Preston, Cambridge real estate — prices, trends & homes for sale

The housing stock

Preston sits at the confluence of the Speed and Grand rivers, and King Street is its spine — a long low-rise commercial corridor of 19th- and early-20th-century brick blocks, later plazas, and infill running from the Speed River crossing east toward the Hespeler Road junction. The oldest residential streets cluster near the core and around Riverside Park, one of Cambridge's largest parks, on the Speed: brick Victorians and Edwardians, one-and-a-half-storey workers' housing, and the occasional grander house from Preston's era as a mill town and mineral-springs resort stop. The former Preston Springs hotel site above King Street is a local landmark from that period. Most of Preston's area, though, is postwar: 1950s-to-1970s bungalows and split-levels on rectangular lots along streets north and south of King, with 1980s-and-later subdivisions filling toward Fountain Street and the city's edges. Newer townhouse and low-rise infill has been landing along and near the King Street corridor, partly in anticipation of the planned ION Stage 2 light rail, which routes through Preston on its way from Fairway Station to downtown Galt. Streets closest to either river can fall under Grand River Conservation Authority regulation, which is worth checking on low-lying properties near Riverside Park and the confluence.