Sell the Condo, Buy a House

Tell me if this sounds familiar: get out of school, get your first ‘real’ job, work for a couple years, save your money, buy a small condo. Meet someone, someone moves in. Condo starts to feel smaller. Buy a car. Realize that cars are freakin’ expensive! Have a kid, condo feels even smaller. Realize kids are freakin’ expensive! Realize that you’ve outgrown your condo, so you sell the condo, buy a house in a hip neighbourhood (Leslieville, Little Italy, Bloor West, Riverdale, Beaches etc) and live happily ever after.

As clichéd as it sounds, this is a pretty common pattern for many young professionals, artists, entrepreneurs, health workers, and ‘professional students’ in this city. As much as we all love condo living (especially downtown), the reality for most is when the family unit of 1 turns into 2 or even 3, suddenly 642 square feet just ain’t gonna cut it! It’s time to move.

Selling your first property can be a daunting and stressful task (more on this in a future post). Buying a house when you are used to condo living is a little like learning to drive standard when you’ve only ever driven automatic – it’s hard to know where to begin and feels a little strange at first.

Selling your first condo and buying your first house for most people is a major step, and I love being able to walk my clients through the process and help them meet their goals along the way. In fact, helping people who are making these sorts of BIG life moves is probably the most rewarding part of my job and what gets me out of bed each morning. I love meeting new people and helping them reach their goals!

If 2011 is looking like the year your condo finally feels too small and you are thinking about making an upgrade to a house in the city or possibly just a larger condo, let’s talk.