Whether you’re a Boomer looking for a smart opportunity to downsize or a millennial trying to find stable affordable housing, a Carpe Diem intergenerational condo community can be the perfect solution.
Diverse, supportive, and full of life, these multi-family living arrangements help foster social connections, encourage healthy lifestyle choices, and offer flexible employment opportunities—all without breaking the bank.
Curious to find out more? Let’s take a look at how Carpe Diem’s intergenerational housing works.
Benefits for Boomers
A stable financial future
When can I retire? Will my savings last? Should I downsize? If you’re starting to think about retirement, you may be questioning your financial future. The nature of retirement is changing, and knowing when—or even whether—to stop working can be challenging. Boomers are waiting longer than ever to leave work, with many choosing “semi-retirement” over the traditional model.
This makes Boomerdom an optimal time to transition from a full-size family home to a smaller condo. By joining a vibrant retirement community of like-minded individuals, you can drop the burden of mortgage payments, declutter your life, and build lasting relationships. You may be leaving behind a house filled with memories, but you’re also offering yourself a chance to make new ones.
A great place to age
Many Boomers may be weary of exploring their retirement housing options because of the realities their parents faced: programmed living, obligatory service packages, and nursing home care. Others may feel uncertainty about what their health and mobility will look like in the coming years. By offering optional, flexible services that enhance and sustain an active, healthy lifestyle, thoughtfully designed collective housing settings can ease these fears and facilitate “aging in place.”
Flexible wealth management
Considering a move into your ideal retirement housing? Title ownership may be affordable after cashing out of a longtime family home, and downsized retirement housing is often even more budget friendly. In many cases, housing costs will include only property taxes, condo fees, and phone and metered utility accounts—typically totalling less than $2,000 per month.
In the choice between investing in real estate or investing in the broader equity market, selling your home and spreading the wealth across a variety of investments provides improved diversification and stability. By downsizing to a condo, you can re-invest in housing while also adding to your retirement savings portfolio. Plus, Carpe Diem’s living options offer a rent-to-own program, allowing you the flexibility to consider your long-term options more deeply if you’re unsure whether to commit to full ownership again.
Sharing economy
As you’re starting to think about retirement, you may realize that you want to keep working part time—either for the extra money or simply because you enjoy it. Like co-housing communities, Carpe Diem Suites will organize and nurture local sharing economies. By providing part-time work-from-home opportunities, these communities allow residents to stretch their retirement budgets, share their skills, and maintain a busy and engaged lifestyle.
Benefits for Millennials
Affordable and Convenient
For Millennials, affordability is usually the biggest challenge when it comes to housing—whether you’re renting or paying off a mortgage under full ownership. Location comes in a close second. In high-priced cities like Vancouver and Toronto, finding an affordable living arrangement that’s central to work, school, and social life can often seem impossible.
Luckily, congregated condo living the Carpe Diem way helps with both concerns. Our new housing developments are based in urban centres and offer flexible investment options, relieving the tyranny of long commute trips and impossible mortgage payments.
Sharing economy
Millennials are the most actively engaged in the sharing economy of all generations today. Carpe Diem’s intergenerational housing communities actively foster skill and service sharing, reducing the costs of cars, tools, and rides while also providing work-from-home opportunities to improve your income.
Especially when it comes to childcare, condo living can bring a huge relief. When properly established, sharing economy-based care is a much more affordable option for young families—conveniently located within your own building.
Opportunity to build wealth
We’re often told that we need to own our homes in order to build wealth for the future. But few of us realize that a savings plan can be just as effective as a mortgage.
An affordable monthly housing budget in a desirable location can be an ideal way to plan for the future. By keeping costs low, rent-to-own programs like Carpe Diem’s allow residents to build wealth and invest in long-term savings, while still enjoying some discretionary spending.
Especially for young families and students, a shared housing community can be a much more realistic option than traditional home ownership. In fact, for most of the 65% of Canadians living in urban city centres, affordability is only possible in a multi-dwelling housing situation!
Having a supportive community
Emotional isolation is at an all-time high among urban Millennials, with many of us feeling more disconnected from friends and neighbours than ever before.
Housing solutions like Carpe Diem’s intergenerational condo model are creating new opportunities for people of all ages to connect, build community, and support one another. In these communities, the common areas of a condo setting can be more than just a refuge for relaxation after work. They become a hub for finding company—a community space where neighbours share, connect, and interact with each other.
Conclusion
At the heart of the matter, affordability is really about being able to sustain the quality of life we want. Our housing choices—the buildings we will call home for decades to come—have to take this into account. At Carpe Diem, we are committed to helping our residents build and maintain the life they want, living under a stress-free housing budget and participating in a purpose-built supportive community.