Where do downsizers move in Durham Region?

Condos: the biggest equity release

The numbers explain why condos lead the list. TRREB’s June 2026 figures put Durham’s average detached home near $964,000 while condo apartments traded in the mid $400,000s in Oshawa and just over $500,000 in Whitby, a spread of roughly half a million dollars before costs. Downtown Whitby’s Station No. 3 by Brookfield is the profile of the newer boutique option: six storeys, walkable to the GO and the downtown, suites priced from the $500,000s. Oshawa’s newer buildings run cheaper still. The lifestyle trade is real, condo fees and shared walls for zero shovelling and lock-and-leave travel, and the fee math is covered honestly in the cost guide.

Bungalows: the scarce favourite

The single-storey home is the downsizer’s sentimental favourite and the market’s scarcest product. Most Durham bungalows were built decades ago in the mature pockets of Oshawa, south Whitby and original Ajax, and almost nobody builds new ones, so downsizers compete with young families and renovators for the same houses. Expect a higher price per square foot than two-storey homes and less choice, and expect the good ones to move fast. The consolation: a dated bungalow you renovate to your needs often beats waiting for the perfect one, which is where a team that manages renovations earns its keep on the buy side too.

Adult-lifestyle and land-lease communities

Port Perry’s Canterbury Common is the established freehold model: 241 detached bungalows near Lake Scugog with a residents’ community centre, joined by Geranium’s newer Courts of Canterbury phase, now sold out and available on resale. Wilmot Creek in Newcastle is the other model entirely: a lakefront 55+ land-lease community of roughly a thousand homes with a nine-hole golf course and recreation centre, where you own the home and lease the land for a monthly fee, reported by local realtors at roughly $1,300 plus taxes, confirm current figures with the operator. Land lease frees more equity up front because the purchase price excludes the land; the trade is a permanent monthly fee and slower appreciation. Neither model is better in the abstract. One optimizes community and cash freed, the other optimizes ownership. Knowing which you are optimizing is the actual decision.

Choosing with the whole picture

The destination decision is really three decisions braided together: the ownership model, the monthly cost structure and the distance from the people you see weekly. Our advice runs the same way every time: shortlist two or three options across different models, price the true monthly cost of each, check the market data for each community, and only then decide what your current home needs to sell for to make the favourite work. That last number is where the valuation comes in.