The first night Ramona Frial and Steve Brown spent in their new home, her mom and dad slept in the basement.
Fresh from getting married in Italy, the newlyweds did not mind sharing their Brampton, Ont., house with Ms. Frial's parents for three weeks - seeing as the older couple had owned the place for the previous 18 years.
"My mom said, 'It will be our gift to you to give you a good deal on the house,' " the 29-year-old recalled this week. "We got a $60,000 discount."
As real-estate costs across the country continue to climb, many wannabe homeowners are sacrificing their dreams of ever living in a house as nice as the one they grew up in. Except, that is, for the growing number of people who are opting to actually buy the house they grew up in.
Sons and daughters are taking advantage of parental decisions to downsize, scooping up mom and dad's place at less than market value.
And while moving into your parents' bedroom may seem weird, those who have done so say it's no more irrational than shelling out big bucks in a bidding war, or moving to a less desirable neighbourhood.
Ms. Frial's parents originally bought her home in 1988, and she grew up there along with her three older siblings. Thirty-one-year-old Mr. Brown, too, was no stranger to the residence, having met his future bride when they attended a nearby elementary school.
"We started dating when I lived in this house," Ms. Frial said. "There's a lot of history."
The couple was excited about the prospect of owning such a large house.
However, Ms. Frial said she did have reservations about entering into such a major financial transaction with her parents.
"I wanted to make sure I wasn't ripping them off, because I knew they could get more and they'd be that much more comfortable," she said. "But they insisted, and I couldn't say no."
Michael Lamb, a London, Ont., real-estate lawyer, said families should think long and hard before allowing property to change hands between generations.
"Whenever I have clients say, 'I'm thinking of giving this to my kids now as part of their inheritance,' I always counsel against that," he said. "It's nice, but unless you can tell me you've got $5-million in the bank, don't."
Because people today are living much longer lives, retirement can often stretch over decades, he said, and many people underestimate the savings they will need.
He recommends that parents get a property appraisal before agreeing to a price, and says that both parent and child should be represented by their own lawyer.
For Hersh Forman, the process of buying his mother's Toronto home was blissfully straightforward.
His father had passed away and his mother volunteered to move to a condo and give him the house. An only child, Mr. Forman did not have to clear the idea with siblings, and simply paid for his mother's condo and moved into his childhood home along with his wife, Lee, and their eight-month-old son.
The couple now has four boys and a house that barely resembles the one his parents bought in 1961. Upon moving in, they took down the wallpaper and ripped out the carpet, added closets and even changed the colour of the front door.
"Of course, my mother would say, 'Do you really need to remove that beautiful crushed red velour wallpaper that's in the bedroom?' " he said. "She wasn't upset, it was more like, why did we have to waste our money?"
Mr. Forman is not the only person on his street to take over a family home. A girl he knew growing up bought her grandparents' house a block away and his next-door neighbour, Alan Savlov, bought his parents' property last year, after his mother's death.
"I asked my two brothers and they were not interested in buying the house," Mr. Savlov said. "I bought out my two brothers and moved in."
To avoid the potential pitfalls of sibling resentment, Mr. Savlov and his wife had three separate property assessments done to ensure he gave his brothers the fairest price.
The transaction gave him the opportunity to live in a neighbourhood he could not otherwise have afforded.
"The housing prices were just so exorbitant that we were shut out a number of times," Mr. Savlov said of nearby homes he had previously tried to buy.
Gilles Duranton, a professor of urban growth at the University of Toronto, said these families are catching on to behaviour that has been demonstrated in Europe for decades.
"In some very posh areas of Paris and London, you have families living there for generations and generations," he said. "It's a way of creating a dynasty - big or small."
But whether the trend will benefit future generations remains to be seen.
Mr. Forman said he and his wife will be eternally grateful to his mother, who has since passed away, for giving them their home, and that one of his own sons now jokes about taking over the property.
"Would I do it for my kids?" Mr. Forman said. "It depends. I'm prepared to help them in any way, but we like the house and we may just stay."