Question 7 of 11 · Before you buy the condo
Your Life Five or Ten Years From Now
Will this home still work when your children grow, your parents age, or you stop working?
“You're buying for today. But who will be living in this home five or ten years from now?”
Benny, Best Buy Condo
Homes are chosen in the present tense and lived in the future one.
Buy for the chapter, not just the moment
Most shortlists are built around the household as it is this month: this commute, these two people, this routine. That's reasonable — it's the only version you can see clearly.
But the ordinary changes are quite predictable in kind, if not in timing. Children get older and need privacy and somewhere to study. Parents age and proximity starts to matter. Work patterns shift and the commute you optimised for disappears. At some point the household gets smaller again.
The useful question isn't 'will this be perfect forever?' — nothing is. It's 'can this home adapt, or will the first change force a move?' A home that flexes buys you time. A home that doesn't sets a countdown.
What Benny is looking for
Five ways life tends to move, and what each one asks of a home.
01
Children growing up
Space needs change shape more than size — privacy, a door that closes, somewhere to study. A room that works for a toddler may not work for a teenager.
02
Parents ageing
Proximity, step-free access, lift reliability, how far the nearest clinic and market are. These become sharply relevant, often quite suddenly.
03
Work changing
Hybrid patterns, a job change, a longer or shorter commute. If you're optimising hard around one office, ask what happens when that office moves.
04
Later years and maintenance
Retirement often brings a preference for less upkeep and more daily convenience within walking distance. That's a location question as much as a size one.
05
Whether the home can flex
A study that becomes a bedroom, a layout that takes a wall change, enough storage for a stage of life you haven't reached. Adaptability is worth more than it looks.
Where I'd push back
“A home can be perfect for this year and wrong for the next chapter.”
Benny, Best Buy Condo
The two most common versions of this: a couple buys a compact home because it suits them exactly today, and a slightly more adaptable layout was available for a modest difference — or empty nesters go very small on principle, then find they've lost the storage and the room where family stays over. I won't prescribe a size. I'd just want the next chapter in the conversation, not only this one.
The two-chapter test
Chapter one
Write today's household: who lives here, where they go each day, which room does the most work.
Today
Chapter two
Now write the version five to ten years out with the changes you can reasonably foresee. Same home. Does it still work?
Next
What usually surfaces?
Normally one specific room or function breaks first — the study that had to become a bedroom, the storage that ran out, the stairs or the walk that got longer. Knowing which one breaks first is genuinely useful.
It doesn't mean choose a bigger home. It means choose knowing where the pressure will land.
Benny's 30-second check
Four questions. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere.
“You can't plan for everything. You can notice which change this home handles worst.”
Benny, Best Buy Condo
See this thinking in practice
Two reviews where the next chapter does real work in the assessment.
Newport Residences
A long-view, city-living case — useful for rightsizing and later-chapter thinking.
Read the Newport Residences reviewRiver Modern
A neighbourhood ecosystem read through family life rather than a single commute.
Read the River Modern reviewWhere this thought leads
Usefulness changes as your household changes.
Adaptable homes are understood by more households than yours.
Your holding horizon is set by your next chapters.
Benny's closing thought
Got a condo in mind? Talking through the next chapter out loud tends to clarify the current one.
