It's definitely the brand new house my wife and I bought in March 2016, which we'll finally be moving into on August 10th. When we bought it, the real estate market had not really taken off just yet here in Ontario, and so we paid $1,059,000 for a 2800 square foot detached house (with a double car garage) At the time our current home was worth about $750,000. Fast forward to now, and our current house is listed on the market for $1,038,000 (and we'll get very close to that) The home we're moving into has already gone up in value by $300,000 (even with the downturn in the Ontario real estate market) and once the market recovers it should go up in value another $300 to $500,000 by the year 2022 (when we retire) The builder of this home is confident enough in it's value that if you buy the exact same model from them now (in our same community) the new price of our home is $1,850,000! (that's what they project it's value to be in 2020 when that phase is completed)
It's this house purchase which is going to allow my wife and I to take early retirement at age 52 (in 2022). Homes near Toronto sell for a lot more than homes in the Niagara region, which is where we are planning on downsizing to. We'll buy a home there for a 1/4 of the price that we sell our Oakville home for.
Timing is everything though. Anyone trying to do the same thing as us now won't have the same luck. Even though we made this purchase mostly as a future investment (since we could easily have stayed in our current house for many years), we really had no idea in March 2016 just how valuable of a purchase this would end up being for us.