In today's new home market, few developments have model homes built. Avalon, a new community to be built by the Iona Corp. in Buttonville, has the next best thing.

At the Avalon sales office, you can walk through extensive displays created to show what your new home will look like. You can actually see several standard and upgrade kitchen cupboard selections set up as they would be in a kitchen. You don't have to make a choice by looking at a few cupboard doors.

The same goes for bathrooms. Have you wondered what a step-up tub can look like with all-black ceramic tile surrounding it? You can see for yourself at the display centre - the answer is dramatic.

The sales office also includes living, dining and family rooms along with a kitchen, several bathrooms and a sauna.

Would you like to see the furnace your new home will have? Light fixtures? Carpeting? Ceramic tiles? You'll find them in this sales office. With some clever arranging, Iona has also set up many of the 16 exterior color packages to choose from.

Once you have picked the lot with the exterior colors assigned to it, you can go on to the designs - all 21 of them. With different elevations, this brings the total choice to more than 40.

Lots vary from the smaller 40 by 110 ft. to the standard 55 by 110 ft. As well, many of the 250 homes will be built on oversized or walk-outs lots for a premium. Some lots back onto a greenbelt right in the community.

If you are looking for elbow room in your new home, you'll find it. They offer a broad range from 1,745 sq. ft. to 3,489 sq. ft. of living area. Prices start at $211,900 and go to more than $400,000.

Buttonville, a part of Unionville, is near both Scarborough and Markham and has its own small airport. Easy access to Highways 7, 401 and 404 is a strong selling point for commuters to Toronto and the GO train is only a few minutes away.

If golf is your game, you will have a choice of courses. Conservation areas and parks are dotted all around the community. Space has been set aside for parks, schools and a daycare centre within Avalon itself.

Major shopping centres in the area include the nearby Markville Shopping Centre. A giant Knob Hill Farms grocery terminal is just down the street.
Taking the designs a step beyond the usual are special features that include saunas, cathedral ceilings, sunken rooms and even a courtyard reached through double glass doors.

All basements include a cold room. Many kitchens have built-in pantries. Rough-ins are provided for future air conditioning, a three-piece bathroom in basement, a central vacuum and a stereo intercom.

Extra electrical needs can be met with the 200-amp wiring, which comes as standard.

Driveways are fully paved and the community will have extensive landscaping done in time for the May, June and July, 1987, closing dates.

Homes built on 50- and 55-ft. lots come with a few extras included in the price. Baseboards are extra high and the trim includes corner blocks. Cornice mouldings are found in dining and living rooms with a rosette in the dining room, and kitchens include a luminous ceiling.

All homes at Avalon will have 9-ft. ceilings on the main floor and 8-ft. ceilings on the second floor. There are pedestal sinks and oval mirrors in the powder room, and all other bathrooms will have medicine cabinets and 42-inch vanity mirrors.

Typifying the planning in these home designs is the 2,755-sq.-ft. Pommard, priced at $266,900 on a 45-ft. lot. The second-floor library boasts French doors and sidelight windows. This elegance is repeated below in the dining room.

Also on the second floor are three family bedrooms (one with a cathedral ceiling in one elevation), the main bathroom and the master suite. This suite includes a pentagonal walk-in closet, an en suite bathroom with oversize separate shower, step-up oval tub and two vanities, and a large sleeping area is a step down from the suite's hallway.

In one elevation, the sleeping area also has a cathedral ceiling; in the other, it has a bay window.

Other master suite designs have such luxuries as a sauna, a double-sided fireplace facing both the bedroom and a sitting area, twin walk-in closets or sunken solariums off the slumber zone.

Other designs have equally attractive and distinctive features, depending on the floor plan chosen.

The Avalon sales office is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m weekdays (6 p.m. Friday) and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends. To get there, take Highway 404 north to Highway 7 and exit east. Follow Highway 7 to Woodbine Ave. and go north again for about a mile. The sales office is on the right marked by tall purple and aquamarine flags outside the mirrored building. Prices quoted were accurate at the time the article was written. However, readers should be aware prices are subject to change without notice.