Senior Housing Real Estate: The Overlooked Niche Helping Families Downsize and Sell Fast

Becky Fields (00:00)

seniors to them and referring people to you. And it’s, you know, it’s not as much as listing a house, but that you do get compensation for recommending them to places. And that’s one way I’m networking is I go to, I go to assisted living homes. I tell them what I’m doing. I ask them the question, do you ever have seniors that come here needing to get into your, your facility quickly?

Dylan Silver (00:15)

That’s true. Yeah.

Becky Fields (00:27)

but they don’t have the cash and they need to sell their house real quick. And they say all the time and they’re looking for solutions.

And one thing that I’ve discovered they’re going into is umbrella loans.

Dylan Silver (02:13)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Becky Fields is a senior transition specialist in the Houston area who helps seniors and their families navigate complex real estate decisions. She focuses on solving challenges around downsizing, transitioning and selling homes, bringing both professional expertise and personal experience to the process. She’s a wife of 46 years, mother of seven, grandmother of 18, a published author and a sought after speaker.

who shares insights from her own journey to guide families through major life transitions. Becky, thanks for taking the time today.

Becky Fields (02:48)

Thank you for inviting me.

Dylan Silver (02:51)

Now, when a family first reaches out to you, what’s the situation that they’re usually in?

Becky Fields (03:00)

Well, working with seniors, a lot of times the situation is a crisis. And a lot of ⁓ families put off the decision on downsizing and selling their parents’ house because the parents want to live independently as long as they can and they don’t plan ahead. You plan ahead for your death by riding a wheel, but you don’t plan ahead if the inevitable happens where you don’t die, but you are where you can’t live alone anymore.

Sometimes families start noticing changes in their parents. Maybe they’re forgetting to turn off the oven or they’re not taking their medicine or maybe they’ve fallen and broken a hip or an arm or something and they’re finding that their mother or father can no longer live by themselves. Lots of times with our society the way it is now, the adult children are living in other cities.

Mom and dad or mom are living in the city they grew up with, in the house they grew up with, maybe a two story house and mom hadn’t been able to get up those stairs in years. And she doesn’t even know what’s upstairs anymore. And she just lives in the downstairs. There was one lady I ⁓ dealt with that she had a two story house. She had a half bathroom downstairs. She could no longer go up and down the stairs. And she was living and sleeping in…

⁓ a sleep, a lounger, lazy boy lounger. That’s where she slept at night. I guess she did spit baths in the half bath. She had a little path to the kitchen. It was a mess. She had about 20 cats. There was cat droppings everywhere. It was a horrible mess, but the daughter lived in another city and had no clue. The mother was kind of contangorous and they weren’t on best of terms. And so she didn’t know. She didn’t know until somebody called her and said, mom’s in the hospital.

Dylan Silver (04:54)

What are the most challenging components of this transition when folks are moving from one, maybe two story home to something that’s more comfortable for them?

Becky Fields (05:55)

The hardest thing is letting go of your things. And people my age and older are famous for collecting things. My mother-in-law collected giraffes and she probably had a hundred little, you know, different figurines of giraffes or china. They may have several china sets or big items like baby grand pianos that people just don’t have room for. And

The kids your kids don’t want your stuff Everyone most younger generation like your generation are more the minimalist Mindset they don’t want clutter. They don’t want collections. They don’t want China. They don’t use China they use Chinat and So there’s just not a use for it the the formality that my generation and older grew up with you know

fancy dinners and setting out your best china and everything has gone for simplicity and let’s just grab a package of paper plates and we don’t want to wash all the dishes and we just want to spend time with relationships not the formalities anymore and so getting rid of the stuff and letting go of it and finding out well what do you do with that and things you think that are valuable are not valuable to other people.

Dylan Silver (06:57)

Right.

Are you seeing it being more common that these homes are sold rather than being kept in the family or is it 50-50?

Becky Fields (07:22)

Most kids don’t want them. It depends on the culture too. Some Asian cultures, you know, are really into handing their things, their houses down to a child or something. And then in return, their adult children will take care of them. Some adult children will move their parents in with them. That was what I did. When my parents needed help, we moved away. I grew up in Austin. We moved to Houston.

And my parents were left there with no family there. And my mother needed more help than my dad could give her. So we made the choice to move to a little bit bigger house with a downstairs bedroom for them and move them in with us. And then we had the upstairs with our kids. that’s, we, you know, we took care of them and that’s, that’s what, what my choice was. Some adult children don’t have that option. Their house isn’t big enough.

or they don’t have a downstairs bedroom. A lot of houses are built with no downstairs bedrooms and that’s a problem if you’ve got a parent that needs to go up and down the stairs.

Dylan Silver (08:29)

No question. think in some regard, in many cultures, having children is almost like a security deposit to your future when you get old and now you need someone to take care of you. But as we often see, either the culture is different or the resources to take care of that elderly family member aren’t there. Pivoting here though, Becky, do you see any mistakes that

families make early that sometimes complicates things.

Becky Fields (09:02)

Mistakes they make is not ⁓ approaching the conversation soon enough and not planning ahead and not to start downsizing when they can think about it clearly. If ⁓ parents can start downsizing, start with one closet, clean out that one closet, then move to another closet. Maybe an adult child would go spend a weekend with them once a month or every couple of months and say,

Dylan Silver (09:15)

Yeah.

Becky Fields (09:31)

Okay, what closet do you want to tackle this month? And holding their hand and helping them do it. And then the other mistake is not telling their adult children where their stuff is, like their financial and their, ⁓ who their CPA is, who their banker is, what their passwords, know, mom falls and dad, ⁓ dad’s dad passed away, mom falls.

Dylan Silver (09:53)

That’s you.

Becky Fields (09:59)

and she’s in the hospital, she can’t get to her computer, and she’s got bills to pay and her adult children don’t know how to get to her finances. And there’s that stigma of not wanting to be a burden to your children, but then again, not wanting them to see what a mess you’ve made sometimes. And they’re embarrassed for their children to see where they are financially. And that’s what led me to…

writing a book or publishing a book on preparing your parents and walking, thinking through these things. And I have a workbook that goes with it that has forms for them to fill out. And I tell parents and their adult children, this is like a love letter to your children. And I recommend that they get ⁓ a fireproof file box, fill out these, this workbook with all the questionnaires.

It asks them, you know, what are their wishes if something were to happen to them? Where would I go and what do you want me to do? What’s important to you? And you’ve got all that in that box. And I suggest that they put in that box some file folders with important papers like your deed to your house or your deed to your car. I’ve got one lady I’ve worked with. There’s her mother passed away. There’s two.

sitting out on the driveway. She has no clue where the titles are to those cars. They don’t run and she, she’s, they’re just sitting there and she, she can’t move and she’s in that state where she’s frozen. A lot of adult children find themselves frozen after their parents pass away and her mother’s house has been empty for over a year now with all the clutter, all the everything she has. She keeps thinking, I can do this myself.

but she can’t and she’s not.

Dylan Silver (12:25)

Yeah, in that frozen state can really just be analysis paralysis, but it can also just be the overwhelm of everything that’s going on. And having worked in a different segment of the real estate space, you know, with distressed sellers, oftentimes you see something similar, which is like, Hey, your back is somewhat up against the wall here, but you’re just not able to see the seriousness of the situation, how, how well time that they actually have.

pivoting here, Becky, you’re in Houston. What trends are you seeing with seniors and housing right now? Are there lots more housing developments being put up? Are there lots of places for folks to move to where they will have their needs met and in a setting where it’s a little more comfortable than a two-story home?

Becky Fields (12:58)

Okay.

Yes.

Yes, and I’m at the tail end of the baby boomers and it’s the baby boomers that are aging and moving out of their big houses. A lot of them had 4,000 square feet houses that they’re by themselves now and they don’t need that much space. And sometimes it takes ⁓ a push to get them to sell. It took a push for me to downsize. We had a big house.

out in Sugarland and it was, I loved my house, it was my dream house. And it took my kids, not pushing, but suggesting and planting the thought into their mind. Sometimes it takes planting the thought and give them a couple of weeks to mull it over and just keep bringing it up without forcing them to just bring them to that decision. Because sometimes they do need to

come to that decision themselves and helping them learn that it’s better to do it now than later when your kids have to do it for you. with my mother-in-law, I had to make all the decisions for her because she had a major health event and I had to go back to Austin and shut down her house and put it up for sale and everything like that. yeah, just helping them face reality is…

is the hardest part because they’ve been the senior for so long and they’ve been telling their kids what to do and for their kids to come in and say, mom, you need to really consider this. This is for your own good.

Dylan Silver (14:50)

Now they have to hand the truck over to someone else.

Now, for realtors who are looking for a niche in the real estate space, there seems to be this huge opportunity that is really not being met for folks to work in senior housing and in making these transitions. I went through real estate school a year ago, and I think I heard maybe five minutes on senior housing, and it was about 55 plus communities. But I am yet to see a focused

Training that’s popularized that everyone’s talking about about how to handle these situations and all that goes into it do you see this as being a ⁓ expanding niche within the realtor field

Becky Fields (16:12)

Well, yes.

Yes.

Yeah, I am a realtor and I’m also an investor. So my niche is that I can work either side of the problem. If the person that comes to me and their house is in great condition and it’s retail ready, I can list it for them. I can help them get it ready and list it. If it’s in really bad shape, I can pay cash for it and buy it as is. And I’ve got lots of investors that are looking for places.

there is a certification for realtors and I’ve thought about I went through a certification process for investors called mom’s house and I went through that that training. It was like I think 18 hours or maybe several days to go through the videos and get the certification. There is a certification.

through realtors that you can get. And I think it’s about a 15 hour course. I think it takes you two days to full days of training through a, there’s not very many that offer it. Not everyone offers it, but I’ve looked into that and it costs about $300 to get certified as a senior specialist. I’ve forgotten what the exact wording is as a realtor. And you can claim that.

I can claim that I’m a senior transition specialist because I went through the training with mom’s house and, but I’m not ⁓ a specialist as a realtor in a professional way like that. I don’t have that certification. I’d like to get it eventually, yes, there and a lot of, if you start marketing these, ⁓ these assisted living places, they will pay you a pretty good commission for bringing

Dylan Silver (18:04)

Right.

Becky Fields (18:09)

⁓

seniors to them and referring people to you. And it’s, you know, it’s not as much as listing a house, but that you do get compensation for recommending them to places. And that’s one way I’m networking is I go to, I go to assisted living homes. I tell them what I’m doing. I ask them the question, do you ever have seniors that come here needing to get into your, your facility quickly?

Dylan Silver (18:24)

That’s true. Yeah.

Becky Fields (18:37)

but they don’t have the cash and they need to sell their house real quick. And they say all the time and they’re looking for solutions.

And one thing that I’ve discovered they’re going into is umbrella loans.

These companies come in and offer some sort of umbrella or bridge loan for the seniors to get in until they can get their house ready to sell. But I offer them a quick, you know, close within 30 days.

solution that they can get their house sold a lot faster. And I leave, I came up with a brochure that it’s a little 15 page, 16 page brochure that I will give them a stack of these. It’s called preparing a well-loved home for its next chapter. And I don’t push as the investor. It does mention the investor, but I list, you know, I

It kind of goes through what are your process? What are your options? How much time do you have? How much money do you want to spend on it? Because you can spend a lot of money fixing the house up and you may not get much in return. And what is the easy? I have one of those little staples easy buttons and I push that button and say I want to be your easy button.

Dylan Silver (19:55)

We are coming up on time here, Becky. Bonus question here for you. I’m sure you’ve had many deals and situations that you’ve encountered that have been memorable. Is there any one that sticks out to you where you said, okay, this was kind of a turning point deal or something that I felt like really was a challenge?

Becky Fields (20:18)

I had ⁓ a lot of, there’s a lot of residential senior housing these days where they’re getting a bigger house and renting them out, rooms out to seniors that need a little bit of help, but not a whole lot. Those are popping up all over the place. Well, there was a lady that had one of those. She contacted me because she had a man that had dementia that family did not have the money to put him in and they said,

would you take his house in return for him living there? And her idea was, I’ll buy his house, I’ll fix it up and I’ll sell it and make a profit. Well, she got into it and started flipping it and found out for one thing, it was too far away from her. It was a pain getting there and coming back and it was taking up all their weekends trying to fix it up. So she contacted me and said, I gotta sell this house quickly because I need to get some money.

this man’s living in my assisted living home and I’m not getting any income and I’ve got bills to pay. I’m tired of this. And so I had to, I bought that house from her. But the challenge was some people that don’t know what they’re doing did not get the title done correctly. So it delayed it about four weeks for how long because we had to go back and find the notary that notarized that the man

turned it over to his adult children and verified that he was of sound mind when he did it. And they had to go back and get all the adult children to sign it again. it was kind of a pain and it took a lot longer just because they didn’t do the title work correctly. And so that was a big challenge.

Dylan Silver (21:49)

Yeah.

that.

I can understand some of that and having gone through, you know, bringing people together to sign documents and it feels like you’re reuniting a family in some cases. It’s definitely, you know, equally, you know, family triage coordinator as it is real estate, realtor or investor. We’re coming up on time here though, Becky, any new projects that you’re working on and then also what’s the best way for folks to reach out to you?

Becky Fields (22:23)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

The best way to get me is through my website, grandmahousebuyer.com. And if you have questions, I have this wonderful little bot named Rose, and she’s my virtual assist, well, she’s my bot, my AI assistant, and she can answer a lot of your questions. We’ve got her programmed, and some people even ask her she’s one of my grandchildren. And she says only.

in my dreams or something like that. But we make her very personable. you can, if you just have a few questions, go to my website, talk to Rose. You can ask her anything you want. then the other thing is I do on my website, you can get access to my book, Guiding Them Home and the workbook that I was talking about that has all the pages in it to fill out. You can get those on my website. That’s the only way to buy them unless I’m speaking at your

I speak at different places. go to community centers and talk to them about downsizing or about preparing your home. And then you can also get a digital copy of this off of my website, Preparing Your Well Loved Home. And if you’re a ⁓ healthcare worker and you have clients, then let me know. I think you can get me through, let’s see, my easiest ⁓ email is becky@grandmahousebuyer.com.

you can email me that that goes to my other email address. But that’s the easiest way to reach me. And yeah, I think and I’m my next project. Originally, I was writing a book called Daughters of Naomi, and it’s a has a lot of information about preparing your parents. But it’s ⁓ written to women most probably 90 % of the people that are caring for older parents and that are caregivers are women.

Dylan Silver (24:05)

you

Becky Fields (24:27)

And so it’s written to women that are caring for their parents and telling stories of people that I’ve dealt with and what they’ve done and how they’ve handled. That’s what I’m working on right now. I’m trying to get that written hopefully by the end of the year, but I’m not sure. Once that’s written, it’ll be on Amazon. The other books are not available on Amazon, but and it’s from a faith-based perspective.

Dylan Silver (24:53)

Becky, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

Becky Fields (24:56)

Thank you.