How To Make The Process Of Moving Seniors Easier
“Hey, Guys! Today I wanted to share a quick story. I attended a networking group meeting last week. It was a meeting for a bunch of eldercare professionals. They get together once a month and network with each other. There were some eldercare attorneys there, social workers for nursing homes and assisted living centers, and some Medicare Part D agents. Just a bunch of people that work in the eldercare community. There were about 30 people there. It was a little networking group that gets together once a month to try to help each other to grow their business. We sat in a circle and everyone shared what their business was and if they could help give leads to each other, and help each other grow our business.
So when it came around to my turn, I shared a story I have shared many times over the years…that I have a passion for real estate and that I love buying houses, rehabbing them and reselling them. So I started a company back in 2002. The company is called FasterHouse and when I first started the company, I initially thought that most of our leads for buying houses would come from some form of distressed sale…like a foreclosure or a divorce or a bank-owned home or a short sale…something along those lines. That is what it was when I first started because that is what I was marketing for.
But over the years, what I noticed was that I would get calls occasionally from people where their parents were moving into a nursing home or assisted living center or their parents had recently passed away. That kind of became a common theme. Usually their parents had lived in the house for at least twenty years…sometimes more…and usually they had not updated the house for a long time…twenty years or more. And if they had updated it, what they had usually done is they put a ramp up to the front door or they put some grab bars in the bathroom shower or maybe they had moved the laundry room out of the basement up into a spare bedroom. Those things are very common. But those things actually don’t help at all when you are selling a house. Typically, you just need to redo all those things.
This common theme I was finding is that there are a lot of people, when their parents were in this situation, the kids of the parents were taking care of trying to sell the house. And quite often, their kids were just overwhelmed for many reasons. One is the house had not been updated in years. Maybe they were out of town…maybe they lived in Florida but the house was in the St. Louis area. Or, they had their own lives to live. They were busy with their jobs and their own kids and stuff. What happened is, the house became a burden to them and they really needed to sell it in a quick and easy manner. And that is what we do! That is a service we provide. We buy the house without them having to get all the stuff out. Quite often, especially with this older community, they have 20, 30, 40 years worth of stuff in the house…checks from 20 years ago, tax returns from 20 years ago, clothes from 20 years ago…it is not uncommon at all.
So we would take care of cleaning up the house. They wouldn’t have to update the house. They wouldn’t have to worry about passing any inspections or occupancy inspections for the local communities or anything like that. They wouldn’t have to worry about paying any real estate commissions. The bottom line is, we make the process very easy. And I have found that is what they are looking for. They are looking for an easy way to sell the house. They aren’t necessarily looking for the top dollar. They are looking for how can I sell this house in an easy way.
So anyway, as I was sharing that story, when I was coming to an end, it was really crazy. A lot of people in the room, one by one, kept going ‘I know somebody right now that needs your service!’ It turned out that when I left that meeting that day, I had several leads of people that I was going to talk to in the next week. It just kind of confirmed to me that there is a huge need for our services and there are a lot of people out there that we can help. So that’s my blog for today. Thanks!”
Here at FasterHouse one of our goals is to assist seniors who want to sell their house quickly and easily, if you are a senior who needs to sell your house please call us at 314-926-0660 or fill out this form
