Or listen on Buzzsprout, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Season 2, Episode 70. About fifty minutes.
What We Discussed
Lisa Hartung built Giving Grief Grace for the sandwich generation, the people caring for a parent while raising their own kids, and she is living the question herself right now with family in Maine. So this was not a pitch. It was two people talking through the part of a parent's move that nobody warns you about, and it ran long because there was a lot to say.
1. The house is item twenty-one on a list where the first twenty matter more.
Most families' first instinct comes in a hospital hallway. Mom fell, she is going to a continuing care community, so let's sell the house. But the house sits behind the fall or the diagnosis that started all of it, the hospital discharge, whether she is safe alone at night, who has power of attorney and whether it is the right kind, telling her, siblings who do not agree, somebody's job and somebody's marriage absorbing the whole thing, medications, meals, Medicare versus Medicaid, touring places, the move itself, the pets, the vehicles, a VA benefit nobody applied for, whether there is a will, whether she should still be driving, who is paying for what, and forty years of stuff in the house. There is a professional for every one of those. The house before it is ready to list is the gap I fill.
2. The $200,000 mistake.
This is the one I harp on the most, because families make it while trying to be smart. Say mom deeds the house to the kids for $100,000 under what it is worth, planning to apply for Medicaid in a couple of years. Medicaid looks back five years, finds that transfer, and values it, usually off the tax assessment. Then it divides the $100,000 shortfall by the state's monthly nursing home rate. At $10,000 a month, that is ten months the family has to pay out of pocket before Medicaid helps. So the $100,000 of equity that went to the kids has to be paid a second time. The family lost $200,000 instead of $100,000, and the penalty clock does not even start until mom has spent down to about $2,000 in assets, which is the worst possible moment to find out.
The same math applies when the $100,000 goes to a stranger. Take the first cash offer because the house is full of stuff and has some deferred maintenance, and you gave the discount to a wholesaler and you still owe the penalty. The fix is a couple of thousand dollars of planning with an elder law attorney or a Medicaid planner before anything is signed, not after.
3. Selling the house to qualify for Medicaid can disqualify you.
Families say we have to sell the house to get Medicaid. Often the opposite is true. In many states the home is exempt, at least for a while, and there are ways to keep it that way. Sell a $200,000 house with no mortgage while you are applying, and you now have $200,000 in cash and no Medicaid at all until it is spent on care. The cash buyer who closes in seven days does not tell you that. You find out when the money is already sitting in the bank.
4. There are five ways to sell, and most families are shown one.
Ninety to ninety-five percent of people hire the first listing agent they interview, and the cash offer works the same way: you call the buyer who mailed you every month, they sit at your kitchen table, they see the stuff and the deferred maintenance, they make one low offer, and you take it because you are embarrassed. Here is the rest of the menu. List it as is with an agent who specializes in that kind of property, which is why I never take the listing myself. Put it on the open market as is with an agent who works with investors, so everyone can bid. Bring four or five vetted cash buyers into competition with each other, with someone confirming they are real buyers and not wholesalers. Or do the strategic repairs first: a dumpster, a deep clean, carpet, paint, light fixtures, four to ten thousand dollars, and sell for thirty or forty thousand more. Not the fifty thousand dollar kitchen that gets thirty back and that the next owner rips out anyway. Owner financing and lease options exist too, and those are a conversation for the right family.
Slowing down is what makes any of this possible. As long as the mortgage, taxes, and insurance are handled, there is time. When we slow down, we can still move fast and get the highest and best price.
5. Two bags a day, and do not start with the photo albums.
For the stuff, I start families on two bags a day, one to throw away and one to donate. If there is only a month, it becomes four piles: keep, donate, trash, and decide later, and Sunday is later. The rule that matters is to start where nothing hurts. Not the collectibles, not the photo albums, not the bedroom. Start in a closet, the pantry, the kitchen cabinet full of Christmas trinkets, the garage. And for a closet nobody can face, turn every hanger backwards and wear things for a month. Whatever is still backwards goes.
6. Plan for who your parent will be in five years, not who they are today.
I have no argument with aging in place. Grab bars and non-slip floors are cheap. The question is the walker and the wheelchair three to five years out, because widening doorways is a big undertaking, and the plan has to be priced against that version of your parent. The same thinking applies to funding. Continuing care runs ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month in a lot of places, and what happens at ninety-three when she is doing great and the money is gone is a question for a financial advisor and a CPA. I stay in my lane, which is the house and the protection of it, and I point families to the right people for the rest.
7. The farmhouse I would handle differently today.
Lisa asked for a story, and the ones I tell are from my own buying days, because I can say what I did and what I would do now. A sinking farmhouse with $109,000 owed on it, a daughter who had just inherited it and wanted it off her books, and my offer of $104,000. She brought $5,000 to closing to be rid of it. I remodeled the house and broke even, sold the side lot for $40,000, then cleared the three acres behind it into three one-acre lots at $65,000 apiece. Today I would never remodel that house. I would sell the lots, pay for the survey and the road with the first one, and that family would have walked away with roughly $200,000 instead of writing a check at closing. That is the whole reason I switched sides.
One more thing that came up, because Lisa asked about the siblings. It is usually not a rift. It is an information gap. One sibling is here doing everything and not conveying it to the one four states away, and the one four states away says just sell it. I can be the bad guy in that room, because parents do not want to be told what to do by their children. My own parents still argue about the price they got for the house I grew up in.
About Giving Grief Grace
Lisa Hartung lost her mother to pancreatic cancer and turned that grief into a weekly podcast for people in the middle of caregiving and loss, with expert guests, real stories, and practical tools. New episodes every Sunday.
Where to Start If This Is Your Family
- Senior Transition Blueprint. The full twenty module course, no cost. The house is one module out of twenty.
- SeniorSafe App. The document vault, the daily check in, six one-tap contacts, medication reminders, and a companion for a parent who lives alone. My grandmother's phone has one app on it.
- The Unheard Conversation (book). A short read on how to start the conversation.
If your family has a house in the middle of all this, or a cash offer already on the table, call or text me at 336-553-8933. There is no cost and I never take the listing.
