Deals on houses have been pretty thin for the past few years, and people have been using all sorts of strategies to beat the market. They’ve bought in unlikely neighbourhoods, hoping to be part of an early wave of gentrification; they’ve done some creative cross-referencing of obits with mls.ca; they’ve even started looking at show homes in the middle of farmers’ fields in Whitby. But the latest advice from canny real estate agents is to consider multi-family dwellings: former apartment complexes and rooming houses that can be converted back into stately single-family homes.

“I’ve been telling my clients to do that for two years,” says Ophira Sutton of Sutton Group. “You’re going to be competing like crazy, so why don’t you take something divided and do it yourself?” Sutton sold three such houses in October alone, all in and around the Annex. Elise Kalles, one of the city’s top agents, says she’s also been selling a lot of them recently.

Many formerly opulent homes in expen­sive downtown neighbourhoods are now multi-unit complexes. Grand houses in River­dale, the Annex, Hillcrest, and the Dufferin and St. Clair area were converted into apartments and rooming houses during the past four decades, when vacancy rates hit all-time lows. Now those houses are going to buyers who plan to live there, rather than investors. On Markham Street, number 19, split into two apartments, was listed as a possible conversion in November for $699,000. The triplex at 535 Palmerston Boulevard was listed for $899,900. Up in Forest Hill, 355 Walmer is a four-unit apartment on the market for $1.595 million. Buyers who find the million-dollar-plus price tag steep hang onto a tenant or two to help with the mortgage (though if they plan to move in themselves, they’re legally entitled to evict the tenants they inherit).

The same sort of reclamation happened a decade and more ago in Rosedale on now grand streets like Beaumont and Chestnut Park. If the market continues to expand—and it’s showing no signs of going south like it is down south—the Annex of today will be our Rosedale of tomorrow.