A house is a place. A transition is a family.
For families in the greater Nashville area, Murfreesboro, Christiana, Shelbyville, Watertown, Manchester and Tullahoma who are figuring out what happens to a parent's home.
Complimentary. Confidential. No obligation.
If you have said any of this out loud.
I don't know where to begin with my parents.
How can we keep their house if they go into assisted living?
I don't even know what we qualify for.
I don't know what to do with all their stuff.
None of that means you have to decide anything today.
The move families make trying to protect the house.
The step families take most often, usually with good intentions and usually before anyone calls a realtor, is quietly changing whose name is on the house. Putting the deed in a child's name. Signing it over to a sibling. It feels protective.
It is also the step that most often narrows what a family can do later, and it is very hard to undo.
I am not an attorney and I do not answer that question. I work with elder law attorneys here in Middle Tennessee, and my job is to make sure the question gets answered by the right person before anything gets signed.
“Not in a hurry, and not before an attorney.”
One family, two states, one day.
An older client had quite a bit of equity in her Tennessee home. She was tired of being far from family now that her husband had passed, and she wanted to live in South Carolina with them. We got her Tennessee home under contract while one of our agents in South Carolina was out shopping with her. We closed both homes on the same day from South Carolina. She never spent a night in a hotel. She said we made a very hard situation so easy.
Both homes closed the same day
Zero nights in a hotel
One point of contact across two states
One past result. Every family and every situation is different.
Just a conversation. No paperwork, no pressure.
Where the market sits.
$457,500
Median sale price
33 days
Average time on market
58 days
Listing to contract, up about 14 percent from a year ago
5 months
Close to five months of inventory
A home that has not been touched in twenty years takes noticeably longer to sell than it did last year.
The family carries taxes, insurance, utilities and care costs the whole time it sits.
What I actually do.
I have already done this
Not as an agent. As an only child, with my own parents, and nobody to hand the hard questions to.
The right people, in order
I work with elder law attorneys, assisted living communities and skilled nursing facilities here in Middle Tennessee. I am not the one who answers the legal questions. I am the one who makes sure they get answered in the right order.
The house costs you nothing first
I pay for the pre listing home inspection, and I provide a one year home warranty for the buyer. Your family is already paying for care. The house should not need money before it can make money.
Both ends of the move
We have a national office. If the move is near family in another state, both sides get coordinated by one point of contact instead of two agents who have never spoken.
One step at a time, in the order that works.
We look at the house and what it would realistically bring.
We get the legal question answered by an attorney before anything changes.
We figure out where your parent is actually going.
We decide whether the house gets prepared or goes as it is.
We sort the belongings before showings start.
We line the closing up with the move, so nobody is living out of a suitcase.
I write this out with real dates so the whole thing fits on one page.
All of their things.
Forty or fifty years in one house is the part that stops most families. Not the sale. Sorting the house is not really about the house, and everybody knows it.
Estate sale companies
Donation pickups
Haulers
Movers
Dividing things among family
Nobody is doing the lifting alone, and this does not happen in a single weekend.
About MK.
My dad was in retail and got promoted almost every year, so I moved seventeen times before I was married. Then I did all of this for my own parents as an only child. Retirement income, selling a home to pay for skilled nursing, trusts, elder home care. I learned it the hard way because there was nobody to ask.
I closed thirty four homes in my first year in real estate. My clients tend to become lifelong friends.
I am not trying to list a house. I am trying to help your family keep what your family earned.
One more family I think about often. A widowed client had been in assisted living and then a nursing home for a couple of years. She decided she would rather hire home nurses to visit and live in a small house than spend what was left on nursing home care. We found her exactly the right place and moved her from the nursing home into her own house, right down the street from her daughter. She was very happy.
When you are ready.
I will look at the house, tell you what it would realistically bring as it stands, tell you what it would take to get it ready, and tell you who else needs to be in the room before anything gets decided.
A lot of the families I sit down with are not moving this year, and that is completely fine.
It's just a chat. Nothing to sign.