Renovate or move?

It’s an age-old question, one that a lot of people in Toronto ask themselves, and a tough one to answer no matter how you look at it.

Renovate or move?  In a perfect world, it would be neither.  The current abode would be great, the inhabitants would be happy, and the “bother” of moving or renovating would not be necessary.

I don’t know anybody that actually likes moving, although I suppose if you were moving into a bigger, better home in a premium area, there would be no qualms.

Unless, of course, if you were me.

Throughout childhood, my parents had this weekend ritual whereby they went and looked at other people’s houses.  I didn’t quite understand it at the time, nor why they always went with this guy named “Richard.”  This went on for what seemed like my entire childhood, but since things always seem longer, bigger, or more substantial when you’re younger, perhaps it was only a short period of time.

In any event, I didn’t really understand what they were doing, but my sister informed me that they were looking to buy a home.  “Cool,” I thought, not really grasping the idea of moving.  They never did buy anything anyways.  Life went on, and they’d go see more homes with Richard thereafter, and it went on, and on.

One night in the spring of 1992, my father was out late, and when I asked where he was, my mother said, “He’s working on a house.”

Of course, I assumed this meant he was putting on a new roof or something, but it wasn’t until my sister explained, “He’s going to buy it for us, and we’re going to move,” that my heart started racing.

Move from 128 Parkhurst Boulevard?  My home of 12 years?  Never.

I don’t know if children really get anxiety, but I do believe I had it that night.  I wasn’t interested in playing Super Mario II, I didn’t want to watch Family Matters on TV, nor did I have the appetite or wherewithal to take the white icing out from in between a dozen Oreo cookies to make one, massive, disgusting cookie-sandwich.

The phone rang later that night – the home phone, back when that was a thing; back when you would answer, “Hello?” and not actually know who it was.  My Dad said, “Hey buddy,” and I asked him, “What happened?  How did it go?”

I’ll never forget the words, the tone, and the pause before he answered: “We bought it.”

I dropped the phone.  My pink phone; the one my sister handed down to me when she got her first cordless.  I dropped it right on the floor, right out of my hand, and I started to cry immediately.

My sister picked up the phone and was elated.  She was in Grade 8, ready to start high school in the fall, and the idea of moving up to Bessborough Drive, into a bigger house, was exciting.

I was curled up in the fetal position in the corner of the room, crying, one step from sucking my thumb.

I was 11-years-old, and this house was all that I ever knew.

My bedroom was tiny, the window stared out at the house next door, but it was my bedroom.  It was my domain.

Actually, I think I have a photo of that somewhere, believe it or not.

Here we go:

Yup, that’s my bedroom in 1992.

That’s a “ghetto blaster” on the bed.  And I can see my “Casio” keyboard sticking out from behind what I always thought was a massive wooden headboard, but is actually like doll furniture considering that’s a single bed.  That’s what I meant about how everything seems larger in your mind.

Anyways, that’s about 80% of my bedroom.  There was a window on the other side, a shelf above the bed, and a small closet.  It was “home.”

I didn’t want to know which house my Dad had purchased, where it was, or what it looked like.  I just knew that I didn’t want to move.

It was irrational, but so too are children.

I wrote in my “Diary” that week at school that I wanted to set my new house on fire, and Mrs. Withers wrote back in her cursive-writing comments, “Oh, that would be too bad.  Your family has purchased a very nice home.  I think you’ll enjoy it.”

A few weeks later, I was walking down Parkhurst Boulevard and from afar, I could see a sign on the lawn.

I got closer, and there it was: “FOR SALE.”

I was so angry.  I drop-kicked it, but the sign was on a swivel, and it merely swang back a little as I fell to the ground.

I took my Easton baseball bat out of my backpack; all 30-inches, 24-ounces, and swung it at the sign.  It made a huge dent, but one that only I would notice.

That weekend, we went to the “new house” at 96 Bessborough Drive, and I wasn’t impressed.

It was a huge home, and my Dad was going to renovate and add-on, but I didn’t care.  I didn’t even know where we were (ironic, since it was like 8 blocks away), the street was way too busy (even though it wasn’t), I didn’t like the look of the neighbours (even though I almost never played with the kids on Parkhurst), and the owners had a dog.  And I didn’t like dogs.

I told my Mom and Dad, “I’m not moving.”  But my Dad simply said, “Will you come visit us though?”

My sister was already making party plans for that fall, and she and her friends would ride their bikes by the new house at lunch-recess, but had never really ventured to the other side of Millwood Road.  In fact, it now dawned on me that if we moved to this house, I wouldn’t be able to walk home after school with my friends!  Fraser and Jeff both lived north of the school, as did I.  We walked home together every day after school, for years!  Chris too!  Who was I supposed to walk home with now?  Who lived down that way?  What the hell was down there anyways?

Leaside is tiny, but at 11-years-old, the idea of going in the other direction, eight blocks “thatta-way” scared the crap out of me.

And living in somebody else’s house?  That was so unappealing.

From birth, I only knew one home.  I knew every square inch of it; even under the back patio, where I would venture to find tennis balls that had made their way under the bottom step, or to find quarters that had slipped through the boards.  I knew the roof of my garage, where I almost blew off my fingers with M-80’s the year before.  I knew behind the clubhouse (we had a clubhouse, but the raccoons sort of lived there) where I was obsessed with digging.  That was my hobby, seriously.  Digging a large hole, for no reason.  Just digging.  And I had really worked on it!  It was eight feet, and I needed a ladder to get in and out!

The concept of moving was difficult to grasp, and the concept of selling our house was something else altogether.

My mother made us pack up our toys, clean our play areas, and even get rid of a lot of our clothes!

The kicker came one day when I came home and found my hole, my precious hole, had been filled in with dirt.

My mother had to do that herself, by the way.  Today, I feel awful thinking about my mother outside with a shovel for two hours, filling in a hole that, for some reason, her son dug.  But she told me, “We can’t have buyers falling into some random hole behind the garage, which, for some reason, you filled with spikes last week!”

True story.

I tried my best to hold up the sale.

I had this rubber-vomit that dated back to my “gag” days, when card tricks, flash paper, and those packs of gum with the snap-like mouse-trap thing were all the rage, and I would always make sure to come home at lunch and put the fake vomit in the front hallway so it was the first thing that buyers saw when they came in.

I could always tell when somebody had been in my room too.

My light switch was covered with my “baseball player” wallpaper; a nice touch by my mother.  And one day, the switch, and the player, were upside-down.

My Mom said, “It must have been the Cinderella’s,” which I suppose was the early-90’s term for Realtors.  I actually haven’t heard that term since.

I remember when “offers” came in on the house, and I remember my Dad arguing with Richard all the time.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have my Dad as a client, wow.

The house was listed at $399,000, and then $389,000, and then $379,000.  Once it was listed at $369,000, it eventually sold for $362,000.

The house we purchased was a whole other story!  $999,000, then $899,000, then $799,000, then $699,000, then $599,000, and my father bought it for $565,000.  Different market, right?

Once the house was sold, it was just a matter of waiting for D-Day.  That was what I called moving day, anyways.

The summer was our last in that house, and starting Grade 7, with an influx of kids from Bennington & Rolph now invading our quaint Bessborough, I was distracted from the September 30th move date.

Seriously.  Twenty-seven-years later, and I remember the date.

I remember my mother wanting me to “stay out of her hair,” as the saying went back then, and giving me about ten bucks in quarters to go up to Pizza Pizza and play Mortal Kombat for a couple of hours.  This was when arcade games were everywhere.

We had the world’s worst movers, and they literally put our crap anywhere in the house.  I’m talking mattresses for the bedrooms, in the basement or kitchen.  It was absurd.

It seemed to take us three months to fully unpack, and some things just stayed right in their place for more than a decade until the house was eventually sold.

Two weeks after we moved in, we went back to the old house for a “goodbye,” as the three of us kids had been pestering my mother to go back.  After we walked in, separated, and went to our own special places, my Mom found me on the floor of my room, hugging the carpet.   “Oh Lord, I knew this was a mistake,” she said, and then shuffled us back into the station wagon to pull out of the driveway for the very last time.

Over the next couple of months, it became very apparent that moving was not such a bad thing.  I had a larger bedroom, the house was bigger, the yard was bigger, and there was more space for us kids to get away from one another, and have our own time and place to spend with our friends.

It wasn’t long before I would look back and ask, “Why didn’t I want to move?”

But it’s not easy to pull the trigger, whether you’re the one buying, or you’re just a naive kid who doesn’t know any better.

You know what?

I was going to talk about this “Move vs. Renovate” article I saw on a mortgage broker news site this week, and provide a brief, one might say, “folksy” intro.

But then I felt like writing.  And sharing.  And it bodes well with my laid-back Friday theme, so it became a blog unto itself.

Here’s the article, albeit somewhat lackluster after my brief childhood fable, but enjoy!

“Most Canadians Prefer Renovations To Moving If Given A Windfall – Survey”
Mortgagebrokernews.ca

A recent survey found that most Canadians are satisfied with their current neighbourhood and would rather renovate their current home than move.

According to a poll conducted by online rate finder RateSupermarket.ca, if presented with a $50,000 windfall, 50% of Canadians prefer to stay put and renovate their existing home while 30% would choose to move.

“Given the current real estate market and tightening mortgage rules, renovating your existing home makes a lot of financial sense for many Canadians,” said Janine White, vice-president of marketplace and strategy at RateSupermarket.ca. “Our survey shows that Canadians understand and appreciate the value of their real estate investment.”

The survey also found that 40% of respondents felt that renovating will increase the value of home, and 32% reported that moving is ‘too much hassle.’ More than a quarter of respondents (28%) stated that they would stay put because they don’t think they can find a house right now within their budget.

Almost eight in 10 (78%) of respondents said that they like their current home or neighbourhood, with almost six in 10 reporting this as their top reason for staying in their home. Additionally, the RateSupermarket.ca survey indicated that rural and suburban Canadians would prefer to stay in their homes, with 54% of suburban and 59% of rural dwellers saying they’d renovate, against 44% of urbanites.

The survey also revealed a split between younger and older respondents. In fact, 43% of Canadians aged between 18 and 34 say they’d move, while only 15% of Canadians over 65 would leave their current house. Less than 20% of Canadians aged 55 and over say they’d buy a new home while 43% of millennials felt this way.

“The desire to stay put by older Canadians may stem from them being more established in their current homes,” said White. “Those in their 20s or 30s are looking to acquire some equity and build their financial portfolio, which translates to their greater willingness to move. Additionally, the added transfer tax, moving costs and general hassle of moving houses might deter some Canadians.”