And welcome everyone back to Answers for Elders Radio Network with the Susanne and Rebecca Show today. We are here with Rebecca Bomann from SASH Senior Homesale Services, and Rebecca and I are talking about how to best facilitate a home sale with a loved one who is there with Alzheimer’s or dementia. And this is a whole specialized area that I’m so glad we’re talking about. So Rebecca, we have gone through, just to summarize, we’ve talked about two tips, and for those of you that missed it, it was in segment number two, and it was all about making sure your paperwork’s in order, and work with realtors that understand and that have experience, and I think that’s really the most important part. I love the fact that you interview them. So we get back tell us a little bit about what other tips you have up your sleeve.
– So we’re talking about the home needing to get ready for sale, and sometimes gung-ho family members or loved ones will say, all right, we’ll be there Saturday, and they want to come in and start packing boxes, and taking things off walls, and packing up knickknacks while mom or dad is still living in the home. And so, my advice is, don’t change anything about the home. Let mom or dad have their transition into their new place, into their new apartment where their familiar surroundings will follow them. You can bring the photos and the favorite quilt and the favorite armchair, and the American flag that sits over there, their entertainment center, and get all of that set up, so that they’re not sitting with the confusion, and disorientation, and anxiety of why is my home being packed up, when it’s possible that they’re going to forget —
– They’re gonna wake up and they’re going to see everything gone and it’s it’s crazy.
– Over and over again, they’ll have that trauma and shock of what is happening to my home. And so I recommended to families don’t start the work in the home. Let it be the safe and comfortable and familiar place. Work instead on finding that new place for mom and dad, and the placement of where to find that place for mom and dad to live is so important. And there’s gonna be some gung-ho assisted living communities, or adult family homes, or retirement communities that will say, oh, it’s fine, she can move in here without really doing that full cognitive assessment or the full health assessment, or really measuring their independence. And I’ve seen families misplace mom or dad, meaning they put them into a building that is not enough care and it can actually be disastrous. And then you have to do a whole other move. And so you want to really take the time to do that well. And you have a story about this with your own mom, don’t you?
– I do, I do, And you know that’s one thing I did do right. I did one thing right and one thing wrong when I moved my mom. She had mild dementia when we first moved her into assisted living, but she still had a little bit of dementia. What I did realize that I didn’t want her to be in the middle of all the boxes and all that stuff, so when we found her a place to live first, which was good, I negotiated with the senior living community that said, we will move in, but I want her to live in the guest unit for the first week, and I want you guys to comp that, and they did.
– So that you could have that time to really set up her room right.
– Yeah, and she was still paying her rent, obviously, because they had the money for her care. But the nice thing was, it was like she was on a vacation, and we did things with her. We would go to have lunch with her, kind of a great little bridge for her. So we’d take our lunch break, and we’d run down the road which was near her house, and we would sit there for her and we would have lunch and we would help her adjust. And so that was kind of what we did.
What I did wrong was, and this is before I knew any better, I thought, I’m going to surprise my mom and I’m gonna buy her new furniture. And so I spent probably $5,000 out of my pocket. That’s when I was making a lot of money, and I bought her a new little couch, little love seat, and a chair, and a little dining table and a new dresser for her bedroom, because she had this big bedroom set, and so I did more of an upright dresser for her. It was a really bad decision because it wasn’t familiar. I didn’t realize how important that piece was. I should have known better, and I just didn’t. I thought, Oh, she’d be so excited to have all this new furniture.
– And you had good intentions, yo did it from a big, generous heart. And who doesn’t want a big, you know, new set of furniture in an apartment, except for a senior who’s already feeling uprooted, they’re already feeling like things don’t look right around me. They’re not familiar, and so we incur families take as much over that is exactly what they’ve been looking at every day for the last 30 years.
– And that’s the thing, it took her a while to adjust. She eventually did love the furniture, so I was lucky, but she still missed her chair. In the beginning it was like, where’s my chair? t’s like I’m living in in a resort, in a new place, sSo it took her probably longer to adjust had I not just brought her old furniture.
– Yeah, so that is one tip: Make sure you find the place first, and then fill their new room or apartment with the things from home, and have it be ready and waiting for them. And just a couple of stories. We just were assisting a family right now actually whose home we’re going to sell for them. Mom has early onset Alzheimer’s, and they found a place for her that is run by caregivers who actually speak her language. English isn’t her first language, and so the caregivers speak her language. And not only that, they’re serving food that’s culturally appropriate that she grew up with. And they even speak the same dialect of the same language. So she’s been in home, and now her family, they took a lot of care, they interviewed, they toured, they took their time. They were looking at a lot of different places, and they found a place where it is comfortable for mom. She’s hearing her native language, she’s eating the food that she loves, and they’re providing great care. And that was a well-done placement, of finding a home.
The opposite is we are also in the middle of helping a family where mom has dementia, also, and the power of attorney went to a place where they said, no problem, we can take care of her. They didn’t vet it properly. Mom wasn’t examined properly. A lot of quick decisions were made. It’s just an assisted living, Suzanne, and so Mom had her first night in this assisted living, and got up and walked out the front door, because nobody was there. It’s not locked, and she walked ten blocks by herself before she was finally found and picked up. It could have been disastrous, it could have been a terrible emergency, and they had to hurry up and find the right kind of place for her. And it’s the second move, really disruptive and traumatic for Mom.
– And shame on the assisted living community for allowing that, because they should be assessing that person before they ever move in.
– They should be assessing. There should be a lot of questions. It should be the right financial fit. And for people who are not independently wealthy, once they spend the money that they do have from the sale of their home or their own assets, they may need to go on Medicaid. And there are buildings that do not accept Medicaid, but they aren’t telling the family when the family is coming through and touring. So the family only has, you know, a $150,000 or $300,000 of mom’s money, and they don’t realize that once they’ve spent that, that community is going to ask them to leave, because their money is gone. And so asking those questions when you’re going in and touring, and sitting down, I always say to families, crunch the numbers. How much is mom getting a month, or how much is dad getting a month? How much does the community cost? How many months will this last?
– And that goes back also to a good elder law attorney that can also point to if mom needs care, and maybe you’re a veteran, you may made qualify for veterans benefits, so that’s doing your paperwork. Your first tip, talking about going and seeing the right individual, because there will be resources available that you may not know about.
– Exactly. So basically, to sum up our tip for this segment, don’t start packing up the house and putting things in boxes while mom or dad is still living there. Give them the comfort of the familiarity of their own home the way they’ve always loved it. Find the right place for them to move into, and then bring those familiar things over, and decorate their new place with it. And I even had a client: her furniture was covered with gray tape. She was so frugal that she gray-taped her furniture. And when I moved her, Suzanne, she brought all of her gray-taped furniture with her. And that was what was most familiar, and I wasn’t going to object — that’s personal. So let them bring the things that are familiar, and worn, and loved, and comforting, and really take the time to make sure the placement is appropriate for their care needs and their financial needs.
– And I’m going to add one little caveat in on that. Just because you think mom or dad want to be in a community that’s really fancy, because you think it’s really nice, because they have a fountain in the lobby, and all of these things, that may not be the best fit, the right thing for your loved one. So when you’re looking, really think about them more often. Iit’s more important that they feel like they’re in an environment that’s comfortable. Maybe if mom and dad like to wear sweatpants all day, they’re not going to want to go down to a dining room where they dress up and feel like they have to. Just a side note I want to bring up.
– Good point. It has to be the right fit, it has to make sense financially. You can protect your loved one’s well being, and emotional well being, by paving that way for that easy transition to the new place.
– Perfect, perfect, and everyone, Rebecca and I are going to be right back right after this.
