31 Victoria Ave., Markham, Ont.
Asking price: $3,880,000
Lot size: 66 by 132 feet
Taxes: $8,220 (2026)
Listing agent: Sylvia Morris, Century 21 Leading Edge Realty Inc.
The backstory
The Gilmore Girls house is for sale, and until recently, its current owner didn’t know the first thing about Stars Hollow or the rabid fandom for the early 2000s comedy-drama. In fact, he didn’t live there at all during the show’s 2000-2007 run.
But now that 31 Victoria Ave. is for sale for the first time in 25 years, it’s gone viral on social media. There’s been a wave of interest in people coming to see the home.
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Masood Mohajer was is an entrepreneur and world traveller who, in 2002, bought the house in the picturesque Markham, Ont. neighbourhood of Unionville, purely as an investment property. He fell for it during a wintry visit to Toronto to visit family a quarter century ago. It wasn’t until his wife and three children moved into the house in 2010 that he began to realize that many of the period features he treasured were the same pieces of heritage charm that served as the backdrop for the domestic dramas and comedies of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore for many years.
“They had this sort of sheet about the house. And I remember I read through it, and it said something about a ‘Gilmore Girl.’ I had no clue what it was, absolutely no clue,” said Mr. Mohajer, who tactfully avoided answering whether he’s ever actually watched the show. After buying it, he rented it out to a couple of business executives over the next eight years, without too much thought about the whole Gilmore thing.
Not that he was unfamiliar with show business; over the years, four films used the home at different times. And Unionville – with its well-preserved main street – has been the site of several TV and film productions, including the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls filmed way back in 2000.
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The first big “Ah-Hah!” moment came a few years back when there was a Gilmore Girls fan festival in town and the place was swarmed by the show’s admirers.
“There was like, thousands of girls walking around the village,” Mr. Mohajer said. By then, he knew this was potential trouble. “I was very deliberate in telling the organizers: ‘Please do not tell them where the house is.’ Because I cannot have a kilometre-long queue of girls wanting to come into my house.”
Nevertheless, at least one enterprising duo sniffed it out.
“There were these two rather demure-looking girls just walking up and down, pacing up and down,” in front of Mr. Mohajer’s house. He went to say hello, and indeed they had an inkling. “They asked me very sort of softly, ‘Is this the Gilmore Girls’ home?’ And I felt so sorry for them, I said, yes, it is. They came in, they had a look at the house. They were from Lexington, Ky. – I remember this very clearly – they sent us a hand-stitched blanket as a gesture of thanks.”
Happily, the Kentuckians didn’t share the news with the rest of the festival, and that was it in terms of public attention until his house went up for sale last week.
The house today
The main entryway will be very familiar to fans: a set of double doors in the middle of the wraparound porch under a stained-glass transom. Indeed, a few times in the pilot, Rory and Lorelai walk through these doors into the foyer and through the arched doorway opposite that leads into the main living space.
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To the right of this rounded portal is a raised dining room, actually the first room in the house depicted in the show: in the pilot, Lorelai is having a conversation with fictional private school Chilton Prep about tuition as she walks down the hallway into the great room.
The house listing has a virtual tour, and sharp-eyed viewers will note the real space does not exactly match the one in the TV show, at least not after a few scenes in the pilot.
In the real house, there’s a built-in bar right next to the entrance from the foyer and the dining room. It’s seen once in the pilot, but later on, when the house was reconstructed as a set on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, Calif., they removed the bar and put a staircase to the second level in its place. Many times in the show Rory would traipse down those stairs into the great room, but they do not exist in the real house.
That said, Hollywood faithfully recreated all the other features of the real great room, including the brown-brick fireplace with double arched openings for hearth and log storage. It’s the same today as it was in the pilot, and many spikily sarcastic or heartfelt conversations were had in front of its TV clone for 8 seasons.
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This room and the porch that runs along outside it are some of Mr. Mohajer’s favourite spaces in the house, and he’s done his best to keep as much of it as original as he found it. Flooring and woodwork have been preserved (despite one tenant’s bursting of the water pipes in winter), and of course the stained glass and antique hardware on the doors.
“I even had to go and research how to fix the lock on some of these doors, and I had to go to St. Jacob’s, Ont., to find the people that can specialize in fixing these types of locks,” he said.
Mr. Mohajer likens the job of holding onto the house to the famous advertising slogan of Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe: You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation. “So with me in this house, I’m just the custodian of it.”
The major exceptions are the kitchen, which is recently renovated, some of the bathrooms that have been updated and the basement which has been finished and is currently kitted out as a primary suite bedroom.