Cachet

The place

Cachet occupies the square of north-west Markham between 16th Avenue and Major Mackenzie Drive, with Warden Avenue on the east and Woodbine Avenue and Highway 404 on the west. Cachet Parkway runs through the north of it and gave the neighbourhood its name. The Rouge River and Berczy Creek, which flows south toward Toogood Pond, cross the area in wooded valleys that the plan kept as open space.

The land was farmed into the 1980s, and before that decade there were only a few dozen houses in the whole area. Development started in the 1980s and accelerated sharply in the first half of the 1990s, when close to half of Cachet’s houses were built, and the remainder followed through the early 2000s. From the beginning the north-west pocket was planned for estate lots and custom houses, while the subdivisions to the south and east were built by production builders at a large but more conventional scale. That two-speed origin still defines the neighbourhood: one part estate enclave, one part affluent suburb.

The houses

In the Cachet Country Club pocket around Cachet Parkway and Personna Boulevard, the houses were custom commissions from the start. They are large two-storey houses in brick and stone, many in the formal, symmetrical vocabulary of the 1990s, with three-car garages, circular drives and deep setbacks. Lots were drawn for this scale, so the houses do not crowd each other. These first-generation estates are now thirty years old, and the earliest second-generation rebuilds have begun, usually in a cleaner transitional or contemporary idiom with larger windows and a lower roofline.

Cachet Woods, Cachet Mews and the Manors of Cachet hold the production-built houses of the 1990s: substantial two-storeys with double garages and four or five bedrooms on standard lots that are still generous by current standards. These houses are being renovated rather than replaced, with kitchens, bathrooms and lower levels brought up to date. Townhouses make up a small share near the main roads. Across the neighbourhood, roughly four houses in five are detached.

Streets and lots

Cachet Parkway is the address, and the courts and crescents off it in the north-west are where the largest houses stand. Personna Boulevard runs through the estate pocket and is the other name buyers ask for. Glenbourne Park Drive and Bowes Lyon Court are among the quieter estate streets, and Macrill Crescent follows the pond and trail park of the same name. Berczy Creek Way, as its name says, follows the creek.

Estate lots in the north-west are wide and deep, often irregular where they meet the valley, and the best of them back onto the Rouge or Berczy Creek with a view of mature woodland. On the production-built streets, lots are rectangular and well-sized, with the premium going to those that back onto Thomas Frisby Woods, the Macrill pond or a park rather than another house. The street trees were planted in the 1990s and have now reached a size that gives the neighbourhood real shade. Cachet is flat except where the creeks cut through, so ravine here means a wooded valley at the back rather than a dramatic slope.

Living here

The trail parks are the neighbourhood’s quiet strength. Thomas Frisby Woods and the Macrill Crescent pond preserve woodland and water inside the subdivision, and Personna Park, Ashton Meadows Park and Calvert Park serve the surrounding streets. The valleys of the Rouge and Berczy Creek connect south toward Toogood Pond and the Unionville trails.

Shopping is at the Cachet Centre plaza and at King Square at Woodbine and Markland, with the larger centres of Markville and the Woodbine corridor a short drive away. The Angus Glen Community Centre and Library on Major Mackenzie Drive, with its pool, rinks and indoor tennis, is a few minutes east. Angus Glen Golf Club is the nearest course. Highway 404 is reached from 16th Avenue, Highway 407 is one exit south, and York Region Transit runs on 16th Avenue, Woodbine and Warden. The drive to downtown Toronto takes roughly forty minutes outside rush hour. School boundaries change, so buyers should confirm designated schools with the board.

Buying and selling in Cachet

Houses on the production-built streets come to market regularly and sell openly; the comparables are clear and the buyers are mostly families moving up within Markham. The estate houses of Cachet Country Club are a different matter. They come up a few at a time, are often held for twenty or thirty years, and a notable share change hands privately, through agents who know which owners are considering a move and which buyers have asked to hear first. Buyers for the estates come from across the GTA and from abroad, and many are looking specifically for the scale of lot that newer Markham subdivisions no longer offer.

Sellers of first-generation estates should recognise that some buyers will value the lot above the house and plan a rebuild, while others want a well-kept 1990s house they can update. Presentation should serve both: the grounds, the setbacks and the view at the back matter as much as the interiors. Sellers on the production-built streets should expect buyers to compare finishes closely with Angus Glen and the newer communities to the north. If you are watching this neighbourhood, join the private register and we will tell you when something is about to come up, listed or not.

Cachet is Markham’s estate neighbourhood of the 1990s, now mature enough for its trees to shade the street and its first houses to be rebuilt. It offers scale and privacy close to the 404, and in its north-west corner some of the largest lots in the city. For a buyer who wants an estate without a heritage street attached, it is the place to look.