Throughout the five case studies we’ve examined so far, we’ve emphasized the importance of having honest discussions with yourself and your family, making the hard choices so you are in control of what happens in your later years, putting a Housing Plan in place and executing that plan when it’s time. We’ve seen success stories of people who put strong Housing Plans in place and moved on to enjoy the next chapter of their lives, and we’ve seen people who didn’t put a plan in place struggle. Today we want to highlight the importance of executing your plan when it’s time. Even the best-laid plans are useless if you never execute the plan.
Julie waited too long. With her husband gone and her daughter living out of state, Julie was happy living in their longtime family home. It was single-story and comfortable in size, but not too big for one person to manage. She was very engaged in her community, and her many friends provided an active social life. She was fine, until the years went on and she became less stable on her feet and began to fall, frequently. She was also losing strength, as we all do with age, and began having trouble getting out of chairs. She later shared a horrible story with us. After dinner one night at the kitchen table, she was unable to push herself up to a standing position. Her arms and legs were just too weak. She couldn’t reach the house phone, and her cell phone was in another room. Stuck, the poor thing sat in the chair all night, waiting for her cleaning help to rescue her when they arrived the next morning. And that was not the only occurrence. Clearly, the wheels were coming off the bus. At 89 years of age, falling and unable to get out of chairs, it was definitely time, if not past time, to put a Housing Plan together.
The power we all have to deceive ourselves is amazing. We simply don’t want to believe what we see. We don’t want to admit that age is taking its toll. Sometimes the advances are so slow we don’t notice, and the falling and weakness become our “new normal,” as if it’s always been that way. Even our friends don’t want to see the changes; if they see that we have aged, it means they have aged too. Collective fear allows everyone to deny reality. Julie insisted she was fine and could still safely manage living independently at home. But you and I both know this is a recipe for disaster. The train was barreling down the tracks, and Julie was refusing to get out of the way. She refused to admit “it was time.”
Julie fell yet again! She’d fallen and injured herself before, but this time she broke her femur. I’m told the femur is one of the hardest bones in the body to break. After a stay in the hospital, she was looking at spending the next several months in a rehabilitation center within an independent living community in town. That’s when our phone rang. Lauren, Julie’s daughter, couldn’t let her mother return home and needed our help.
We had known Julie for many years but only met her daughter Lauren a couple of years back at a real estate seminar we hosted focused on writing a Housing Plan. Lauren was in town visiting Julie, saw the invitation we sent to Julie and proactively thought it would be a good idea for her mother to start thinking about next steps. Julie didn’t take the message to heart, but Lauren did. She made a point of keeping our contact information, hoping she’d never need it, and was glad she had it when everything came crashing down.
Julie had planned on moving into an independent living community “when it was time,” but never got around to making the plans or securing a space. Now her deteriorating condition required more assistance than most independent communities are willing to provide, narrowing her choices and availability. She wanted to remain in the area to be near her friends but would soon not be able to drive, limiting her social activities. With her daughter living out of state, she’d be without family nearby to lend a hand when necessary. Acting on our advice, Lauren had the hard and honest conversations with her mother regarding her options. What’s realistic versus what you want, and what is the compromise in the middle that works? With Julie recovering in the rehabilitation facility, they had time to make a plan, but still needed to move with urgency because Julie wouldn’t be in the facility forever, and she couldn’t live alone at home.
It took a little doing, but Lauren, with the help of the nurses in the rehab facility, was able to convince Julie that the best option was to move into an assisted living facility out of state near her daughter. It was a big decision. Julie was understandably anxious. Everyone knew it was the right decision for her circumstances, but so many questions remained. Where to move? Julie couldn’t travel to tour facilities, so Lauren would have to select one for her. How to get Julie to her new home? And, as always, what to do with the house? How to clear it out? How to sort through everything? What to do with everything that wouldn’t fit in the new apartment? All the questions that, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know we face on a daily basis. Not to worry, Julie and Lauren, we’ll get you through this. It’s what we do!
Lauren was a trouper! She’d fly in on weekends to start sorting out the house. She’d take carload after carload to a local charity for donation. We arranged for a dumpster for anything that couldn’t be donated. We worked with Julie and Lauren on a floor plan for Julie’s new apartment and figured out what furniture she wanted and what would fit. We arranged for furniture movers to help load a rental truck full of furniture for the apartment, and Lauren made the two-day drive home. Another truckload of items Lauren wanted to keep from the house. Another truckload for items her children and friends wanted. Each truck followed by a two-day drive home. Through the heat, through the dust, through allergies and even through asthma attacks, Lauren kept working. We’d check in when she was in town to offer assistance where we could and resources for what we couldn’t help with, but Lauren deserves the real credit for clearing out the house. It took time, understandably, but she got it done.
Through all of this, Julie was still in the rehabilitation facility. Involved from afar, Lauren kept her mom up to date on her progress, and we’d join her occasionally to visit and talk about next steps. With the house mostly cleared, it was time to talk about selling it. It was a difficult conversation for Julie, but ultimately she embraced the reality that she would be living near her daughter out of state and the house had to go. She signed the listing paperwork and, with her recovery nearly complete, she started looking forward to her move. Naturally, they were worried about not being around, or even in the same state, through the sales process. That’s where it’s critical that you have experienced Realtors® on your side who can handle anything and have an army of vendors and resources to call upon to get the work done. Julie and Lauren were confident they had made the right choice of Realtors®, as were we. We said our goodbyes to Julie and Lauren, took the keys to the house and went to work.
Although beautifully decorated, the work had been done 40 years ago. It was tired and showing its age. We chatted on the phone with Julie, snug in her new apartment near Lauren, about the pros and cons of doing some updates versus selling it in its current condition. If done right, investing in updates can pay off. If done wrong, investing in updates can be a costly mistake and a waste of money. We have a winning track record when it comes to updating houses for sale and knew we could significantly improve the sales results for Julie if she’d give us the reins. We talked about positioning the house to appeal to a younger buyer, like Julie and her husband were when they bought the house all those years ago. She agreed, saying jokingly, “It does look like an old lady lives there,” and decided it was worth the investment to spruce it up so it would show at its best.
This was a house worth investing in! A traditional ranch-style home from the 1940s, designed by a noted architect, with large rooms, walls of glass and an oversized bay window with breathtaking garden views. A Southern Californian classic, blurring the transition between inside and out. And with grounds as beautiful as these, the outside needed to be inside as much as possible. My husband, with his interior design background, came up with a design plan, reviewed it with Julie for her approval on the budgets, and put our formidable team of vendors to work. Curtains came down and the sunlight poured in. You could almost feel the house breathe a breath of fresh air. Carpets came up and wallpaper came down. Gorgeous hardwood floors had been hiding under wall-to-wall carpet for decades. We decided to sand, re-stain and polish them to lighten the color and make them shine like new. Everything got a fresh coat of paint. Cottage White is our go-to color for staging. Damaged bathroom floors were replaced. Under more carpet we found a brick floor from what must have been a sunroom that was incorporated into the oversized living room long ago. But after consulting with our flooring expert, we learned the adhesive used to glue the carpet to the brick could not be removed. We made a quick trip to our favorite carpet vendor and selected an earthy sisal carpet to install, using a remnant piece so it was in stock and at a steep discount. The selection helped brighten the space, ground it to the beautiful garden outside the wall of glass and update the look of the house. It had the added benefit of providing a contrast to the hardwood floors, visually separating the living room and sunroom into two cohesive yet separate functioning spaces.
Through the magic of staging, the house took on an entirely new personality, that of a younger buyer. Outside, our gardening team trimmed overgrown bushes and trees, planted lots of seasonal color and power-washed the hardscape to clean away the moss and stains accumulated over the years. Our amazing cleaning crew gave everything a deep scrubbing, inside and out, to make sure everything sparkled like new. It was stunning! My husband and I even talked about selling our house and moving in. It was ready to go to market.
Julie remained very involved. We made sure to send her regular updates and photos. Whenever she’d question a design decision, she’d always pull back and say, “I trust you. Do what you think will look best.” Every designer LOVES to hear those words. Lauren said Julie cried a little when she saw the final sales brochure and website with the professional photography. I think doing the work helped her say goodbye to the old house and set her on the right path to succeed in her new surroundings. We were overwhelmed at the first open house and, as you can imagine, we were under contract very quickly, having received multiple offers, all substantially over asking. The investment in updating the house paid off handsomely! Julie and Lauren were thrilled.
Julie got lucky. She, like many, refused to acknowledge it “was time” until it was too late. She knew what she wanted for her later years but didn’t act on it, never putting a plan together to fall back on. When her circumstances dramatically changed, her options became limited. Stuck in the hospital and rehab facility, she was unable to put any kind of a plan together for her next steps. Julie was very fortunate to have Lauren step in, from out of state, to figure it out. It was quite a sacrifice for Lauren to drop out of her life and figure things out for her mom. Whether she wanted to do it or not is irrelevant; she shouldn’t have had to. Julie should have been honest with herself, made the difficult decisions and put the plan she originally wanted in place so she could act on it when the time came, when she first started falling.
We were fortunate to have been brought in to be a part of the solution, along with Lauren. Updating and selling a house while the owners are out of state takes experience and a lot of resources. We were happy to have been asked to assist and thrilled to have been able to leverage our extensive network and resources to help secure a positive outcome for all.
We saw Julie and Lauren for the first time after selling their house about a year or so later. Lauren brought Julie to Southern California for a conference. She said at the time it was probably her last trip back. She was well, but her strength was failing her. We had lunch and caught up. Julie was exceptionally outgoing and had made several new friends. She’d joined a church near her apartment that kept her active. She was a regular at the library in the assisted living facility and tried never to miss an organized outing with her neighbors. She and Lauren went on various adventures, taking car trips and enjoying the rugged beauty of her new surroundings. Julie was thriving and enjoying spending time with her daughter, grandchildren and brand-new great-grandbaby. It was the last time we saw Julie. She passed not long after our visit, with her daughter by her side. We were so grateful to know how happy she was in her final years.
Julie’s story is a reminder that having a Housing Plan is only half the equation. The other half is knowing when it’s time to execute it. None of us knows exactly what the future holds, and none of us wants to imagine a moment when our choices become limited by circumstances beyond our control. But that is precisely why the hard conversations need to happen while we still have the ability to make our own decisions. A Housing Plan gives you options. Waiting too long can take those options away. Julie ultimately found a wonderful new chapter, surrounded by family, friends and a community that kept her engaged and active. But it took her daughter stepping in and making difficult decisions under pressure to get there. Planning ahead can make that transition easier for everyone.
If this sounds like you or someone you know, we’re here to have those conversations with dignity and tact. Contact us at (626) 483-5269 or at [email protected].
Stay tuned for our next Case Study, coming soon.
