To realise compact city policy visions, individual property owners in rezoned neighbourhoods are increasingly incorporated as key actors in market-led urban consolidation. This paper examines the influence of the planning process on understandings of property by exploring how owners negotiate the ‘rezoned property’ as a site of ontological security. We draw on interviews with owners in rezoned neighbourhoods in Sydney and Vancouver who were involved in a collective sale/land assembly process, where groups of owners seek to sell their houses together to assemble viable high-density development sites. Specifically, we examine how owners contend with the rezoned property on financial and emotional terms. Once rezoned, properties were attributed to feelings of being insecure and more secure: insecure due to neighbourhood change and the uncertainty of a property marked for redevelopment potential, and more secure as rezoning creates an uplift in property value, possibly providing the owner with increased financial security through a more profitable sale. Potential sale profits are intensified through a collective sale process – with owners collaborating to realise a sale price that far exceeds what they would get if they sold alone – yet owner accounts demonstrate that a successful collective sale is far from clear-cut and straightforward. Difficulties and delays assembling neighbours and failed sales attempts can contribute further to feelings of insecurity, the promise of the rezoned property instead becoming a source of frustration, uncertainty, regret, and loss. This paper contributes to understandings of tenure and ontological security in consolidating cities, and points to the importance of accounting for the lived experiences of owner-led sale attempts in the delivery of compact city visions.