Maria and Pat Toth met while working at a home improvement store, Pergament Home Center, in Port Jefferson, the village on the North Shore of Long Island. It was 1978. “She was the wallpaper girl and I was the third man — there’s the manager and assistant manager and third man,” Mr. Toth said.
They married, bought a ranch in the South Shore hamlet of Shirley, N.Y., and later traded up to a raised ranch in Coram, a few miles south of Port Jefferson. By then, she was a special-education teacher and he was in sales.
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“As I was getting close to retirement, the discussion we had was: We can’t live in this house anymore,” said Ms. Toth, 68. “It was just too big.”
The 13 stairs from the front door to the kitchen were fine when the Toths entered empty-handed, but not so great when they had groceries and cat litter to haul. They also were tired of maintaining the yard and the above-ground pool.
What’s more, Ms. Toth said, “I felt isolated from my family.” She longed to return to Port Jefferson, her hometown, which was closer to four of the couple’s five children and all nine grandchildren.
And they knew that, if they lived in Port Jeff, as the locals call it, they could avail themselves of village amenities like free downtown parking and access to the two resident-only beaches.
The Toths had a five-year plan to downsize. “But then she retired two years earlier, so it became a three-year plan,” said Mr. Toth, 69.
They figured their Coram house would sell for around $700,000, so they set a budget of up to $650,000. They wanted to pay in cash. “We did not want any loans at this time in life,” Ms. Toth said.
A year ago, she contacted Deniz Ozgur, an agent at OverSouth Real Estate, who was listing a Port Jefferson house and happened to know her son. The Toths told her they were open to a smaller ranch house with a little yard, or to a townhouse in a condominium or homeowners’ association, where most outdoor maintenance would be taken care of. They didn’t care much about community amenities like pools, but they knew their grandchildren would.
They wanted at least two bedrooms, plus space for Mr. Toth’s freelance martial arts photography business. “I took martial arts when I was younger and I was the father taking pictures of my daughter’s sports,” he said. When he realized there were no photographers for karate schools, he filled the void. He also holds two part-time retail jobs.
On early tours, every place seemed to have a dealbreaker. One house had a scarily steep driveway. Another was near a siren-plagued hospital route. A three-bedroom had just one bathroom. “For me, it was almost buyer’s fatigue,” Mr. Toth said.
The Toths often envisioned how they might reconfigure a house to fit their needs, but Ms. Ozgur suggested they aim higher. “In a year or two, that house is going to start bothering you,” she said. “I told them: You need to find a house that works for you.”
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