Siblings Simon and Carlyle Routh bought and renovated this semi-detached home in Toronto's Dufferin Grove neighbourhood since buying homes individually was out of reach.Carlyle Routh/Carlyle Routh
251 St Clarens Ave., Toronto
Asking price: $1,949,000
Lot size: 21 by 127 feet
Taxes: $8,242 (2025)
Listing agent: Sabrina Kaufman, broker, Slavens and Associates Real Estate Inc.
The backstory
Most people in the rental market know that having a roommate to share costs can be a smart move. But when it comes to home ownership, having a co-owner who also splits the living space is still a novelty.
“People thought we were very weird when we first did this,” said Carlyle Routh, who in 2007 purchased a Toronto home that had been split into four apartments with her older brother. “Truly, it was a financial kind of reasoning, and also a bit of an experiment,” she said. “Now it seems to be a much more normal thing. I have friends who are interested in it; two sisters wanting to move in together or two single moms.”
The brother and sister duo had good careers; she’s a fashion photographer and he’s an architect. But at the time, buying a house in downtown Toronto was out of their reach individually.
The combination living/dining room and kitchen gained some unique features after it was renovated by Simon, an architect.Jeremie Warshafsky/Jeremie Warshafsky
“The alternatives had been either, we both kept renting or we both bought small condos that we probably wouldn’t have been happy in,” said Simon Routh. They decided to buy the semi-detached house near Dufferin Grove and Simon has spearheaded the redesign of all four levels, one at a time, in the years since. The home now encompasses two cool, contemporary two-floor apartments.
They’ve come to a mutual agreement to sell now, but there were agreements in place to work out the financing and logistics if either had wanted to sell out without the other. “The home-buying public probably thinks that co-ownership is like a risky, hippie thing,” said Simon. “But you know, I don’t think it needs to be.”
Over the years, Simon has been able to use the house to try out designs and materials that he was considering in his architectural practice. The siblings have shuffled between levels, both occupying the upper and then lower parts of the house at different stages of the house’s evolution.
The house today
As you come through the small front garden the front steps are almost the width of the deck (with one interruption in the middle for a planter) and have deep treads. If they remind you of bleacher-style seating, that’s intentional.
In the early years of renovation, the backyard was in bad shape as the garage needed replacement and a small rear addition was removed, so the front yard served as some much-needed outdoor space. “We made this kind of like stadium seating thing, and there were years everybody would get home from work and you’d sit and have a cocktail on the steps and meet the neighbours,” said Simon.
Inside the front door is a short hallway to the two interior doors that separate the upper-floor apartment (for Carlyle) and lower unit (for Simon).
The interiors are mostly cool white walls over broad-plank oak floors. The first apartment opens into Simon’s home office (with windows looking onto the porch) and a hallway to the rear where the main living space begins. This level was the most recently renovated, and was intended to be a flexible space (the front office could just as easily be a bedroom, and has been before) with a full bath with walk-in shower in the hallway where one might expect just a simple powder room.
The walls in the bathroom are tadelakt, a Moroccan plastering technique that is finished in a soft grey. “It’s like the lowest maintenance shower: the plaster has marble dust in it and then you actually do a soap finish on it. So now, as soap reacts with the lime plaster, it actually just makes it more waterproof,” said Simon. There are glass-domed LEDs (Canadian-made Bocci lights) embedded in the wall of the shower, adding whimsy to the textured walls.
The combination living/dining room and kitchen at the rear of the house has a couple of unique features. First, you’ll notice there are no obvious appliances: all the fridge, dishwasher and microwave units are contained below the quartz countertop in slate-coloured cabinetry. Then you’ll see that the upper cabinets run from the countertop to the ceiling with doors that slide open sideways like an elevator so that they don’t swing wide and disturb anything on the prep space. Even the sink is unusual, contained in a triangle-shaped section of cabinet that cantilevers out over the stairwell that leads down to the basement living spaces.
The home's basement can serve as a separate apartment with a private entrance to the backyard.Jeremie Warshafsky/Jeremie Warshafsky
The basement could be a separate apartment with a private entrance to the rear yard (the upstairs kitchen also has an exit to the backyard). But currently, it has more of a kitchenette setup with a counter and bar fridge along the back wall. A bright-white living room extends toward the front of the house. Along the way, the utility and laundry rooms are hidden behind sliding panels. At the far end is a primary-sized bedroom with an ensuite bathroom featuring an oversized square soaker tub.
The stairway up to the second level opens onto a hallway lined with storage cabinets that connects to a street-facing living room (which has been a bedroom before, much like the downstairs version) and the kitchen/dining room at the back. A full bathroom sits between these spaces, this one with a soaking tub and a separate shower.
This kitchen was the first the siblings redid and has a more traditional layout: central island with bar seating between the door to a balcony (triangular, and cut away so that it doesn’t shade the downstairs windows) and a run of upper and lower cabinets with more visible appliances.
Simon’s evolution in his preference for lighting styles is also evident here. In the early days, he did a grid of potlights, but by the time he was doing the lower kitchen, he was hiding those lights in channels where the walls meet the ceilings to provide indirect illumination.
The stairway to the attic level is framed with glass railings, and there’s a glassed-in cut-out in the wall separating it from the main room, all to pull as much sunlight into the stairs as possible.
The attic has three spaces: A large studio-sized sitting room off the stairs, a separate bedroom with cabinet storage built into one wall, and in between the two, an airy full bathroom with white, hexagonal tiles on the shower walls.
The attic has a glassed-in cut-out in the wall to pull sunlight into the floor, home to a bedroom, bathroom and sitting room.Carlyle Routh/Carlyle Routh
The benefits of co-housing
In addition to making the mortgage math work better, sharing a home with someone else makes things like upgrade projects (such as a new roof or replacing the gas furnace with a heat pump; both things the Rouths have done in recent years) shareable across two household budgets. Holidays can also be shared: “I do like Christmas morning on our floor and then like Christmas dinner on Carly’s floor,” said Simon, who then paused, embarrassed as he realized he’d slipped into childish parlance. “Carlyle, sorry, I forget her professional name – her grown-up name – is Carlyle.”
Sharing the space is also handy for smaller, but still important matters.
“There’s a good chance that someone is gonna be home to receive a package. We just have the one doorbell and it’s a smart doorbell so it rings on both our phones. Usually one of us can sign for a package for the other,” said Simon. “And the number of mornings where it’s like one of us sends a text saying: ‘Coffee beans?’”
There’s one last lesser-known benefit to the house, accessible through the double-car garage that opens to the rear laneway: nineties-era Canadian rock band merchandise.
“Chris Murphy from Sloan lives down the street and occasionally holds merch sales out of his garage. You pull into the laneway and there will be a 200-metere-long lineup,” said Simon.