Time To Downsize Your Home? We Can Help.
By Frank Demarinis
It’s time. Whether moving to a senior community, downsizing to a 55+ community or assisted living, it’s not easy to “be ready.” Just making the decision is a big step, and for most, a lot of work to make it happen. Sometimes dealing with one’s home and estate is a greater task than the actual decision to downsize to a senior living community.
You’ll want to think through whether keeping the home makes sense. Sentimental reasons alone aren’t always enough. Depending on where you live, selling could mean losing more money than hanging onto the home for a while and renting while waiting for the right time to sell. Senior Advisors of Delaware, LLC can be secured as a property manager: However, factors such as your liquidity to maintain new expenses and the headache of being a landlord should be weighed carefully prior to that decision.
Factors including covering ongoing costs, utilities, ongoing maintenance, and not being able to check in and manage the property, often lead to the decision of selling. Thankfully there are no capital gains taxes for a $250,000 gain if you are single or $500,000 if married as long as you owned the home for at least the last two years and treated it as your primary residence. In some cases, selling the house is the smartest financial decision. The “un-readiness” of it all calls for more than a realtor: An estate manager can transition the estate and its content, which will help facilitate the need for eventual spend down, Medicaid qualification, and putting monies into trust for loved ones and estate re-positioning.
Our latest success was a 96-year-old woman who lived independently right up to the day she was hospitalized for a respiratory condition. She put off the inevitable for some years, living independently at home with the support of home care and through Senior Advisors of Delaware, LLCs coordination and home food delivery. Even if she had the financial means for 24-hour care, the footprint of the household (including many steps and rooms to maintain) simply became a necessity to sell and move to a senior residence. Unable to traverse the home and to go through papers was her largest concern. She was unable to return to the household to “get it ready.”
Our advisors went through documentation, scanned and stored what held importance, and room by room photographed and inventoried the home, helping her decide what would be donated, what would be stored and what would be shared with family abroad. We held an estate sale and auction for items she felt would help add to her liquidity in her new residence. We coordinated the realtor and maximized her revenue from the sale by preparing the home for the market. Through a small home improvement grant, we were even able to repair some necessary issues which may have impacted the sale at no cost.
Senior Advisors of Delaware, LLC is a full-service agency able to help when help is needed most with our collective partners of attorneys, realtors, advisors and other professionals. We also offer Power of Attorney services for ongoing support and emergency response in a medical crisis. Our nonprofit goal is always to help support the client in the most independent setting possible!
If it’s not yet time to sell the home but you are 85+ and at risk for frequent hospitalization ask about our stay at home grant!
1-800-564-0173
