A senior relocation can involve much more than packing boxes and hiring movers.
There may be a longtime home to sell, decades of belongings to sort, valuables to evaluate, a new living situation to find, financial questions to address, and family members coordinating everything from another city, state, or country.
Many professionals can help with one part of the process. Senior Relocation Team was created to connect the pieces.
By combining real estate expertise with an established relocation and estate-liquidation operation, specialized resources, and a trusted professional network, we help families manage the transition as one coordinated process.
Senior Relocation Team brings together two areas of expertise that frequently overlap during a senior transition.
Tom Nixon has helped Bay Area families buy and sell homes since 2004. He is a Broker Associate, former attorney, and Seniors Real Estate Specialist®.
Sharon Catalan owns and operates Caring Transitions Silicon Valley, specializing in senior relocation, right-sizing, estate liquidation, packing, move coordination, and resettlement.
That means SRT is not simply assembling outside vendors when you need them. We have an established operation experienced in sorting, packing, moving, selling, donating, storing, and setting up a new home.
Depending on your needs, we can help coordinate:
You may need only one or two of these services, or help managing the entire transition.
One of the biggest questions in almost every senior move is:
What do we do with everything in the house?
The answer should not automatically be “have a garage sale” or “donate it.”
Through Caring Transitions, SRT has access to CTBids, a dedicated online auction platform for estate-sale merchandise. It provides another way to reach buyers for furniture, artwork, jewelry, collectibles, tools, household goods, vehicles, and other items.
Not everything belongs in the same marketplace.
Part of the process is identifying what you have and choosing the best way to handle it. Depending on the item, that may mean an online auction, traditional estate sale, specialized appraisal, private sale, donation, family distribution, or another solution.
Jewelry, artwork, antiques, collectibles, heirlooms, and vehicles may require specialized valuation before deciding what to do with them.
The goal is to make thoughtful decisions before something valuable or meaningful is sold, donated, or discarded without proper evaluation.
Senior relocation becomes more complicated when the adult children responsible for helping live hundreds or thousands of miles away.
You may be able to come to the Bay Area for a few days, but much of the work can continue after you go home: sorting belongings, distributing keepsakes, scanning photographs and documents, arranging movers, holding an estate sale, clearing the property, coordinating repairs, preparing the house for market, and selling it.
SRT can serve as your local point of contact and keep the process moving while you are away.
For example, an adult child living in London may come to California to help a parent make major decisions and identify important belongings. Once she returns home, our local team can continue coordinating the work and keep her informed through calls, email, photographs, video meetings, estimates, and progress updates.
We can also help with details that often surface when going through a longtime home, including:
You remain involved in the decisions without having to be physically present for every step.
One of the most important differences in the SRT approach is that we do not treat the real estate transaction separately from the belongings, the move, and the family’s overall plan.
These decisions affect one another.
Before removing furniture, it helps to know what will fit in the new home. Before holding an estate sale, important possessions should be identified and family members given the opportunity to select what they want. Before renovating, it makes sense to understand which improvements are likely to benefit the sale.
Before selling a longtime home, seniors and their families may also need to understand the financial, tax, estate-planning, and housing implications of the proceeds.
SRT helps coordinate these steps in the right sequence.
The process may include right-sizing, moving, estate liquidation, cleanout, repairs, landscaping, staging, real estate marketing, escrow, and referrals to financial advisors, CPAs, estate-planning or probate attorneys, fiduciaries, and senior living advisors.
Instead of treating each task as a separate project, we look at how the pieces fit together.
Every senior transition is different.
Some families need to move quickly. Others begin planning months or years ahead. Some need help with a house full of belongings, while others simply need reliable information about their options.
Our role is not to tell you what decisions to make. It is to help you understand your choices, connect you with appropriate resources, coordinate the work, and give you the information you need to decide what is right for you and your family.
You may decide to move, stay where you are, or simply put a plan in place so your family knows what to do when the time comes.
Wherever you are in the process, the first step can simply be a conversation. Contact us anytime for a free consultation.
