Practical Transitions

Whenever we consider a new property for a lifestyle change or a job relocation or just for pleasure, the same sunny song plays in perfect pitch : Select your new home, hire a moving company and host a housewarming!

To illustrate how much complexity this glosses over, imagine World War II in a similar set of happy talk terms: Select your French Coastal Beach, Send Troops on Ocean Voyages, and Host a Big Parade!

As a practical matter the realtor and mover do the best they can to simplify the process for us. They are experts at their specific responsibilities in the residential asset procurement. Many of our clients here at The Home Zone Company actually go even farther down the outsource-the-complexity path, hiring us to manage the soup to nuts process of first seeking out and then creating day-one readiness for a new lifestyle asset.

On the far right side of the complexity scale is the lifestyle transition that is characterized by downsizing, resizing or simplifying. I take great pains to make sure our clients have a realistic set of expectations about the timing, pain and magnitude of that process. Based on my client feedback, my checklists and project plans, here's a rule-of-thumb, perfect world timeline for our lifestyle transition moves. Click to enlarge.






As you can see, the biggest/longest pain point in this chart, which again is based on real life client experiences and feedback, is rightsizing the belongings for the new residential asset. Rightsizing is the housing industry equivalent of Lord Valdemort. Nobody says the name, and most fear it. Your realtors and movers (who as transaction professionals are compensated solely on the basis of total square footage sold, by the way) always hope Rightsizing is the same thing as Upsizing.

If you aren't Upsizing, you might like to read the book I give to my clients. I'm a big fan of Ciji Ware's book Right Sizing Your Life. Her writing validates the emotions and difficulties associated with a lifestyle transition that involves shedding tangible belongings. She reports on her own struggle to affirmatively make lifestyle choices, and empowers us to move through our own specific challenges. She does a good job of validating the pain while effectively laying out tools to emotionally and practically navigate a right sizing transition.