking around it disappears
- Construction season starts on the Finch corridor and on the Downsview lands
- The student population drops and the neighbourhood is at its quietest
- Warm evenings and the longest daylight of the year on the Black Creek trails
- A good month to test the commute you would actually make, in both directions
- Humid and high twenties, with the year's heaviest rainfalls
- Black Creek carries a lot of water fast, so ask about backwater valves on anything near the valley
- The quietest month of the year for sales
- The student lease cycle turns over and rental asking prices are at their most visible
- Contractors are booked out, so get quotes before you need them
- Air conditioning load is the honest test of a 1960s apartment building's electrical service
- Roughly 53,500 students return and the neighbourhood's traffic and transit change character overnight
- The autumn market opens and runs to late November
- School catchments matter most now, and the C. W. Jefferys boundary is the one people ask about
- The pleasantest month of the year for walking the creek valley
- Assessment notices and tax instalments land around now
- Leaf fall clogs the eaves on the streets that back onto the Black Creek parkland
- Listings thin sharply after mid-month
- Grey and wet rather than cold, and the trails get muddy
- The best negotiating month of the year in the W05 apartment market
- Exams end and the campus empties, which is when the neighbourhood is least like itself
- The thinnest month for both listings and competition
- Closings cluster before the year end
5 more photographs of the community and its surroundings
All freely licensed, via Wikimedia Commons. Filter by category.
Showing 1–5 of 5 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near York University Heights, 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.