Every few months I find myself at a kitchen table in Unionville or Markham Village with clients in their late sixties, a pot of coffee going cold, and the same question hanging over the paperwork: if we sell this house, where would we even go? The four-bedroom served its purpose. The garden has become a chore. The stairs are a conversation. And the answer, more often than people expect, turns out to be a place most Markham residents have driven past for years without ever seeing in: Swan Lake Village.
Swan Lake sits off Ninth Line at Sixteenth Avenue, wrapped around the kettle lake that gives it its name, and it is one of the very few gated communities anywhere in Markham. The gatehouse is staffed around the clock. Behind it are 649 homes, built in phases from 1997, when the first resident moved in on January 27 of that year, through to the final homes around 2010 (Swan Lake Village residents' site, swanlakevillage.ca). It was designed from the first drawing as an adult-lifestyle community: homes are capped at two permanent occupants, pets are welcome within limits, and everything about the place, from the pace of the paths to the programming calendar, assumes the kids have moved out.
The variety inside the gates surprises people. There are detached bungalows and bungalofts, two-storey townhomes, and four low-rise apartment buildings on The Boardwalk Way overlooking the water, with suites from about 1,100 to 2,000 square feet and some of the larger homes reaching 2,700. That range matters, because downsizing is rarely one move. I have known residents who went from a century home near Main Street to a bungaloft, and years later from the bungaloft to the Boardwalk, without leaving the gates or the friends they had made.
Those friends are the real product. The Swan Club is a 16,000 square foot centre with an indoor pool, a gym, billiards and an art room; three satellite clubhouses add outdoor pools, tennis and pickleball; and the residents run more than thirty clubs of their own, from bridge to tai chi to line dancing (swanlakevillage.ca). When I bring a hesitant client through, I do not start with a floor plan. We walk the boardwalk, we poke our heads into whatever the art room is doing that afternoon, and somewhere on that walk the question quietly changes from why would we to which one.
Now the broker's portion, because this is still a real estate decision and the numbers deserve daylight. Listings in Swan Lake currently run from the high $800,000s to about $1.7 million, with most homes trading between roughly $900,000 and $1.5 million (Oct 2026). Selling a detached home in Unionville or Markham Village will usually fund the move with money left over, though less than people assume once land transfer tax, moving costs and any updating are counted. Budget honestly for the monthly fees as well. They cover water, cable and internet, building insurance, exterior maintenance, the gatehouse and the amenities, and residents who use what they pay for consider them money well spent - but they are a real monthly number, and I want clients to see it beside their retirement income before they fall in love with a sunroom.
I will also tell you who should not buy here, because that conversation saves grief later. If your plan involves rental income, a grandchild staying for a school year, or a home office with staff coming and going, the rules will fight you. And resale behaves differently inside a gate. The pool of buyers is narrower than for a freehold bungalow on an ordinary street, so a well-priced home sells steadily to a motivated audience while an overpriced one can sit for months. If it were my listing, I would price it tight to the last few sales of the same home style and let the community sell itself from there.
If the kitchen-table question in your house lately has been where would we even go, Swan Lake deserves an unhurried afternoon. I am happy to walk it with you, floor plans in one hand and no particular agenda in the other.