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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.
It has been a busy August here at The Home Zone Company, with one long road trip after another. I have been driving around the mid-south focusing on waterfront or golf community townhomes near school towns like Charlottesville, Knoxville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Houston.
I have a new client category comprised of parents of boarding school or college bound kids. Not shocking at all to you perhaps; but when you factor in that this category of clients is my age cohort - -well let's just say I've reframed my thoughts about the necessity for botox and social security.
Upon my return home from searching for school houses, I was tickled to see Louise Tutelian's article in Thursday's New York Times about this new trend of parents who purchase secondary residential assets that are convenient to their kids in college.
This sector of the business is the result of a matrix of interests and conditions. Here are the 5 conditions that inevitably lead to someone hiring our company for research and "home-launch" of an Off to School house:
a. a college or boarding school bound child has an active sports or arts talent
b. in or near a scenic or exciting or cultural area
c. where there are limited comfortable rental or hospitality choices
d. but the parents do not wish to relinquish their mildly chaotic "friends and family" lifestyle with in-laws, special friends, nannies, grandparents, roommates and dogs (rarely cats)
e. and they and the extended family are their child's biggest fans.
What specifically they are looking in this residential asset falls into two categories, inside and outside.
Outside is the most client specific - -whether they are forest hikers, horse lovers, latte drinkers, golfers, boaters, medically dependent, culture vultures etc. --and drives the initial location scouting parameters. Once we have identified the ecosystem, the specific location choices are dependent on visual appeal of the approach and surrounding properties along with appropriate levels of quiet and privacy.
On the inside, this client group is attracted to small work area kitchens with walk in pantries that open onto dining areas that can easily accommodate furnishings for 12. The living area must have over-sized french door access to 10' or deeper porches and landscaped stone patios. Elevators for 2 are in place or must be installable with little disruption to the floor plan. The laundry is front loading and in two areas: one on the upper level nearest the bedrooms that the children and guests will be using and one near the lower level secondary entrance. Tubs are out -- over sized walk in steam showers with built in seating. two or more heads and secondary hand held sprayers are in.
The form that all these "insides" take that is most popular, surprisingly to me, is the high end townhouse or patio home, as long as it has some type of view. Supporting a gardening crew and property manager for a school house is a non starter. Although my clients insist these are limited term investments and they factor in cost recovery in five years, I have to wonder if these bijoux bohemihomes will become the primary residence as my forty and fifty-something clients start thinking about their right-sized 60s and 70s.
At any rate, this has been a fun new category. With the exception of speed traps on I-81 in Virginia, which is an entirely different story, Off to School lifestyle provisioning is like, so now!
Here at Homezone we do a lot of research on various neighborhoods and properties that are appropriate for Empty Nesters. Of course everybody is somebody's baby...and our age 40+ Empty Nester clients often hire us to look into residential options for their age 70+ parents.
If you want to star in your own version of Family Feud, ambush an Elder with an unsolicited report from a presumptious stranger about aging in place. Better yet, arrange a face-to-face family meeting in the Elder's dining room and have the presumptious stranger ask nosy questions and present a dossier of floor plans. "Is she married to the mortician?" was one unforgettable bon mot that was tossed by an ambushed Elder.
Here are some tips in approaching conversations about lifestyle and the home with Elders that have helped me through the prickliest of client meetings. Standard caveats here - -not everything works for everyone - -but here's my high level road map.
1. Be fluent in the lifestyle perspectives that are top of mind to your elders. Reading lifestyle posts in Time Goes By and Aging Hipsters is my approach.
2. Use language that is open, honest and direct. For instance, "Mrs. X, I am an expert in lifestyle provisioning. It's a new approach to how we enable our homes as we age. Your daughter has hired me to share my expertise with the two of you."
3. Get the "nevers" out and honor them as short-term boundaries to the conversation, e.g. "What are the three things you are never going to change about the way you live?" The answers don't have to be scientifically supportable. Your goal is to get a window onto the pain points for the conversation so that you can navigate.
4. Scenario based discussions are more productive than a litany of questions. "Let's talk about living at the lake...describe your day." will elicit a broader range of actionable information, faster.5. Use visual aids, such as decision trees and project timelines, to minimize the perception and mitigate the reality of memory loss or misstatements. Avoid the downward spiral that starts with "But Mom you said...."
Finally, the setting of these early conversations has an impact as well. Our two most successful meetings (the miracle meetings, as the clients call them) were in a quiet little park at the covered picnic table area and at the conference room of the Elder's wealth manager.
Physically and mentally, an Elder's home is a sanctuary that requires an invitation, even if you did grow up there.
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