Posted on Jan 7, 2020 in Assisted Living
When you need a little extra help, assisted living can give you back your freedom and quality of life. Before you start enjoying all of the perks that assisted living has to offer though, you need to make a big decision: what should you do with your current home? Well, you may have more decisions to make before you move, but this one can cause the most stress for seniors. That’s why it’s helpful to have this list of things to consider when choosing an option for your home.
Before you make any major real estate decisions, you should research current trends. Sites like Redfin make it pretty easy to pull up this sort of information and to figure out whether current home real estate trends make it favorable to sell your home right now. For instance, when you use Redfin to view the market in Beverly, you can see that homes in Beverly have generally sold for $435,000 during the last month, and most homes sold for about 0.6 percent over their asking price. If you live in Beverly, which shows all signs of being a seller’s market, listing your home before you move into an assisted living facility could help you cover assisted living expenses.
Average home prices and real estate trends are not the only factors worth considering when you are thinking of selling your home during a transition to a senior living facility. If you are still paying off your mortgage, you also need to think about your home’s equity. Equity simply refers to the difference between what you owe and what your home is worth. So, if you have paid down your mortgage or if your home has gained a great deal of value, selling your home could turn enough profit to keep your retirement income stable. If you still owe quite a bit on your mortgage, you may be able to use rental profits to pay it down and build additional equity.
The next item on your financial checklist should be to estimate your care costs. The most recent research on long-term care expenses, which included assisted living facility costs, shows that senior care expenses can only be expected to go up. While the average senior may presently pay around $4,000 per month for assisted living services, those monthly costs are expected to increase by as much as 6.67 percent each year. If you are using the proceeds from a home sale or rental income to pay for assisted living, keeping these trends in mind is essential.
Savvy seniors also need to think about how selling, renting or gifting their home will impact their taxes. For instance, if you decide to sell your home right now, and you’ve owned it less than two years, the proceeds from that sale could be reduced by capital gains tax. Relatives can also be impacted by this penalty, unless you gift real estate in the right way. On the other hand, if you rent your home out for a profit, you may be able to use certain tax breaks to grow your profits.
Real estate transactions can be tricky. That’s why it helps to have real estate pros to guide you along the way. Real estate brokers or agents can help you manage a home sale, while real estate attorneys can help draw up the right paperwork to keep your property transfer as penalty-free as possible. If you decide to rent your property out, you may also need a real estate manager to help with logistics, and you may need a contractor to take care of repairs.
Living in assisted living can take the stress out of your everyday life. So, don’t let deciding what to do with your current home cause you any added anxiety. Use the steps above to guide your decision and consult the right professionals along the way, so that you can get back to enjoying all of the freedom that life in assisted living has to offer!
At Landmark Senior Living, we have all of the activities, services and care, as well as amenities that you or your loved one could need. While you are organizing your housing options, come visit landmark senior living for a tour to see what assisted living with us is like.
