What I learned when I helped my mother move: some personal insights

A few years ago, I was finally able to persuade my mother that she couldn’t live alone in her house — the one in which my family had lived since the 1970s — and needed to move into a smaller co-op apartment in a nearby retirement community. But neither she nor I were aware how stressful the process of selling a house and purchasing an apartment could be.

While I wouldn’t presume to advise anyone on the technicalities of buying and / or selling real estate, I did come away from the experience with hard-won insights on how to deal with some of the emotional crises that can occur. Here are some of the things I learned.

If this is the first time you’ve sold or bought a home, get ready — it’s going to be a wild ride. A lot is involved: finding a buyer and negotiating a sale, or finding a new home and negotiating the purchase. Or both. In between, there are open houses, legalities, inspections, unexpected expenses, and tons of paperwork. So unless you’re really into real estate, you may be tempted to give up and hide under your bed at some point.

You may find it helpful, at least in the beginning, to consider it a research project rather than something you have an emotional connection to. Read, watch videos, talk to friends who have been through it — do what you can to collect information. Use your favorite note-keeping or info-collecting app to track it all: Notion, a Google spreadsheet, Keep, Apple Notes, whatever works for you. But do track all those links and sources, because I can assure you that at some point you’ll suddenly find yourself thinking, “Wait, didn’t I read something about that?” and you’ll want to know you can find it.

I once asked a lawyer friend about who I should hire to take care of a real-estate transaction, and she shrugged. “Any competent lawyer can handle it,” she said.

That being said, when hiring a lawyer, a real-estate agent, or any professional, pay attention to your instincts. When I looked for a lawyer for the sale of my mother’s home, the first one we found sounded like a nice, straightforward person until he said, “We’re going to email you the agreement. Don’t let it scare you. You won’t be held to it. Just sign it, and we can get going.”

When a lawyer tells you not to pay attention to the fine print, that is definitely a red flag. The agreement that came listed around 20 “if this happens” clauses with dollar signs attached, and, yes, it scared me. So I replied that we would not be hiring his firm (and refused to take the three calls I got from him after that). Instead, we found someone who sent us a simple one-page agreement, laid out all the costs we would incur right up front, and proved to be efficient, honest, and helpful.

Buying and selling homes can be a balancing act, especially when the funds from the sale of your current dwelling will pay for the purchase of your next. And sometimes, things go sideways.

A couple of weeks after my mother’s house went on the market, we found the perfect co-op apartment, right after a nice-seeming couple expressed interest in buying my mother’s house. Great timing, right? So we sent in a bid and waited. I lived in tense expectation. Would the couple close the deal on the house? Would our bid on the apartment be accepted?

The call from the real-estate agent came while I was attending a work event where a series of new Bluetooth speakers were being introduced. I ran to the bathroom and took the call. Our bid was accepted, assuming we could assure them that we had the cash on hand.

I said that I’d get right back to them. I called the agent who was helping us sell the house. Had she heard back from the couple yet? We needed a firm commitment, and I told her why. She said that she’d call me back.

It took a few minutes, but finally, my phone rang. “Bad news,” our real-estate agent said. The couple, perhaps figuring we were desperate or thinking of this as a game, had dropped their offer by several thousand dollars — take it or leave it. “I can’t tell you what to do,” the agent said. “But if I were you, there’s no way I’d take this.”

I agreed, called the other agent, and told her we couldn’t bid on the apartment. Then I gave myself a few more minutes to get over my anger before I went back to admire the Bluetooth speakers.

We did, soon after, get a reasonable offer for the house and found an apartment that wasn’t quite perfect but was good enough. And I discovered that sometimes good enough — works.

A week after my mother moved out of the house and the new owners moved in, I was in Las Vegas, attending the CES trade show. I was exhausted from the weeks of apartment hunting, open houses, negotiations, and meetings. Compared to that, the familiar chaos of CES — with its mass of vendors, developers, reporters, and other attendees — was a relief. I was sitting in the hallway outside the press room, trying to eat a quick sandwich before my next meeting, when my phone rang. It was our lawyer.

“The new owners say the second-floor toilet doesn’t work,” he said. “They want to take $200 from the final portion of their payment to pay for a new toilet.”

“It’s a low-flow toilet,” I said. “We just bought it a year ago. It’s brand new. It’s ecological. They just have to be careful using it, but they’ll save water.”

“I told them,” he said. “They insist it’s unusable.” He paused. “We can fight them on this, but considering what you’re paying me per hour, I’d just give them the $200, get the rest of the security, and let it go. Live your life.”

I waited a moment, watched the crowd of reporters and tech reps hurrying past, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “Give them the money.” And that was that.

I’ve never regretted the decision. Sometimes it’s better to lose a small battle in order to get the war behind you.

When my parents moved into their house, they were ecstatic. They had grown up in working-class Brooklyn, New York, had brought up their kids in apartment projects, and now were finally able to buy a house — a real house, with a real yard. It wasn’t a large piece of property — a little corner piece of a suburb — but there was a tall, ancient-looking evergreen looming over the house, a pear tree that still gave pears, and a flag pole. My father and brother planted flowering bushes around the house and the flagpole, and they added flowers and herbs every spring. My parents loved that small garden. And it apparently returned the favor: during Hurricane Sandy, the roof of their house was the only one in the neighborhood completely unharmed, protected by that evergreen.

When we sold the house, my mother and I told the new owners about the story of Hurricane Sandy, and we advised them to keep the tree. I had hoped they’d keep at least some of the bushes, as well.

About two months after we moved out, I drove past the house. The evergreen, the flowering trees, the bushes, and even the flagpole had all been removed. The only greenery left was a flat expanse of cut grass along with two small bushes and a few sickly flowers by the front door. The garden was gone.

I’ve never been back.

Things change. You leave one home, happily or reluctantly, and you go to another. This is what moving is — you’re not only changing your living space, but your circumstances, your surroundings, and your life. And I now know that while you may remember your old home with affection, it’s important to create a new life at your next home so that you can enjoy that one, as well.