As you get older, living in your Bolton real estate year round becomes less and less appealing. The endless winter cold, the early morning shoveling sessions, the ice and the early nights. But you have to stay because of your job. However, once you're retired, you're free to go and live wherever you want as long as you can afford it. While they're not eager to leave Canada completely, many people decide to "fly south" for the winter and join the ranks of the snowbirds.

Snowbirds is the slang term for the retirees who live in Canada and the northern United States and spend their winters in Florida, Arizona, and other warm locales. Being a snowbird is a happy medium. They don't want to put up their houses for sale in Oakville and leave behind their friends, family and, community ties forever, but neither do they want to shovel and balance on icy sidewalks, especially once their mobility starts to decline. So they hop on a plane and "fly south."

While most of the motivation behind a snowbird's behavior can be found in the fact that even a new condominium in Toronto can't compete with the nice weather down south when it comes to enjoying themselves, there can also be a medical factor to the migration as well. Doctors often recommend heat for muscle aches and arthritis pain, and heat is readily available in warmer climates down south. This practice of avoiding harsh winters when you have a medical condition dates back several hundred years.

So what is life like for a snowbird? Well, with no job or obligations to worry about, snowbirds are free to putter around their Sunshine Coast accommodations as long as they want, lingering over breakfast and a newspaper. Later in the day they might sit out by the pool, play a round of golf with friends, or go for a swim. For many snowbirds, going south is as much about the social community as it is about the weather.

Most snowbirds won't buy a vacation home like they would have bought Mississauga homes for sale. Instead, they'll buy a time share of a condo in a complex filled with other snowbirds. That way they get to visit the same community every year and have a guaranteed place to stay. Often, the sons, daughters, grandchildren, friends, and siblings of snowbirds will take turns visiting them while they're down south, so a snowbird is rarely alone.