My husband and I couldn’t afford a Toronto home, so we decided to buy a house with my aunt. It wasn’t as easy as we thought

Real estate is emotional. Why? Because a home is more than walls and a roof, it’s a canvas and container for our lives, our families, our communities. As part of an ongoing series, we’ve asked local writers to share their stories on real estate and housing. Want to write for the Star’s Home Truths series? Email [email protected].
“You must be a millionaire,” the guy behind the sandwich counter says to me when I tell him we just moved to the neighbourhood. His family has been running this Seaton Village restaurant for decades.
“I only bought HALF a house,” I respond. It’s the line I use regularly when talking to anyone about purchasing in Toronto so they don’t feel the need to stone me for my privilege.
“Ok, so you’re half a millionaire,” he smirks.
As a Gen-X—Millennial household, my husband, Ryan, and I weren’t sure we would ever get into the Toronto housing market, and certainly not into a beautiful and centrally located neighbourhood like Seaton Village. Bordered by the Annex, Christie Pitts and Koreatown, the tree-lined streets are largely filled with semi-detached, brick century houses while Dupont Street to the north still holds traces of its industrial past with a few mechanics, plumbing supply stores, and equipment rental yards, alongside new condo towers, small shops and houses.
Our new life as half-homeowners began in March 2023 when we put in an offer on a duplex alongside my then-78-year-old aunt, Margaret — though it had been a long time in the making.
Ryan and I had been discussing wanting a house for years, but weren’t prepared to move so far out of the core for affordability that we would lose access to all the things we love about city living. We’d been renting near the University of Toronto for more than a decade, and being able to walk to work or to get groceries in Kensington Market, host playdates in Grange Park, and pass the time on gloomy Toronto winter days at the Art Gallery of Ontario of the Royal Ontario Museum was important to us. While we were having these discussions, Margaret was thinking of selling her house of 40 years to prepare for future accessibility needs.
Margaret has been a parental stand-in for me many times in my life. I lived with her in junior high and again through university. She doesn’t have kids of her own, and because of our close relationship I always planned to support her more as she got older. However, it wasn’t until my father was diagnosed with cancer in early 2021 and I had to fly across the country repeatedly to care for him that I realized how important proximity to loved ones was to me — the idea of crossing even the Don Valley if my aunt needed me was too much.
We began talking about the idea of buying a house together.
Once the worst of the pandemic abated in mid-2022, Margaret and I started going to open houses out of curiosity. Sometimes my then-seven-year-old daughter would join us and we’d wander through strangers’ houses imagining how we would use the space if it were ours.
“This will be my bedroom,” my daughter would say with determination. “And this will be my dance room.”
In one house in Bloordale Village she lay down on the white shag rug in a staged child’s bedroom, melting into the feeling of the place as her own.
Once we started talking about things more seriously, neighbourhood was the biggest and most emotional hurdle. We had set a budget of $1.6 million, which dictated where we could look. Plus, we had a lot of opinions. I felt Riverdale had lost its distinctive character, but my aunt had called it home for four decades. Bloor West and Parkdale were off the table for her — too much traffic and too far from her curling club. I knew unreliable transit from the Upper Beach would make me a miserable person. Ryan and I had long lived on a major street so we were happy to consider noise and traffic in exchange for a lower price, but it was a hard no for her. We had to consider how a new neighbourhood would fit into the lives we already had: what could we let go of? What would we gain?
Next came the house itself. It was important to us all that we maintain separate units. We considered the accessibility of prospective properties, especially the number of steps to the front door and the options for a main floor bedroom and bathroom. For the second unit, we needed two bedrooms, and space for my husband and I to work from home at our tech jobs without constantly hearing each other’s video calls.
By January 2023, as interest rates rose and the market slowed, we started considering creative options. An East York bungalow with a large lot where we could build a laneway house briefly seemed like a possibility, but bungalow owners were still looking for bidding wars, and even the most decrepit houses were selling for over a million dollars. When factoring in the cost of building an accessible laneway house while needing to maintain an interim apartment for Margaret, the numbers didn’t make sense.
We next considered a four-bedroom estate-sale house we thought we could convert. It had been on the market for nearly a year and the price had dropped from $2.5 million to $1.3 million. The backsplash tiles on the kitchen featured 1970s brown daisies on yellowing white tiles, and the basement was unfinished and had asbestos-wrapped pipes, but the original wood trim, elegantly large living room, and wide wooden staircase made my heart skip. Then a contractor quoted us $500,000 in work and we knew we weren’t up for the stress.
Finally, on a Sunday in March, we toured a duplex in the north end of Seaton Village. It was out of our budget, but had been sitting on the market for a month so I let myself get hopeful. The main floor unit for my aunt was move-in ready. The unit that would be ours had a sagging bathroom ceiling, industrial carpets throughout, and a persistent scent of cat pee. We put in an offer.
The logistics were complicated. Though we were comfortable with our budget, our mortgage approval relied on an unusually high down payment (about 65 per cent) made up of Ryan’s and my savings and the proceeds of Margaret’s own house sale. We had to put in an offer before Margaret could sell her house, but she needed to sell before we closed. We all had to be listed on the mortgage, even though only my husband and I would be making the payments. Separately, we all agreed on the ownership structure (she owns 50 per cent, Ryan and I own the other 50 per cent jointly), how we would split the monthly bills, and which renovations would be shared responsibilities. Importantly, we had to have discussions about how long we were committed for (at least six years), and what would happen to the house if something should happen to Margaret.
We decided as much as we could up front, but it took a leap of faith to move ahead. Once our offer was accepted, Margaret began to ready her own house for sale. As luck would have it, our agent knew a young couple looking and Margaret was able to sell quickly.
We took possession in mid-June 2023 and spent every free moment of the interim two months working on and arranging trades people for our long-neglected unit. Every surface had to be scrubbed and painted. All the floors had to be replaced and the bathroom needed gutting. Outside, the backyard weeds were taller than our very tall seven-year-old and digging them up ourselves, by hand, was the only option in our budget. We all moved in by the fall. 
Though living with older relatives is common — and even expected — in many cultures, it hasn’t yet become a norm in Anglo-Canadian households. When I describe our living situation to people they are often surprised, though they seem to like the idea.
We’re liking it too. Margaret has home ownership experience we can draw on when needed. Ryan and I are tackling the much-needed yard work, and honing our home improvement skills. My aunt can text me when she needs help hanging a picture or with tech support, and I can pop down when I need to borrow an egg or other such things. She was there for the first day of school, and my daughter wanders into her unit to play the hundred-year-old piano that was a fixture of both mine and Margaret’s childhoods. We co-host holiday dinners and other events with our broader family — sometimes deciding on who takes the lead depending on whose unit is cleaner.
Knowing the housing problem, we’re also thinking about what this house means for our next generation. Our daughter is already making plans to move to the basement apartment when she goes to university in 10 years. I’m imagining 30 years in the future where we will need the accessibility of the main floor, and am comforted that our daughter could take over the upper apartment for her own long-term stability if she wants to. Perhaps she’ll have kids of her own, and they too can wander down to play the old piano.
Lizz Bryce moved to Toronto from a small town 20 years ago and truly loves this messy city. She moonlights as a writer when not doing her day job or tackling yet another home improvement project with her husband.