Tips to Facilitate a Senior Home Sale, Part 2

– And welcome back everyone to Answers for Elders. And I am here again with Rebecca Bomann from SASH Senior Home Sales Services, SASH Realty. SASH stands for Sell a Senior’s Home. And the beauty of what I love about what SASH does is that, Rebecca, you have devoted your entire career into making things easy for our older adults. And this is a big issue with Alzheimer’s and dementia. because it does require a lot of paperwork, a lot of legal documents, a lot of different things like that at and this is a good topic to talk about. So you’ve got some tips for us.

– I do, and I work with families on a monthly basis who are in the middle of this situation. Monthly, there’s no month that goes by that I don’t have at least a few families that I’m serving right now where there’s powers of attorney and there’s someone with dementia the family. And so I’m bringing these tips from the trenches. We’re we’re talking about real stuff here. So the thing we wanted to start with, Suzanne, and I know you’ve talked about this on your show in other segments, is how important it is to get the legal paperwork in place for a power of attorney for your senior loved one. And people do not want to have these conversations, because it means that there’s gonna come a time when you’re very competent, bright, active, athletic, very sharp mom or dad can’t make decisions for themselves anymore, and they don’t want to think about that time. Nobody wants to imagine that that’s a possibility. But when families don’t do it, when they don’t take the time to be proactive and get those documents in place, then they get caught in crises where somebody needs to be making the decisions and no one has the authority to do so. And so we just encourage families: you don’t have to be a senior to need a power of attorney. You can get one when you’re 18, when you’re 30, when you’re 45, when you’re 55, who’s your power of attorney? Have it done. Have it done right. And so you had some things you wanted to talk about as well with how to choose that person to help you with their paperwork.

– Absolutely true. A lot of times, families come to me and say yeah, we have our attorney and I go, oh, really? Yeah, we downloaded it off the Internet. Well, that is not your best friend. To understand the difference between a power of attorney that comes off the internet — really every senior situation is different. Assets are different, their their emotional mental capacity is different. The family dynamics are different. And to have just some form that comes off the Internet, it’s like taking an aspirin when you really need a surgeon. It’s not it’s not gonna necessarily be the best tool for a family. And people will say, well, I don’t want to spend money and go to an attorney. It will probably cost you more money by not having it done properly, and the time and anguish that you’re going to go through if you don’t have the proper documentation is huge.

– Maybe you have three adult children. One is the first power of attorney. If they’re not able, there’s a successor power of attorney. If they’re not able, there’s a third power of attorney. Those downloadable POAs from the internet are not gonna accommodate that. Also, is it effective immediately, or is it effective only upon a doctor’s letter of incompetency? Those are a distinction that folks don’t think about. And also there’s a power of attorney for medical, and then a different set of language for financial power of attorney. And so you just want to make sure it’s done right. It can be a few hundred dollars, with an affordable attorney nearby, and it’s so worth it. I’m working with a family right now where the son lives out of state. Mom was declining, he had her power of attorney ready, he sent it to me in an email. We got it recorded with the county. He was able to sign papers for his mom two days later to get her house sold. There was no scramble, there was no stress, and we were able to begin and get funds in for her care immediately.

Contrast that with another client I took care of this year, where there wasn’t a power of attorney. His wife is on title, but she never signed a power of attorney over to her husband. He couldn’t sell his home because no one could sign for her, and he had to go through three months of a legal conservatorship through the court just to sell his own home. So, that’s the difference between having those papers prepared and not. And so that’s our first tip is if you haven’t got it done, do it. Have the hard conversation with mom or dad and say, listen, we cannot wait for this, we need to do this now. We’ll tuck it away, get it notarized, make multiple copies, put it in a safe place. You’ll be so glad that you did.

Absolutely. That’s a huge, huge thing, and it’s peace of mind for that person to know what the expectations are of them when they say yes, I’ll be your power of attorney. I just had somebody come to me and said, I would like a friend of mine to be my executor when I die. But Suzanne, I want you to help him. Would you be willing to? And right away I went, yes. But I had some stipulations. Between this person who’s going to have the last say, this is somebody I don’t know, so you need to tell us who you want to have the last say. And so those are some things even in the whole thing of a house sale with an executor, I would would assume that that applies as well.

– Exactly, it really does, and so get your legal paperwork in order. We can’t emphasize it enough.

The next tip we want to talk about: If mom or Dad are going to be present, and involved with all of the steps ahead — and when I say involved, I don’t mean they’re going to be part of the decision making, but they’re going to be in the home still, they’re gonna be in the living room, they’re going to be in the dining room — choose professionals to come in and help your family through this journey who are experienced and understand the delicacy of talking to someone who has advancing dementia or Alzheimer’s. You don’t want someone just barreling in, just because they have a real estate license, and talking about things that are going to cause anxiety and send the person with dementia into a disorientation, into an emotional tailspin, confusing them. This is a very delicate touch, and it requires experience, it requires empathy, and knowing how to navigate around those big decisions while mom or dad are there, and how to take the important things out of earshot or out of sight.

– What you’re saying is so important. That’s probably one of my bug-a-boos with the real estate industry, because they give a “Senior Real Estate Specialist” certification, but they don’t teach realtors any of this stuff. This is where I get frustrated. Just because somebody has that title SRES, it doesn’t mean squat, it doesn’t mean anything, because the most important piece is that emotional understanding of where that person is at. Understanding how to communicate — the communication process is the biggest piece.

– Absolutely critical, And I took that SRES class, Suzanne. I sat through the whole thing, 16 hours, and they don’t teach how to work with homeowners who have advancing dementia or Alzheimer’s, and so, for families that are choosing a real estate agent, a couple of tips: You can actually vet them offsite first. Meet at a Starbucks or a local restaurant, have coffee, talk to them, ask them what is your philosophy of caring for people who have Alzheimer’s or dementia. Find out how they talk about it, see how their inner-personal skills are before bringing them into the home where mom or dad is, and see you know how they act around those topics. Also, say, what is your experience? How many times have you been involved with the situation like this, and find out if they’re experienced, and other elder care providers might be able to give a reference to the real estate agent that is sensitive to that. I helped a couple recently who she, I knew he was her caregiver. She had dementia, and I knew that every time we sat in the living room together, she would forget who I was after our visit, and I’d go back and visit again and talk to her husband, and she would introduce herself to me over and over on each successive visit, even though we saw each other 30 or 40 times over the course of a few months. I just gently said hello, it’s great to see you. How is your day going? I just smiled, brought a smile to her face. I didn’t try to make her remember me. I’m just there to help her feel comfortable and at ease.

– You’re there in the moment. To really understand, to work with a realtor like that, they have to understand and where the mind is. You know, what’s going on, and that it’s going to be different the next time you show up. So I love that you’re bringing this up.

– Yeah, and having the sensitivity also that the realtor shouldn’t be coming in and putting a long to-do list on the shoulders of the caregiver, because the caregiver already has a 24-hour job. The realtor shouldn’t be coming in and saying, all right, by Thursday next week or by the first of next month, let’s have the garage cleaned out, get the outside painted, get the driveway pressure washed. They should instead say, I’m here to help you. I have resources, you have an important job and your hands are full. Let me support you. I’ll bring in this, I’ll arrange that, I’ll coordinate this. And this is what, of course, SASH does, is we come in and we bring those resources, so they don’t have that long to do list.

– I am thrilled that we’re talking about this more, and I bet you have more tips coming.

– I do.
– All right, we’ll be right back right after this.