Elderly Seniors Find Sale of Homes in Southern California Easier Than Expected

Los Angeles, CA, June 05, 2007 --(PR.com)-- If you have had the challenge of having to move your elderly mom or dad into a senior nursing or assisted living facility, you know first hand how agonizing this process can be.

But compound the dilemma with the sale of mom or dad's house, and you've got a recipe for severe anxiety.

Jason Ross, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker, serving the Los Angeles and Ventura Counties has come up with a way to change the "stressing" into a "blessing".

"I have found that with each elderly client that the same problems can occur. Their Realtor does not explain to the family what the day-to-day realities are of showing their home, and more importantly, the Realtor doesn't often listen to the real life needs of the elderly person. This creates and un-needed level of stress that many agents expect their clients to simply cope with routinely," Jason Ross said recently. “This can easily be avoided with some good planning at the start of the process. Keep in mind, many of the elderly sellers we serve have not been involved in a real estate transaction for decades. Realty With Dignity works extra hard to remember that. It may be everyday business for me, but it’s a scary process sometimes for my clients.”

There are also some necessary steps that are often overlooked with the preparation of the sale of mom or dad's home. Most commonly those are:

1. A full title search to address any liens or encumbrances the owners may have forgotten about. Sometimes decades can go by while a lien simply waits for the eventual occurrence of the sale of the home. Jason Ross offers a free title search with every listing to isolate and deal with this head-on. This gives sellers the necessary time to tackle and resolve such issues.

2. The surviving spouse is often times entitled to a "stepped-up value" at the time of the first spouse's passing. This may have a significant impact on the capital gains tax exposure. But more often than not, the family has no idea what the value of the house was at that time, and no idea how to figure it out. Or worse, the family hires an appraiser to perform a "years past" appraisal at a substantial cost. Jason Ross offers a free service providing the very same opinion of value, with verifiable data to support the value substantiation.

3. The house was paid off several years ago, but the bank never took the all important step of reconveying the deed back to the owner. The absence of this “reconveyance deed”, which sadly is often undiscovered until a buyer has already made an offer on the house, can cost thousands of dollars to the seller to remedy. The cost is created largely because of the lack of time and knowledge most elderly sellers have to accomplish this backtracking task. But Ross has found that the early investigation of this matter usually allows for time to deal with any problems that may arise.

"The vast majority of elderly home sellers are trying so hard to make the adjustment to their lifestyle that they would never think in a million years about the possibility of these problems. By assisting the families with each of these issues, we have found that the stress can be avoided almost entirely," Ross added.

Ross also implemented a practice within "Realty with Dignity" that allows for the family members to have a look at what he is doing with regard to marketing the home and negotiations with potential buyers. The goal of this transparency is to provide an unmatched level of comfort for the whole family.

"By providing each member of the family a chance to see what's going on whenever they want, I feel this open book policy provides a needed check and balance system against agent inactivity, and prevents a the parents' home from becoming just another unsold statistic.", Ross said.

With older home sellers struggling to make sense of this huge transition in life, it's a comfort to know that Realty With Dignity is there to bring peace and happiness to an otherwise nerve-racking experience of selling a home.

Jason Ross operates Realty with Dignity in Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Chatsworth, Northridge, Encino, Moorpark, Westlake Village, Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Granada Hills, Van Nuys, Studio City, North Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Santa Monica, Tarzana, Reseda, Sherman Oaks, West Hollywood, Culver City, Venice, Brentwood, Valencia, Santa Clarita, Saugus, Canyon Country, and anywhere else in Los Angeles County or Ventura County. He can be reached toll free at 888-414-5678 or by emailing to: jasonross1234@yahoo.com

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