Conversations about downsizing usually focus on transaction costs. Agent fees, stamp duty and moving expenses are easy to quantify, so they dominate the decision. The cost of staying rarely gets the same attention.
That cost is real, even though it arrives in small amounts. Rates and insurance on a larger property. Maintenance on rooms nobody uses. Gardening on a block that has outgrown its owners. Heating and cooling space that sits empty most of the week. Then there are the weekends spent looking after a house instead of doing something else.
Set against all that, a one-off cost to move looks different. The question is not simply what it costs to sell and buy, but what another ten years of holding the current property will cost by comparison.
Running both numbers side by side is a straightforward exercise, and it often changes the answer. Anyone who has been putting the decision off for a few years may find the comparison more persuasive than expected.
Transcript
Here's a cost nobody talks about. The cost of staying. The maintenance, the gardening, the unused rooms, the weekends spent looking after a house that's become too much. Could life be simpler? Send me a message.
