Downsizing

Downsizing Seminar at Livermore Valley Senior Living

Are you thinking about simplifying your life and don’t know where to start?

Concerned about making a move when you also have a home to sell?

Worried about what to do with all the “stuff” you’ve accumulated?

Learn the TRUTH about what it means to make a post-retirement move in today’s market by attending this information packed 1 hour seminar at Livermore Valley Senior Living.

Bring your questions and ASK THE EXPERTS!

April 30th 2:30 PM
Livermore Valley Senior Living
3356 East Avenue, Livermore, CA

About Our Experts:

Laurie Moore is the Bay Area Manager of Gentle Transitions. Gentle Transitions is a pioneer and specialist in the art of senior relocation. The mission of our service is to ease the moving process for seniors and their families. They help plan, coordinate and supervise all aspects of a move. From planning and packing to picture hanging and making beds, they take care of every detail. Their commitment and goal is that their clients are comfortably and securely settled in their new homes the evening of their move.

Annette Junell is one of the top real estate agents local senior communities refer to when they have a client moving into their community. She has been assisting homeowners move since 2000. She and her husband Brett specialize in assisting Seniors who are looking to move from their current home to a more easily maintained home whether that is a smaller home or to one of our many local Senior Communities. They handle every aspect of the home sale with the goal to make the transition as smooth as possible for their clients.

The Challenges of Selling the Family Home

Working with our senior clients is a very rewarding experience on many levels for Annette and I.

At the same time, there are unique challenges that we encounter that don’t occur with our younger clients.

For a client selling the family home that they have lived in for 30, 40 or 50+ years, this can be a stressful time. When it is “the family home”, and adult children and grandchildren are involved, the challenges and stress are often magnified.

We find ourselves having to address many unique and sometimes difficult circumstances that don’t occur with younger clients. When children and grandchildren are involved, there are a lot family dynamics to work with. There is also a need to be sensitive, while at the same time, address how to get an outdated or cluttered home ready to sell. We also find ourselves typically playing a more active role than is required with our other buyers and sellers.

While challenging, these situations also provide us with an opportunity build great relationships with an entire family members from multiple generations as we help them all cope during sometimes trying times.

Here are just some of the unique situations we encounter:

People Issues: Dealing with the Family

Issue: Emotions Are Running High

Selling a home is always an emotional time. But the circumstances surrounding selling a family home can bring out more emotional issues than usual. After all, this is a house where now-adult children were raised, and it holds more memories and sentimental importance than a recently-acquired home. Everyone could feel they have a stake in the outcome of the sale.

A large part of our role is to act as a calming force and facilitator in order to help smooth the choppy emotional waters and make the sale, “sail” through for all concerned. This is done by remaining ever helpful to all parties and maintaining good communications.

Issue: Too Many People Are Involved

We often find ourselves dealing with more PEOPLE than usual when selling the family home. And several of those people can be sporting a fine array of emotional issues attached to the sale of and decisions about the home. There is the owner (or owners) and their children and possibly their grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews and others.

Our first goal when becoming involved is to determine who our principal contact will be. We have a duty and obligation to deal with the owner directly unless the owner authorizes us to deal with family members or other trusted individuals. This can sometimes be challenging when a family member wants to help and this isn’t the wish of the owner.

A relative or caregiver can be extremely helpful by acting as a guide, interpreter and facilitator to an elderly owner. With that said, it can be very challenging if more than one person is attempting to fill this role, hence we always ask for one person to be the primary contact.

Issue: The House is Woefully Outdated

More than once or twice we’ve walked into a home and felt like we just stepped through a 30-, 40- or even 50-year time portal.

In this situation, we have two options to move forward with, depending on the situation.

The first is to sell the home with minimal or no changes. The second option if the seller/family has the time, the money, and the inclination, is for us to recommend updates that will provide a return for the investment in addition to causing the house to sell faster and for more money.

What kind of changes do we typically consider?

Paint is always the first and best return on investment option. Removing wallpaper and those popular “borders” from the 1980s goes a long way toward updating the look without breaking the bank. Some of the less desirable, but unchangeable, features can be artfully camouflaged-or perhaps featured for their retro charm-with skillful staging techniques.

Flooring is usually the next best investment. Changing out the 40 year old green carpet does wonders to getting buyer interest and the home sold.

For some homeowners, there priority is not to have their life disrupted with work the house, especially sometimes when they have pets, and they would rather take a slightly lower price over inconvenience and added stress.

Issue: Clutter, Clutter, Everywhere!

Many homes we’ve sold have initially been overflowing with “stuff” and have needed significant help before the home can be successfully shown to potential buyers.

By being sensitive, understanding and explaining the drawbacks of showing a house that’s too full, we are able to then give options on how we can help de-clutter the home to improve a home’s resale value.

In many cases, our clients are moving from a family home into a smaller house, a condo, an apartment or an assisted living situation. In these scenarios, the amount of space available will be dramatically reduced, so we explain that now is the perfect time to share treasures with the rest of the family. Divesting the home of furniture, heirlooms, collections and items of sentimental and financial worth will minimize the expense of moving, plus it will eliminate double-handling and the need for offsite, possibly long-term storage.

These are just some of the challenges we encounter in the sale of the family home. For the most part it is more about the “emotional move” than the “physical move” when it comes to our long term homeowners.

A great resource to learn more is our “Downsizing Made Easy” guide.

Relieved us of a lot of stress

We were very impressed with all the people involved with the sale of our house: the photographer, the designer, contractors, and other agents brought together by Annette.

The quick response from Annette to any of our concerns relieved us of a lot of stress. She kept in contact with us even when out of town. We knew we could depend on her to address any of our problems. The sale went very smoothly. – Jim and Barbara C.

Very Impressed

Video Transcript:

I chose Team Junell because I thought I would like to have a husband and wife team. The retirement community recommended some realtors and Brett and Annette were on the list and I checked out their website and I was impressed with their website. I saw that they had sold homes in my area. And I saw from the website that they were familiar with people moving to a retirement setting. They had clients who were my age, but they also had younger clients and I thought that was important also because I thought it would be a younger family who would buy my house.

I felt that Annette and Brett worked seamlessly together to make the process an easy process. They held a seminar at the Senior Center talking about how to downsize and they had their move manager there. I was very impressed with them and that has been very helpful to the moving process, also. Brett and Annette coordinated with the other services, with the title company and with the various inspections. And so they’ve been very thoughtful in the process.

I was very excited with the price I got on my home. I actually signed a contract with Brett and Annette long before I knew I was going to move, but they said we shouldn’t put the house on the market unless I had place to live, which I didn’t until closer to my move day. I was very pleased with the offers I got on the home when it came time to price it and put it on the market. They priced it for a good price and held an open house one weekend and asked people to present offers the next Wednesday. And I was very pleased. There were thirteen offers all over the asking price. And so I’m very happy with the price that I got for the house.

I was very happy with working with the team of both Brett and Annette and then their assistant. I was in contact with her and she helped coordinate some of the inspection appointments. And so I really liked the idea of a team approach in selling the house.

In closing, I would say if you need to sell a house, I recommend that you contact Brett and Annette Junell and their team.

Pat K.

Specialize in working with Seniors

Hugh and l thank you for providing the care, concern and attention to detail that made it possible for us to move from our home to a senior living residence with a minimum of confusion.

From the beginning, you provided a clear picture of what we needed to do to make our house as salable as possible. We feel that Ann, who did the staging, did a great job. And the people she worked with who did the alterations were very competent and cooperative.

The house sold quickly and the price we received exceeded our expectations. But we especially appreciate the relocation people from Gentle Transitions. I don’t know how we would have managed without them. They were great, and by the end of the day we moved in, TV, phones and computer were all working. Pictures were attractively grouped and hung on the wall, and our household goods were stored in logical locations in cupboards and cabinets. When I look around and see other people who did not have relocation specialists and are living amid chaos with boxes full of their possessions for days on end, I realize how fortunate we are.

Thank you much for your support throughout. And thank Claire for always being there when I called.

Sincerely,

Barbara H.

Letter from Hempills (PDF)

You were out to please me and you did

Video Transcript:

I’m here with Isabel Curry and we’re just gonna talk a little bit about the process of her getting her home sold. Tell me what you liked best about working with Team Junell?

The fact that we were successful, that we got the house sold. And once the house was sold the whole operation seemed to move quite quickly and smoothly. There’s always something about selling your home that’s a little emotional and more than a little stressful, however Team Junell seemed to understand that and be patient with me as a seller and helped me through the whole process.

I found that anytime I called you, you would respond and bless you, you had an easy phone number to memorize so I could call in the number and you were very good about answering questions and making certain that I felt that you were overseeing the whole process, so I really appreciated that.

Tell us a little bit about the team you experienced; having a team working for you versus just a single agent. Did you find a benefit?

Yes, yes, I did. There was always someone who could comfort me and let me know that whatever concerns I had were being addressed. It worked very well. Anytime I called, somebody would answer. If it wasn’t a live person, there was always a message, and he would really get back to me.

Great. So did you feel that we had your best interests at heart?

Oh, very much so, yes.

So tell us about that. What would make you say that?

Well, for one thing, you treasure your reputation. You want to make sure that people who use your team will say good things about you, and your reputation is one of the most precious parts of your whole operation. So that’s what I felt quite confident that you were out to please me and you did.