What Should Families Look For in a Realtor?

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

This is a special presentation of Answers for Elders with Real Estate Fifty Five Plus. Good afternoon everyone. It’s life changes and transitions Saturday. I am so excited to have our again our wonderful real estate guru on transitions, Juli Ann Gibson of Real Estate Fifty Five Plus. Juli Ann is a wealth of knowledge everyone in the industry. I have known her for many years and she’s actually been kind of somebody that’s helped me through a lot of crisis, as with my friends as well. Juli Ann works specifically with seniors and their families and she has a network of realtors throughout greater Puget Sound and, as such, they really specialize in these kind of transitions, and so I’m really excited, Juli Ann, that you’re here. Welcome, great thanks to than I’m glad to be here again. There’s a lot of people out there looking for a realtor. What should families today look for? I know that obviously they could call your company, but they also could have family members or personal friends that they think, oh, this is a perfect person to help me. Great. There are some key questions that you want to ask when hiring an agent for real estate, traditional real estate, you have certain questions, but when you’re working with the senior and transition and a senior trans action is selling a home, you definitely want to hire someone who understands what that looks like. Right and we’re not talking about just the financial aspect of it, but also the emotional, the spiritual and the physical implications it will have on the senior and also in the family members. I agree, I agree. I know it’s it’s a it’s a very, very profound time for families. Sometimes, you know, the whole family member comes in and this is the home that they grew up in and so all of a sudden a realtor comes in and doesn’t really recognize all the emotions that are going on and in dynamics in your family. And what we have found is a lot of agents will come in and they’ll listening the property and getting it ready for market, getting a high price for it. They can do that aspect of it, but the transitional piece, on making sure that the seniors cared for and so or the adult children’s and getting the references and recommendations that are going to help them with the process. They don’t have that skill set right or vice versa, they’re not skilled at listing the property and they become more of a therapist to the family and that hinders the process also. So it’s really finding that combination. Yeah, one thing you did mention was a lot of people. Most people know at least one real statey agent that’s out there. Sure need to understand that we’re not all the same, and so the first thing that I would suggest that people do is get a pad and paper out and write some of these questions down. And the first one is you’re going to want to hire an agent that knows your local area. And so if you live in the Seattle area, let you live in West Seattle. You want to hire a listing agent that knows west Seattle absolutely, that has a history of listing and selling property in those areas. One, because they’re going to know the comparables and what the valuation of your property is and also, really important, other relationships that they have with buyers agents. Sure, because that’s who you’re going to be working with. Then you want to layer on top of that an agent that understands a senior transition and the transaction. And there’s some questions you can ask how they know what to do. So when someone comes in, they’re going to ask you specific questions that are more in line with where mom or dad are moving to and how quickly that needs to happen. Oftentimes when we go in to meet with family members, they don’t know where mom and dad are going right and so we’re going to make recommendations to hire someone to come in and work with them to make that change. What’s going to work best for mom or dad as far as their next living situation and and even on top of that, you know, wouldn’t you want to have somebody that’s connected to services, especially when is your parents house? How many of US families are out there having to handle a parent sale from? You know, we may live in Seattle and mom and dad might live in Tacoma. Are you going to go take care of all of these little details of getting a house ready for market? You want to be able to rely on someone that can handle that for you. Great, and it has, and we work a lot, especially with our probate program but we also work with a lot of families don’t that don’t live in Washington State. So either the senior has a home that they need to sell in Arizona, California or Florida. We have a network of agents throughout the United States that we find really understand the market and then we coach and consult for the senior piece. So that’s one component of it. When they’re here locally, when we’re looking at doing some changes to a home that need to be made because the person that’s going to be purchasing it is getting alone, there are things that need that are requirements, the furnace, the roof chanting. So what we do? We have a network of people that we work with that, number one, we’ve vetted and worked with in the past that provide exceptional service. Number two is that they’re willing to give some sort of a discount to our senior client or in that case that a senior doesn’t have funds to pay up front, we’re able to negotiate on behalf of for them that they’re going to get paid at escrow. That’s awesome. That is awesome and so often times, you know, if seniors in a big house and they want to know what are kind of the breakdowns within the seenion near Niche of real estate, where do they actually go? You know, what are the options as far as housing options. Obviously there’s downsizing is one of them, right, so can’t. Well, we call it right sizing because there are many that are and you can’t use age as an option because there are as a niche. Right. So you have people that are right sizing, and that could be the empty Nester, if their kids have gone off to college and now they’re going to moving from their large home and they’re going to be buying a condo in downtown Seattle, but they also want to buy a secondary Condo in Arizona. Yeah, that can happen at fifty five, but it can also happen at seventy five. Sure. Then we have clients that are looking to simplify their life and so they’re going to move from a home to possibly a condo or a fifty five and older community. The next is somebody who has either cognitive or physical impairment or challenges. So they may be looking at a dull family home or assisted living. They may also decide to stay in their home and bring somebody on and there’s a product out there called a reverse mortgage that may work in their best interest. Right. Keep in mind, though, the older we get, when we start losing our peers and we’re no longer able to drive, we’re going to become lonely and through really taking that into account is you know, we’re human and part of our human nature is to be social interact with one another. M So when we age we really want to take that into consideration. Then there are people that are very proactive and say I want to age in place in a community that provides all services. Right, so that’s would be a continuing care retirement community. They can move in very independent. If they need assisted living, that would be there. If they need memory care, skilled nursing, Rehab, the whole gamut is within the continuing care retirement everything to move. It can actually move with them. They can move. Yeah, I can move with them. And then what we’re starting to see are people that are deciding that they want to live together jointly, not just in a home, but they’re choosing to live in a retirement community or system living. So it maybe sisters, are best friends, cousins. Often times we’re seeing a nine year old woman and a seven year old woman, you know, mother daughter. They’re moving into those communities. It’s going to cost them a lot less money when they share space. So I’m assuming we had talked in another show about your aging and choice. With choice. Yes, workshops. The thing that’s, I think, interesting, though too. I’m sure that when you meet with families you can help them explore what the best option is when they start to say I want to make a change. Actually, you don’t want to hire us to do that. Oh okay, so we’re like, we know, we’re licensed real estate agents. Okay, that’s what we’re license to practice. What you’d want to do is hire a senior housing advisor, and when I mean by higher them, you’re not actually, in most cases, going to be paying for their services. What they’ll do is they’ll come in and meet with you or do a phone consultation and again, they’re going to hit those four aspects, sure, the financial and physical, spiritual and emotional needs of the senior. Based on those, for a sessments, they’re going to tell you these are the best options for mom or dad or the best options for you. Wow, and the weep till we partner with them. They real estate piece is huge. It totally is, because if most people are relying on their net proceeds from the cell of their home for their future living. They need to know that number up front. Right. Are Coming in early on is huge, right, right, and then obviously helping coordinate with the families if they are, you know, maybe sun is handling the sale of the house. There’s repairs that need to be made updates that need to be done. You can go in and pretty much just sess what that we do when we come in and meet with the family and look at the property itself. When we leave, we provide the family what we call the prelist worksheet. It’s kind of your honey do, yeah, she and it’s anything from minor repairs to major maintenance, but also takes into cosmetic changes. oftentimes some cosmetic changes you have to do. Sure, example, of the carpets and really bad shape and would be a hazard for someone if they were walking through. They might trip. Often Times, if we do just paint and carpet and some other little cosmetics we’re going to get if you spend fifty cents, you’re going to get a dollar back. Sure, most of our clients are willing to do that because they’re going to see we’re going to sell our home for more money, but we’re also going to sell it quicker well. And the other thing, obviously, is an adult child. You’re going to be probably ending up spending more money in the care of your parent if you don’t do it up for absolutely and absolutely. You know, one of the things that you did ask about when we are going to hire an agent. One thing I love just to talk about briefly. It’s certifications and designations. Hmmm. And in most industries when someone has a specialized designation or certification behind their name or beside their name, for example teaching or engineering or a tray or physician, they specialize. They go to school for sometimes years right to learn that trade and that niche. Within real estate, our certifications and designations are given out by taking anywhere from up to thirty clock hour classes and paying an annual membership. And you can call yourself a senior specialist in real estate, you may never have listed at home and never have worked with a senior. So just because someone has a designation in our industry does not mean that they have the skills, experience, background or success to back it up. So ask you that question important. So at the end of the day, bottom line is, how many seniors have you worked with? Oh God, how many? I mean, that’s a question that you should ask every single realtor. What do you know about these you know this process? What kind of you know experiences if you had? These are all valuable questions, I’m sure they are. And, more importantly, one of the things with real estate fifty five plus that we found to be very beneficial is it is an emotional process, and real estate, even in the very, very best circumstances, is emotional. When you’re working with mom or dad not doing well, they’re in crisis. Now you’re having to sell their home and not really understand exactly what the next steps are. Having the ability to call some of our past clients and we give you their names and numbers, you can call them and ask all sorts of questions about the experience that they’ve had with our with our agents, sure that has more credibility, I think, than anything. Absolutely, absolutely so, Julianne, how do we reach you? You’re going to reach me either on our website, which is realestatefiftyfiveplus.net. We also have a one eight hundred number, which is one eight hundred, nine hundred and sixty four, one thousand five hundred and five three. Great. Thank you so much for being on the show and of course you can always reach Juli Ann on answers for elders as well. Thanks for coming in today. Thanks, Suzanne. This has been a special presentation of Answers for Elders with Real Estate Fifty Five Plus. For more information for Real Estate Fifty Five Plus, go to agewithchoicecom. That’s agewithchoice.com.