Sometimes, a runaway housing market can run away with you. Randy and Joanne Su found this out when they decided to buy a second property around the corner from their $1.45-million, 3,000-square-foot pile at 29 Hedgewood Road in the Bridle Path area. Randy (a former captain in the South Korean army) and Joanne work as legal guardians for exchange students from Asia. They’d been living on Hedgewood with their three school-age sons for just a few months when they decided their house was too small. That’s when a bigger house a couple of blocks north on Tudor Gate hit the market. It was a chic ’50s gem designed by B. Napier Simpson (a period piece about Judy Garland was once shot there), with an outdoor pool and a backyard facing Wilket Creek. The Sus bought it for $2.5 million in April with the intention of modernizing it. They planned to add a media centre, new kitchen, an anti-allergy air circulation system and radiant-heated floors, and figured the reno would take three months and cost $500,000. But after six months, they had spent twice that. They were overextended, so this fall they put both houses on the market and plan to keep whichever one doesn’t move. At the fire sale price of $4.29 million—they just dropped it by 500 grand—it won’t last long.