The Downsizers
They took on Toronto’s property market at warp speed, then opted out
Regan Irvine met Jacklyne Collins in 2012, when he was 33 and an operations manager of a Leslieville restaurant. Collins was 21 at the time and a part-time server and bartender there. After they’d been dating for less than two years, they opened their own restaurant in Cabbagetown, the Irv Gastro Pub, and got married a month later.
At first, they thought they might follow the same arc as other newlyweds in their age bracket: home ownership, then kids. They bought a $355,000 two-bedroom condo near Queen and Bathurst to break into the market, then upsized into an 1,100-square-foot threebedroom townhouse near the Beaches. Living in the east end cut the commute to their restaurant in half.
A year later, they were planning to start a family, so they decided to look for a detached home with a backyard. They sold the townhouse and bought a threebedroom near Victoria Park station.
But their efforts to have a child weren’t successful, and work was taking over their lives: they were pulling 14-hour days and spending barely any time in their new house. And so, six months in, they embarked on a lifealtering change of plans. They sold the house and started renting a one-bedroom condo near Woodbine and Danforth for $1,950 a month—dramatically less than their mortgage payments. With the savings from their no-propertyno-kids lifestyle, they’re travelling to a new place every few months. So far: Panama, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.