The downsizing problem: sell first or buy first
This is the practical knot in almost every downsizing move. Sell first and you may be renting in between. Buy first and you are carrying two places until the Amityville house sells, which is exactly when a listed sale decides to take four months.
A cash sale unties it, because the closing date is a term you set rather than an outcome you wait for. Close the same week you take the new place, or take three months and close when you are ready. Both are the same to us.
What stops most downsizes, and it is not the price
A house held for thirty or forty years holds thirty or forty years of things, and the children do not want the china. This is where a downsize stalls, and it stalls for reasons that have nothing to do with money.
You do not have to solve it. Take what matters, leave everything else exactly where it is, and we handle the clearing after closing. No dumpster in the driveway, no estate sale, no weekends of sorting a basement with your family.
The Amityville market underneath this
The Amityville median has barely moved year over year as of 2026-05, at 1.88%. Flat is the hardest market to price a fixer into, because there is no upward drift to cover a mistake and no urgency pushing buyers to overlook a problem. At a $611,250 median, Amityville is a market where buyers expect to do some work. That helps a seller with a dated house and hurts one with a genuinely broken one, because the pool that will take on a project is not the same pool that will take on a gut. The median house here goes under contract in about 35 days, which is quick for Long Island. It is also a figure that only applies to property in showable condition.
A five-bedroom on Sunshine Lane. A house on Washington Avenue. Both in Amityville, bought and paid for by us.
Downsizing out of an Amityville house that was never updated
The mechanicals are what matter on an Amityville house of that age: the boiler, the electrical service, the roof. Those are the items a buyer's lender will flag, and they are expensive exactly when you are retiring and least want a large bill.
We are pricing all of it anyway, because we do this work every week at contractor rates. The same repairs cost us in the region of half what you would be quoted, which is why we can take on a house that a retail buyer's bank would decline.
The retirement tax question worth an hour of somebody good
A house bought decades ago and held through every Long Island boom since can carry a large gain. There is a primary-residence exclusion, there are rules about how long you lived there, and there are consequences to getting the timing wrong.
Downsizing tax is a CPA's job and it is worth the appointment. Ask specifically about the exclusion and about your cost basis including the improvements you have made over the years, because people routinely forget decades of receipts that would reduce the bill.
How we arrive at a number on a home you are downsizing from
On a home you are downsizing from we start from the end: what it sells for once the work is done. From that we take away the cost of the work and a margin for the chance that we have misjudged either one. That is the whole method. Nothing is hidden in it.
- What it is worth repaired. Not the Amityville median of $611,250 on its own, but what houses like yours on your street actually closed at recently.
- What the work costs. Roof, boiler, electric, the kitchen and bath. In Amityville the stock is largely colonial and victorian, and on houses that age the mechanicals are usually the expensive part rather than the cosmetics.
- How long we will hold it. The median Amityville house goes under contract in about 35 days once it is showable, then waits 45 to 60 days more on the buyer's lender. Ours has to get to showable first, and we carry taxes and insurance across the whole of it.
- What we are wrong about. Walls and floors hide things until they come up. We price for that uncertainty, and it accounts for much of the distance between a cash offer and a retail price.
How we can pay this and still make it work
Most cash buyers skip this part. We do not. We run millions of dollars of construction a year, so we buy materials at contractor prices and keep our crews busy all year. The same renovation costs us roughly half of what you would be quoted as a homeowner.
That difference is how we make money. It is also why renovating before you sell seldom comes out ahead: you would pay retail for the roof and the boiler and then hope a buyer pays you back for them. Most of the time they do not. Our margin comes from building for less, not from buying from you for less.
If our number does not work for you, tell us. We would much rather hear it than push. We will go through your situation and give you a straight view of your options, including the ones that leave us out. A lot of people do better listing with an agent, and if you are one of them we will tell you now rather than have you find out later.
Taking your time over an Amityville downsize
Nobody is going to chase you about downsizing. Take the number, sit with it, talk to your family, and call in three months or not at all. That is a completely normal outcome of these conversations and it is fine.
What we would suggest is getting the figure early rather than late, because it makes every other decision concrete. Where you can afford to move, whether you sell before you buy, what the CPA is actually working with.
Common questions
Can I stay in the Amityville house until the place I am downsizing to is ready?
That is one of the more common requests and it is generally workable. The date is a term of the contract, so it is negotiated rather than dictated by somebody's lender.
Do we have to clear the house before we downsize?
No. Take what you want and leave the rest. The clearing is ours after closing and it does not move the number.
Will we pay capital gains tax when we downsize?
That is a CPA question and it depends on your gain, the primary-residence exclusion, and your cost basis including decades of improvements. Ask before you sign a contract, not after. It is the most valuable hour in this whole process.
Would a retiring owner get more listing it with an agent?
On a well-kept Amityville house with no deadline, quite possibly, and we will tell you if we think so. Our number makes more sense when the house needs work you do not want to fund, or when the timing of the next place makes a months-long sale impractical.