Roy, if you can hold out, I'd wait a few more years before selling in Cabbagetown. In less than 10 years Regent Park will be cleaned up, the Star of Downtown (poorly named, I know), Parliament Street will have improved and the demand for housing in the area will increase. When I moved to Fredericton from 2003 to 2007 we kept our place in Cabbagetown because we knew that if we sold it we would one day be walking past the house cursing ourselves for selling what would have been a goldmine in a few years.
I know what you mean about the stairs. Our family room is in our basement, while our bedroom is on the third floor, so that's three sets of stairs to climb. However, it's good exercise. I always think one of the worst thing seniors do is sell their taller houses for bungalows or condos, since once you stop using stairs, you quickly stop be able to climb the stairs. The next step is to buy a chair that raises you electronically, but then you soon stop being able to get out of a regular chair. I see the complete polar opposite on my travels. In China I saw old ladies climbing up the 1,000 steps at the Buddist Shrine in Hong Kong, I've seen ancient looking Greeks climbing hills, etc. Somehow in North America we have the idea that if something is hard, we should avoid it, but we forget that if we avoid it, we lose our ability to do it later.
