Eighty-five per cent of Australians aged 55 and over live in a home with two or more spare bedrooms. That’s from the realestate.com.au GemLife Downsizing Australia Report, 2025.
Most of them aren’t downsizing. And it isn’t because the thought never crossed their mind.
It’s because nobody hands them the map.
I sat on a panel recently at an event called “Your Future, Your Way,” hosted by SALT Directory and George Hartnett Metropolitan Funerals. The theme was navigating the ageing journey together.
Together did the heavy lifting in that sentence.
Eight of us on stage. Eight pieces of the same puzzle. And what struck me hardest was this — not one of us could have handled the whole job alone.
Why Downsizing Feels Harder Than It Should
Most people treat downsizing as a property decision.
It isn’t. It’s a property decision wrapped inside a legal decision, wrapped inside a financial decision, wrapped inside a deeply personal one about forty years of belongings.
That’s four conversations. Most families try to have all four at once, get overwhelmed, and quietly decide to think about it next year.
Next year becomes five years.
The same REA Group and GemLife research, drawn from 2,051 survey responses, found the biggest barriers aren’t price at all. They’re the hassle of moving (18%) and simply not finding the right-sized home (17%).
The Real Cost of Waiting
There’s a version of this decision made calmly, over eighteen months, with the whole family in the room.
And there’s the version made in six weeks, after a fall or a diagnosis.
The second version costs more. Every time.
The Australian Law Reform Commission puts the number of eligible Australians without a will at close to 60% — roughly 12 million people. Meanwhile the Productivity Commission forecasts around $3.5 trillion moving from Baby Boomers to their heirs over the next two decades.
Those numbers aren’t there to frighten anyone. They make one point.
Families who plan early keep control. Families who don’t hand it to a court.
The 8 Professionals Who Make Downsizing Simpler
Here’s the panel of experts.
1. Carrie Fortunaso, Guardian Plan — prepaid funerals. Your children never argue about cost, and never guess at what you wanted. You decide. They grieve.
2. Kim Kyle, DSL Law — wills and enduring powers of attorney. This is how you protect an estate before it needs protecting. Most people think an EPOA is a death document. It’s a living one.
3. Susie Dash, Task Tamers — decluttering. Ask a senior what’s stopping them and you’ll hear two words: too overwhelming. Not the price. The garage. A professional declutter is often the single thing that unlocks the next chapter.
4. Henry Wong, RE/MAX Revolution — the sale. That’s me, RE/MAX Australia’s #1 Auction Agent. More on my part below.
5. Pete Galea, Galea Law — estate structuring. A well-structured will reduces the chance of a successful challenge. Blended families and second marriages need structure, not a template downloaded at midnight.
6. Luke Kidd, Aegis Financial Planning — retirement and tax. Pension impacts and contribution timing are not a DIY project. The right planner routinely saves families more than they cost.
7. Denise O’Shannesy, My Records Ready — records. Accounts, logins, bills, insurance. If something happens tomorrow, can your attorney actually find anything? Good record keeping is a love letter to whoever comes next.
8. Darren Reynolds, Great Southern Memorial Park — memorials. The options are far broader and more personal than most people realise.
No single one of us holds the whole map — and any adviser who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Why Auction Protects Families in a Downsizing Sale
When you sell privately, someone in the family always wonders. Could we have got more? Did we leave money there?
That question lingers for years. I’ve watched it damage relationships between siblings who otherwise got along fine.
Auction removes it.
Buyers right now are cautious and slow to commit. That’s precisely why method matters. A private campaign lets a hesitant buyer take three weeks to think about it. An auction gives them a date, a crowd and a reason to act.
It turns hesitation into competition. And competition drives price.
An auction also puts a public price on the table. Every buyer competes openly, on the same day, in front of the family. Nobody feels short-changed — and nobody feels accused.
For a deceased estate, that transparency is worth as much as the price.
The process matters too. Twice-weekly open homes to build buyer volume. Weekly vendor reports so you always know where you stand. A reserve meeting with the auctioneer beforehand, so the number is yours.
My clearance rate sits above 90%. The national average doesn’t come close.
That gap isn’t luck. It’s the campaign.
The Money Side Nobody Explains Properly
Here’s the piece that surprises people most.
Per the Australian Taxation Office, if you’re 55 or older and you’ve owned your home at least ten years, you can make a downsizer contribution of up to $300,000 per person into super from the sale proceeds — $600,000 for an eligible couple. It sits outside your normal caps and isn’t taxed going in.
There are conditions. Within 90 days of settlement. Correct form lodged before or at the time of contributing. Once only, from one property.
It can also affect your Age Pension, because money moved from the home into super changes how it’s assessed. Worth modelling before you sign a contract.
Which is the whole point of this article. You can’t get that right with an agent alone.
External resource: [Link to trusted authority source — ATO downsizer super contributions page] External resource: [Link to trusted authority source — National Seniors Australia housing research] Related reading: [Link to related internal article — “What Really Happens on Auction Day”] Related reading: [Link to related internal article — “Selling a Deceased Estate in Brisbane”]
What Downsizing Gives Back
Worth being fair about the upside, because it gets undersold.
Less house means less maintenance, lower rates, cheaper insurance, smaller power bills. But money is rarely what people talk about afterwards.
They talk about the gutters they no longer have to clean. The four bedrooms they were heating for two people. Being ten minutes from the grandkids instead of fifty.
And relief — the particular relief of having decided it themselves, on their own timetable.
Be clear-eyed, though. National Seniors Australia points to stamp duty, agent fees and moving costs as major deterrents, and notes transaction costs often erode much of the financial gain. Downsizing doesn’t automatically improve anyone’s position, and anyone who promises otherwise is overselling.
But the households who downsize well share one thing. They did it while they still had choices.
How to Start the Downsizing Conversation
If you’re the adult child reading this, the first conversation is the hardest part of the whole process. Not the sale. Not the paperwork.
The opening line.
Four things that genuinely work.
Don’t lead with the house. The moment downsizing sounds like we want you out of here, the shutters come down. Lead with what they want the next ten years to look like.
Ask, don’t announce. “Have you thought about what you’d want if the stairs got difficult?” lands very differently to “you should sell.”
Bring one professional, not eight. Overwhelm kills momentum. Start with whichever piece feels least loaded — usually the will. It builds its own momentum once one thing is ticked off.
Include siblings early. The brother who finds out after the decision is made is the brother who contests it later.
And if the answer is a flat no? That’s a legitimate answer. But the will, the power of attorney and the records should be sorted either way.
Your Next Step
Downsizing isn’t losing your home. It’s choosing your next chapter while you still have every option open — instead of having it chosen for you by a hospital discharge form.
The conversation is never as hard as we imagine. It’s the not having it that costs families everything.
I walked out of that panel thinking about my own parents. That’s what those rooms do — you arrive as a professional and leave as a son.
If you’re weighing up downsizing, or you’re an adult child wondering how to raise it, start with a conversation. No appraisal, no pressure.
Call me directly on 0412 471 588. If the right next step is a lawyer, a planner or a declutterer rather than an agent, I’ll tell you that and point you to the right person.
That’s what the map is for.
