SIDE NOTE AND A SOLUTION- Last time I shared with you about my experience with my Mom and moving her to a ranch home and handling the objection of moving to a new home. Even though, I think after 22 years of helping people buy and sell homes I know what I am doing and can guide ANYONE to make a good decision, I find out, it is quite different with a relative. Well after a tearful conversation with my mother, I learned, this was not going to be as easy as I thought.
So I will digress a bit and tell you that basically, I told my Mom that a lot of her “stuff” was not going over to the new home. After all since she will be “renting” from me, and I will be maintaining the home I wanted to keep it simple and easy to maintain. The plan was to paint the home all one color, clean and repair any immediate needs of the home and then help her move in. I expressed to her that she did not need to bring all her favorite trees and bushes that currently have taken over her yard, a menagerie of yard art and the pias to resitance, a coi pond.
My brothers and sisters quickly informed me that I had hurt my Mother’s feelings (unbeknownst to me) and she did not understand why first of all that I would not let her own her own home and secondly why she cannot have all the things that she currently enjoys. (These are all the same things that create more work for me and my siblings as well).
I needed to work fast for a resolution with my Mom but was going to be firm about what was going and what was not going to the new home. Some really smart person said once “pick your battles”…you know the ones you can win.
Well guess what folks, I did not win any of these battles.
As Mom and I sat on her back deck she said to me in a solemn and unhappy voice. “If I can’t have the things around me that I enjoy the most…why am I moving and if I don’t own anything anymore what is my purpose for even being here?”
Once I picked myself up off the deck and tried to control my urge to all out ball like a baby, I conceded with some mutually agreed upon rules.
My brother is responsible to maintain the coi pond and no one else is expected to do that job, small starts of the bushes and 1 tree can come over. They will need to be stratigiacally placed in the yard to look asthetically pleasing instead of the jungle look that currently graces her back yard. I did win on the buy over rent objection since she really is not in a financial position to buy at her age. She was also worried about the equity of her home and why she did not get that. I explained that we needed to fix up her home to sell and after thinking about it, if there was any profit left, it could be thought of as some equity in her new home but it would come to me as an offset of my expenses to purchase and fix up the new home.
So there you have it- a real ife experience and the solution to these questions:
1. What happens to my “treasures”
2. How do I begin the process to move and when?
3. What happens to the equity of my home in the scenario of a relative buying a new home for the Senior?
Next up we will address repairs needed for the Seniors current home and Who can I trust to help me through this process?