We only glimpse James Bond’s home twice in more than 20 movies. As briefly revealed in Dr. No and Live And Let Die, they’re predictably masculine places, full of wood and antiques and nautical prints on the walls. They’re tidy — one suspects an MI6-vetted maid service is employed — and almost anonymous, except for one comic episode.

In Live And Let Die, the 1973 film that introduced Roger Moore’s lighthearted Bond, the secret agent’s boss unexpectedly arrives at his door early one morning, and after hiding the pretty Italian colleague Bond has spent the night with, he takes M into his kitchen. It’s a groovy ’70s addition to Bond’s pad, all dark wood and tile, where pride of place is given to an elaborate coffee maker and grinder. (Like his creator Ian Fleming, Bond famously hates tea.) There’s a showy ritual of preparing a cup, after which M raises an eyebrow and blusters “Is that all it does?”

Clearly, the seeds of the metrosexual Bond were planted years before Pierce Brosnan took over the role.

My hunt for a suitably Bondlike pad takes me through a series of showrooms and presentation suites that have sprung up in the wake of Toronto’s condo boom. I’m looking for a combination of luxury and discretion — it’s hard to imagine Bond settling for some rented flat, and a tidy little townhouse in some neighbourhood thick with strollers and minivans is completely out of the question. I end up in Forest Hill, a venerable and wealthy enclave, where two pricey prospects seem to fit the bill.

Both the Avenue and the Wentworth offer the sorts of amenities Bond would demand — valet parking and 24-hour concierge, pools and steam rooms to help mend his wounds and private elevator access. They’re both a stone’s throw from the South Korean consulate, but hold the downtown at polite arm’s length.

“It’s Forest Hill,” says Phil LaBoeuf, a salesman for the Wentworth. “Rock stars, politicians, professional athletes — these sort of people choose to live here.”

The interiors for both buildings are by ubiquitous Brian Gluckstein, but the Wentworth comes closest to the Bond standard. Since any place Bond would live is nothing more than a pied-à-terre, he could get by with the one bedroom with the den for just $1.2 million, which includes two parking spaces — one for the Aston Martin and one for the Bentley. Add condo fees of between $1000 to $2000 a month, and property taxes starting at $12,000 a year, and you’d better hope Bond can expense everything from the dinner jackets to the Dom Perignon.

Ultimately, though, the character of Bond lives more fully in hotels than any mere mailing address, so I head downtown to the presentation suite for the Four Seasons Residences, across from the massive hole in the ground where the condo/hotel complex will rise. It’s another Gluckstein design — his name has a Blofeld-like persistency in the condo world — but it’s far more expansive and epic, with big graphic touches and the slick finishes that bring to mind Ken Adams’ sets for films like Dr. No, Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me.

Adams’ theatrical modernity sets the tone for most of the condo presentation centres I visit, which feature glossy white-on-white rooms, and buildings set on improbable cantilevers next to starkly planted stands of trees on perfectly manicured little hillocks. “Ken Adams has a lot to answer for, doesn’t he?” notes Michael G. Wilson, stepson of Cubby Broccoli, and producer with his sister Barbara of the current Bond franchises.

As much as James Bond might have persisted through the decades as a hero, it’s the Bond villain aesthetic, with its stark, expensive-looking surfaces and conspicuously-placed hunks of art, that seems to have triumphed in the world of interior design.