Are you selling your parents home?

It’s emotional, time-consuming and closes a chapter in your life

No one ever looks forward to selling their parent’s home. But at some point, this task may be yours to tackle. Perhaps a parent is moving to a care facility, in with you or has passed away. Selling their home is a lot of work and often more complicated and emotional than parting with our own homes. For those families who get along, agree on most things and work together as a team, consider yourselves the lucky ones. Others are not so fortunate which makes the process of listing and showing the house or condo harder than ever.

It helps to be mindful that the selling of a parent’s home often leads to a form of grieving. Perhaps it is fond childhood memories, the loss of what used to be, or knowing that your parent has lost some of their abilities or passed away. It’s the closing of this chapter in your families’ life which makes this milestone even more physically and emotionally taxing for some of us.

Before you make a plan of ‘next steps’ to prepare the home for sale have you reached out to the professionals to know what your rights are?

Call your parents/family lawyer? Are your parents of sound mind to sign any paperwork? Who is the POA? If your parents have deceased, is the Will in probate?

Times like this can put the best of family relationships to the test and your siblings may be your business partners. Agreement on what updates or repairs (if any) are needed, when and if the house should be sold and the selling price. Deciding on what to do with valuable possessions or decades of miscellaneous “stuff” can also be overwhelming and cause distrust and tension between siblings.

There are so many points to consider during this process but here are a few to help get you started.

• Secure the house. It needs to be safe and still maintained. Change the door locks (you never know who your parents gave keys to), put the lights on timers and keep the heat, AC and water going.  You don’t want to deal with frozen pipes in the middle of winter or mold growing in the summer because the AC was turned off.

• Decide which repairs to do pre-sale and agree to the budget.  Document everything that has been repaired, replaced and added, including all upgrades such as new lighting, flooring and appliances.

• Clean up…who does what and when? Decide and document each person’s responsibilities and try and find as much common ground as possible when it comes to clearing out the home. What to do with the things from both her parents and grandparents that are stored there is challenging. This is a tough one because it brings back a lot of memories tangled up with the practical need to empty out the house and to divide everything up.  KEEP, SELL, DONATE, RECYCLE OR TOSS.

• Declutter. Reducing the amount of stuff in the house will make it look bigger and not so dated.

• What’s that smell? Stinky houses don’t sell. There could be cigar, cigarette, pet urine and old musty furniture smells in the house. Try your best to eliminate the sources of the odors and when possible, open windows, bake some cookies and add a few scented candles. 

The house has been decluttered, cleaned, repairs (if any) have been completed and all family members are in agreement with the next steps to list the home.

Perfect, its time to call us.

The Lennox Team are personally and professionally very familiar with the process of selling a parents home when they have been placed in a retirement home or have deceased. Our experience and knowledge will help guide you throughout the entire process. From preparing your home to list, answering questions, explaining the process, options and strategies on preparing/selling your home etc.

Helping others and building relationships is our priority.