What does downsizing actually cost in Ontario?

The tax bucket: land transfer tax, and only one of them

Ontario charges land transfer tax on the purchase side of your move, on a bracket scale: 0.5 percent on the first $55,000, 1 percent to $250,000, 1.5 percent to $400,000 and 2 percent above that. A $650,000 condo purchase costs about $9,475; at $700,000 it is roughly $10,475. Durham’s quiet advantage: the second, municipal land transfer tax exists only inside the City of Toronto, so a Durham-to-Durham downsize pays the provincial tax once and nothing more.

The transaction bucket: selling, legal, moving

Commission is the largest selling cost, and the honest statement of it is the legal one: rates in Ontario are not fixed and are fully negotiable between you and your brokerage, with 13 percent HST applying on top of whatever you agree. Legal fees for an Ontario sale or purchase typically land between $1,500 and $3,000 all-in per transaction including disbursements, and a downsize has two transactions. Moving a long-tenure home commonly runs $800 to $2,000 and up, more with full packing service, plus whatever the clear-out costs, covered in the checklist guide.

The monthly bucket: condo fees versus detached upkeep

Condo fees are the line downsizers fear and routinely misunderstand. GTA guidance runs roughly $0.55 to $1.00 per square foot monthly, with Wahi’s building-level analysis putting median one-bedroom fees between the low $500s and just over $1,000 across the GTA, newer suburban buildings at the cheaper end, which is where Durham stock mostly sits. The fair comparison is not fees versus zero: fees replace building insurance top-ups, exterior maintenance, roof and furnace surprises, snow and grass, and fund the reserve for major repairs. A detached home carries all of those too, just unpredictably. The switch trades lumpy risk for a flat number.

The bottom line: an honest worked example

Take a mortgage-free $1.1 million Durham detached sold to buy a $650,000 condo. Gross equity freed: $450,000. Subtract commission at whatever rate you negotiate plus HST, land transfer tax of $9,475, legal on both transactions and the move, and the realistic net lands around $385,000 to $400,000. Two lessons live in that math. Friction consumes roughly a tenth of the gross, so it deserves managing but not obsessing. And the sale price moves the outcome far more than any fee ever will, which is why the highest-leverage decisions in a downsize are the condition you launch in and when you launch. Context worth knowing: Statistics Canada’s wealth surveys show the principal residence is the single largest asset for most Canadians 65 and up, so this one transaction usually moves more retirement money than a decade of portfolio decisions. It is worth doing on real numbers.