Helping Mom and Dad Sell the Family Home

Perhaps it comes up over an otherwise festive holiday dinner. It may be a bold, simple announcement by your parents. Mom feels the house is just too big for her to keep, and she wants to move into something smaller. Dad feels like he wants something smaller in terms of living space, since he’s now living alone. Maybe both Mom and Dad are still around, but they have made it very clear: No more family holidays. We’re simplifying our lives.

And then they say it: “We’re going to sell this house.” They may then ask for help directly, or say nothing (but you know you will be there to dutifully help them sort through their belongings and move).

It might also come from the couple’s children, who gradually realize Mom or Dad or both parents simply cannot maintain the large, airy home where they were raised.

Regardless of how it happens, the process of helping a parent sell their home can be an overwhelming one. Chances are, Mom or Dad isn’t just selling a home, but the one you and your siblings consider the “family home,” the one directly tied to many or all of your memories of growing up.

At the same time, Mom or Dad may ask you to help them decide what to keep for the newer, smaller home, a seemingly Solomon-like task considering the emotional meaning intrinsic in many of the items.

Kimberly Warren, a real estate agent based in Pleasanton, knows exactly what both you and your parents are going through. Not only is she a Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES�®), specializing in just such a transaction, but she recently went through the process herself, assisting her mother-in-law move to a smaller home.

“It involved lots of time and lots of patience,” which she explains is understandable. “In my mother-in-law’s case, we had 44 years of stuff, of memories, to go through. It requires time and patience, and if the kids are involved, they need to be patient, too.”

One of the best ways to ease the process, according to Warren, is to find the replacement home first. “I encourage people to make the transition into a new home first.”

Warren explains that this allows time to make the transition easier, so that your parents feel like their new surroundings are truly home. “Giving them time helps them bond with their new home. We took my mother-in-law out to the site numerous times while the home was being built,” she explains. “You should try to find ways your parents can make emotional connections to their new place.”

That also helps ease possible tensions when complete strangers walk through the home with a critical eye, or finding fault with the cherished family abode. Suddenly, that botched repair job that was the butt of family jokes is now dollars and cents being calculated by possible buyers, wondering how much money it will take to fix it correctly or bring it up to the current building codes.

“By moving your parent out of the home first, people aren’t walking in and out of their home daily as it is being shown. It’s just much easier.”

Such a move also makes it easier because the home can be gotten ready for showing without disrupting Mom or Dad’s daily routine (or their prized possessions). Warren says, “It also makes it easier to declutter and depersonalize the home without the client being stressed over it.”

Such an arrangement is usually possible financially, Warren notes, thanks to a bridge loan or an existing loan on the home up for sale. She also advises clients that storage may be needed, to give them more time to consider whether or how they really want to part with cherished personal items.

In addition to providing additional time and being patient, Warren recommends working with an SRES licensee. “I have links to people who deal with antiques, who provide senior discounts,” she notes.

But the biggest advantage of working with an SRES licensee is the expertise they have in dealing with what can quickly become an overwhelming and emotional process. “This can be a very emotional and difficult time in a family’s transition,” she explains. “You want an agent who has experience dealing with mature clients, as well as a sense of empathy. This is often so different from the normal marketing process of, ‘OK, let’s market the property’, and in less than a week, there’s a ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard. You’re looking at, sometimes, up to six months from start to finish.”

For Warren, that means the sale price is important, but so, too, is helping her clients through the sale with a minimum amount of emotional distress.

“Other agents may get just as much money for a home as I do, but that doesn’t fix the emotional aspect, and that has to be addressed first,” she explains.