Fifty years ago, a young couple paid $27,000 for a modest home in Don Mills. That approximately 1,500-square-foot house sold for $2.3 million, more than $1.15 million over the nearly $1.19 list price on Wednesday.

The home on Norden Cres. near Lawrence Ave. East and Don Mills Rd., drew 31 offers following 175 showings over nine days. Two weekend open houses attracted another 75 viewers, said listing agent Sohail Mansoor of Royal Lepage Signature Realty.

“We anticipated it would be busy. We could not have predicted that outcome,” he said on Friday.

“In terms of that neighbourhood, it’s the highest price an older three-bedroom home has sold for. You have new construction properties that have sold for much higher but those are brand new,” said Mansoor.

He had been working with the sellers for the last three months and gives them credit for their “tireless preparation” in selling a home they have occupied since Canada’s Centennial year in 1967.

It was lightly staged and the time spent preparing it for market generated some buzz and made the home appealing to a wider audience, said the agent.

Initially he thought the house might sell for between $1.5 million and $1.6 million. But the January market activity combined with the small number of listings on the market changed everyone’s expectations, said Mansoor.

His colleague had listed a property a few weeks earlier in the same area for $990,000. It sold for $1.95 million. The Norden Cres. homeowners agreed to similarly list below market value to try and generate a similar response.

They wanted to appeal to the broad range of buyers that are house hunting in the leafy neighbourhood close to the Shops of Don Mills — the buyers who might want to live in the house and the builders and consumers who could tear it down and rebuild in that location.

“A lot of the other homes are being sold mostly for land value at this point. They’re homes that need work and they’re not being marketed. They’re really just being listed and sold,” said Mansoor.

“Now you have builders competing with end-users,” he said.

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The home has been “lovingly maintained” and updated over the years. It was renovated in the late 1990s or early 2000s with an extension on the front and a bathroom on the main floor. The owners had carefully tended to the roof and mechanicals and were thrilled with the sale, according to their agent.

“It’s nice to see people who have been in their homes for a long time, who are now selling and having the opportunity to enjoy their retirement,” said Mansoor.

“If you think about people who bought in that neighbourhood five years ago and paid $900,000 and they’ve made $1 million in equity in five years, that is crazy. These guys have actually earned it. You don’t hear a lot of stories of people who have been in their homes for 50 years straight,” he said.

The key for this couple, said Mansoor, is that they’ll be moving into a larger older condo in the same neighbourhood where their son has been living.