What Helping Markham Families Downsize Has Taught Us

The short answer

Downsizing looks like a real estate transaction from the outside. Two closings, a sale and a purchase. In practice it is a family decision that happens to involve property. The transaction is the last and easiest part of it.

That is the single clearest thing the moves our team has published have in common. Below are the patterns we keep seeing, what they mean for anyone thinking about the same move and what they change about how we handle one. The full picture of costs, areas and sequencing sits in our Markham downsizing guide.

Five moves and what each one was actually about

The team publishes its client stories with the list and sale prices recorded for each. Read them in full on our client stories page. Read as a group rather than one at a time, what stands out is that not one of them was really about a house.

• Tapan and Sumita were moving out of a Thornhill home into something that suited the next stage of their lives.
• Glyn and her son Daniel moved south of Thornhill to be closer to family.
• Cynthia and her daughter Valerie sold after five decades in the same Thornhill home, moving closer to grandchildren and a great-grandson.
• Sherry and Ian began planning a downsize from a 2,800 square foot home as two teenage sons headed to college and university.
• Linda and her son John sold a long held Richmond Hill home so Linda could move into a retirement residence.

Family, timing, health, a stage of life ending. The property was the means. The destination was the point.

Pattern one: an adult child is usually part of the decision

In three of those five, an adult son or daughter is named alongside the homeowner. That is not incidental. It changes how a move should be handled.

It means the decision is shared. It is also usually shared unevenly. One adult child lives nearby and is at every viewing. Another lives in another province and hears about it by phone. One thinks it is overdue and one thinks it is too soon. When those views have not been aired, the sale stalls in a way that looks like indecision over price when price was never the real issue.

What we do about it is simple. We ask early who else is part of this. Then we include them. A conversation with everyone in the room in month one prevents the version where a firm plan unravels in month four.

Pattern two: the destination came first

In every one of those moves the destination drove the sale. Closer to a daughter. Closer to grandchildren. Into a retirement residence. Into something that fits the next stage.

Nobody in that group listed a house and then worked out where they were going. That order matters more than any other decision in a downsizing move, because the destination sets the budget, the closing dates, the urgency and often the neighbourhood.

When someone comes to us with a house to sell and no destination, our first suggestion is to pause on the listing and spend a few weeks on the destination instead. It is a strange thing for an agent to say. It is also the difference between moving on your own terms and moving to a deadline somebody else set. Our guide to Markham neighbourhoods downsizers consider is usually where that conversation starts.

Pattern three: the house is the easy part

Preparing and selling a home is a process we run constantly. It is well understood. It has a rhythm and for most homes the outcome falls in a predictable range when the price reflects the evidence.

Sorting five decades of contents does not work like that. Neither does telling a family member you are ready to leave the house they grew up in. Those stages have no standard duration, they cannot be delegated entirely and they are what actually sets the length of a downsizing move.

So we build the timeline around them rather than around the listing date. That usually means a longer closing than a typical sale, starting the contents months before the photos and being realistic in writing about what each stage needs.

Pattern four: the money questions are narrower than people fear

Downsizers arrive with big worries about tax and end up with a small number of specific questions. Three come up almost every time.

Will I be taxed on the gain? If the home was your principal residence for every year you owned it, the Canada Revenue Agency’s principal residence exemption can eliminate the capital gain. The sale still has to be reported on your return even when the full gain is exempt and the calculation changes if a second property was owned at any point. Confirm your own position with an accountant.

What do condo fees actually cover? Common expenses fund the operation of the building and contributions to its reserve fund. What is included varies between corporations, so the question is always what this building’s fee covers rather than whether the figure is high.

What happens to my deferred property tax? If you have been deferring under Markham’s seniors programme, the deferred amount comes due when the property is transferred. It comes out of the proceeds, so it belongs in the plan from the beginning.

The full breakdown is in our post on what it costs to downsize in Markham. None of this is tax or legal advice. It is the shape of the questions, so you know what to ask your own professionals.

What all of this changes about how we work

Kirby Chan is a Broker and co-founder of the team and the approach he has built it on is that the client’s decision matters more than the transaction. In a downsizing move that is the whole job.

In practice it means we ask about the destination before the listing price. We include the adult children. We say when we think this is not the right year, because sometimes it is not. And we give the contents the months they need rather than the weeks that happen to be left.

If you are somewhere in the middle of this decision, the useful next steps are an honest read on what your home is worth, which is what a free home valuation is for and a conversation with no obligation attached. We speak ten languages across the team, which matters more in this kind of move than in most, because the whole family needs to follow the conversation.