Chris Latham moved from Brisbane, Australia to Toronto in 2019 for a work opportunity at an international construction consulting company. He figured he’d spend a few years in the city.

Then, in 2022, he met Lucia England. She had just relocated to Toronto from the U.K. for a job at the same employer.

“I was introduced to the work expat group, and that’s how me and Chris met,” Ms. England says. “We’ve been together ever since.”

In January, 2023, the couple moved into an 1,100-square-foot rental condo in Toronto’s West Bend neighbourhood with two-plus-one-bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms. “You’d open a cabinet door in the bathroom, and if you weren’t careful, you’d smash your head on it,” Mr. Latham says. The condo felt even more cramped after the couple got a golden retriever, Joey.

Their apartment was in a newer building exempt from Toronto’s rent control cap of 2.5 per cent a year. After their year-long lease was up, the couple’s landlord wanted to increase the rent by more than 10 per cent, Mr. Latham says. They managed to negotiate down to an 8-per-cent increase, for a monthly rent of $4,100, by signing another 12-month contract. The couple wasn’t keen on the prospect of negotiating another rent increase the following year.

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In May, 2024, they got engaged. Near the end of that year, Ms. England got an opportunity to relocate to Austin, Tex., with her current company. Mr. Latham could also relocate with the employer. The couple liked the idea of the city’s higher wages and lower home prices, which would make buying their first home more achievable. But after U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January, the mood shifted. “There’s a lot of volatility down there,” Ms. England says. With an American move off the table, the couple considered purchasing a home in Toronto instead.

By the end of January, 2025, they began their house hunt in earnest. They enlisted realtor Kira Danylova to guide their search. She works with Zown Realty – a brokerage that employs agents on salary and gives its clients back a portion of the sales commission that agents usually take to help with closing costs, such as legal fees and land transfer tax.

The couple set a few parameters for their search. Working with a budget of under $950,000, they wanted at least two bedrooms (with the potential to add more bedrooms for a future family), one bathroom and a backyard for Joey to run around in. They hoped to find a place near a station on Toronto’s Union-Pearson Express train line, which would make it easy for both of them to get to work – Mr. Latham near the airport and Ms. England to downtown Toronto (they’re employed in different divisions of the same company). They preferred a detached house and were open to buying an older home that needed renovating, since they enjoy doing DIY projects.

Here were their top three options:

Semi-modern detached in Weston

The first place that the couple viewed was a bright, two-storey detached house in Weston. The home was a 12-minute bus ride to Weston Station, on the Union-Pearson Express line. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a generous fenced-in yard for Joey to run around in. The home had been recently renovated, but they didn’t love the kitchen decor. Plus, the basement, while semi-finished, had low ceilings, dipping down to five feet in some areas, which meant lots of bending and crouching around. They figured they’d need to underpin the basement and redo the kitchen at some point. The listed price was $799,990, but it had been on the market for $825,000 a few months prior.

Updated three-bed semi in Weston

This semi was down the street from the first house they viewed. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a fully finished basement. It was also recently renovated with a newer kitchen and bathrooms. But there was an old attached garage that needed work. “It looked like it was going to fall down,” Ms. England recalls. While confident about cosmetic upgrades, the couple felt uneasy about tackling major structural issues, such as that garage. A fully renovated home also made Mr. Latham and Ms. England realize they’d miss the opportunity for a DIY to their own tastes. It was listed at $879,000, but Ms. Danylova warned the couple that it was underpriced to encourage a bidding war.

Fixer-upper in Dufferin-Grove

The couple loved that this home – a semi-detached with three bedrooms and one bathroom – was in their current neighbourhood. It was close to High Park, which they visited often for jaunts with Joey, and it had a spacious backyard for him to play in, too. But the house was very outdated and would need extensive renovations, both cosmetic and structural, prior to moving in. “There was a massive crack in the back room, and it was sloping downwards,”says Ms. England. The home was listed at $829,000, but it had been on the market for a few months already, first listed for $998,000 and later reduced to $899,000.

Their home: Semi-modern detached in Weston

Since it was the first home they viewed, the couple thought they ought to keep looking around. The couple actually put in a $900,000 offer on the updated three-bedroom semi in Weston but were outbid by $70,000. Losing out on that property made them reconsider the semi-modern detached they had viewed a few weeks earlier. “We couldn’t really find anything like it for our price range,” Mr. Latham says. “It had that family feel to it, which is what we’ve been looking for.”

The home had been on the market for over three months, so they went in under-asking with a bid of $785,000. The seller countered with another figure – $788,500, $11,490 below the list price – and the couple agreed. Because of Zown Realty’s model, they got a return of $15,000 from the sale. Ms. England and Mr. Latham moved into their new home at the end of April.

“There’s a satisfaction in being able to go home and know everything is yours,” Mr. Latham says. “If you want to change something, you can just go do it.”

The couple has been focusing on exterior work first so that they can enjoy the summer months outdoors. That included redoing the front porch as well as taking down an old trellis and fence on the side of their front property line and replacing them with trees.

Mr. Latham and Ms. England hope to tackle a kitchen renovation this winter, and in a few years’ time underpin the basement, where they hope to add a third bedroom. All in all, their purchase has helped the couple feel more rooted in Toronto, where they also plan to host their wedding next summer.

“When you rent, you feel a bit transient,” Ms. England says. “Now that we’ve got our house here, it’s exciting because we’ve started to see Toronto and Canada from a different perspective.”