Learn How a Real Estate Professional Can Help You Navigate The Biggest Transitions in Life: Moving!

Summary

In this conversation, Janet Engel interviews Cathi Coridan, a senior real estate specialist, who shares her insights on helping seniors navigate the complexities of life transitions, particularly in real estate.

Cathi discusses her background in human services and how it informs her approach to real estate, emphasizing the importance of empathy and understanding in assisting seniors.

The conversation covers various aspects of planning for transitions, maintaining control during the process, and the significance of having a plan in place for future moves.

Cathi also shares her personal experience of moving cross country and the lessons learned from that process.

In this conversation, Cathi Coridan discusses the complexities of caregiving for aging parents, emphasizing the importance of communication, recognizing health changes, and planning for transitions.

She highlights the need for caregivers to take care of themselves, the significance of local resources, and the emotional aspects of legacy planning.

The discussion also covers effective strategies for approaching sensitive conversations with seniors and the misconceptions surrounding transition planning.

Takeaways

Cathi emphasizes the importance of empathy in real estate for seniors.

Life transitions for seniors are often more than just real estate transactions.

Planning ahead can help seniors maintain control over their decisions.

Involving family in the planning process is crucial for emotional support.

Seniors often resist the idea of planning for future moves.

Cathi's personal experience highlights the need for a solid plan when moving.

Making a home safer can enhance the living experience for seniors.

It's essential to have legal documents in place before making significant transitions.

Cathi encourages seniors to explore their options without commitment.

The role of a senior real estate specialist extends beyond selling houses. Establish a clear communication plan for emergencies.

Recognize and address changes in senior health promptly.

Assess living conditions to understand the needs of seniors.

Utilize local resources for better support and care.

Involve seniors in legacy planning to respect their wishes.

Self-care is crucial for caregivers to avoid burnout.

Effective communication is key in transition planning.

Planning can be a gradual process, not an all-or-nothing approach.

Understand the emotional connections seniors have with their belongings.

Explore local options for senior care rather than relying on online searches.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Senior Real Estate Specialist

05:47 Maintaining Control During Transitions

11:52 Personal Experience: Moving Cross Country

21:00 Key Factors for Short and Long-Term Moves

28:12 Recognizing Changes in Senior Health

34:34 The Importance of Local Resources

40:16 Self-Care Strategies for Caregivers

48:26 Finding Local Resources and Support

Want to Contact Cathi:
cathi@yourtransitionpartner.com

www.yourtransitionpartner.com

Transcript

Janet Engel (00:01.39)
Hello everyone and thank you for being with me today. My guest is Cathy Corden and she is a specialist in human services. That was her first career. She is now a senior real estate specialist and she trains other realtors in how to work with seniors with excellence and empathy and Cathy's career.

It was specializing in helping people deal with stressful and challenging life transitions, which we know that many of us can experience at different points of our lives, but especially as we get older and we may be having to transition to a different setting. So Cathy, thank you for being with me today.

Cathi Coridan (00:51.192)
It's my pleasure. I'm absolutely delighted. Janet, thank you for inviting me.

Janet Engel (00:55.706)
Yes, so Kathy, tell us a little bit about yourself before I start asking you questions.

Cathi Coridan (01:02.602)
Okay, happy to. I'm a second generation and second career realtor. My mom and my dad were both in real estate. I say that I've been in real estate since I was in high school. And then I said I was never going to become a realtor because both of my parents were in real estate. Yet when I was given a challenge of a unplanned career transition, actually the week I turned 65,

I chose to become a realtor. had wanted to do it and thought of doing it a number of other times. And it was something that was just in my heart. And I knew when I came in, I wanted to work with seniors. It's a, because of my human services background, I really needed something that was a mission more than selling houses. And I really believe that with seniors, it's not a...

transaction, a real estate transaction, but an entire life transition that can be very stressful and very challenging, not just for the seniors, but for their families. And so that's where I've put most of my energy for the last almost eight years. And I love it. I love having the opportunity to guide the seniors through

what is usually their last real estate transaction. A lot of our colleagues, my colleagues work with first time buyers and it's the education process and the excitement of finally being able to paint the walls and plant the garden. And for me, it's dealing more with the loss of independence and self-determination. most of the biggest group of my senior clients have been moving into senior living communities. And so they're...

they're really entering a completely different kind of chapter of their life and having to let go of a lot. So bringing in the resources, bringing in trusted partners, I call them partners, to wrap that support around the senior and help them move forward and embrace where they're going and embrace that next piece of their life.

Janet Engel (03:16.142)
Well, that's great, Kathy. And what a great time to enter this area of specialty within the real estate niche because we have so many people turning 65 every single day along with your older adults who are in their 80s and 90s. Tell us, Kathy, how do you help older adults maintain control while you are planning?

transition for them.

Cathi Coridan (03:48.512)
Well, it's senior to senior, but making sure that my focus is on their needs, not the market needs, not the kids needs, not the house's needs, but what are their needs and how do we time going through this process? Some of my senior clients I've worked, spent time with and worked with for up to a year before we put the house on the market. I have a client who...

lived in her home on and off since she was 16 and she was in her early 70s and she had helped her dad build the house and I've listened to the stories of the hardwood floors in the living room and making the decision about which bedroom was whose and all that kind of stuff from the time that they had built it. It was on acreage, it had an antique barn on it, they raised horses, she was the horse

instructor, the horse lady in that part of the community, and she fell. She'd had mobility issues. She was on a walker. She fell. She wasn't found for a couple days. She went to the hospital, and then she went to rehab, and she was told in no uncertain terms that she couldn't move back to the house. And so she had been put into a senior living community, an assisted living, in a room that looked like a sterile hospital room.

And so the assistant director called me and I went and met with her. And the first thing we did is I put her in my car and we took her over to the house and I just let her sit in the house.

go into her office and fiddle with the stuff on her desk. Literally the food that she had made the day that she had fallen was still in the kitchen. So I was doing the assessment of a very full house filled with three generations of stuff.

Cathi Coridan (05:47.98)
and she was just being at home and we took artwork, she was an artist, we took artwork back, we took her TV, we took her videos back and began to make the living space she was in in the assisted living much more her own personal space over the period of that first couple of months. And then unfortunately she got sick and she was back into the hospital and then into rehab and this kind of kept going for months and then COVID. So,

It took us a while. It was a process where she came, she knew she had to sell the house, but she came to peace with it.

It was a house that had not been updated. It was an old model house. It's in the DC metro area. And it's a split foyer, which means that it's two levels. And it's not the most sought after layout anymore. so it was, and the whole.

Janet Engel (06:47.81)
know that floor plan.

Cathi Coridan (06:54.966)
bottom floor had had water seep in and there was just mold everywhere. And beautiful antique rugs that had been sitting in molds, just stuff that I had to throw away that broke my heart. And so it just took us that long. And then by the time she sold it, she could hear that the family that we had two offers, one that wanted to renovate it and one that wanted to go ahead and tear it down and to build a larger home on that.

lot. And that's the one she chose because we had taken the time for her to get past the stories of the hardwood floors to the acceptance that that's what was her best choice going forward. And that's a journey and it's about what she needed and the time that she needed. Another client had surgery. She had told me that she wanted everything ready to go. She said no matter what the surgery outcome is, I want you to move forward with this.

or kids not so much in agreement with that. And so we went back and forth on it and my concern had been, and I had another agent involved, had been the market because it was a critical juncture of the market in 2022. And I said, the best thing for you and for the family, we get no payoff of having them mad, is for us just to wait.

for three months and we waited three months and yes the market turned. We probably got about 35, $40,000 less than we could have gotten for the house in the earlier market, but it was her needs and the timing of her recovery that was most important. So it's about the senior making those plans. And I know I'm talking more about selling the house than all the other pieces, but if selling the house is needed to put those other pieces in place,

then that becomes the driving force.

Janet Engel (08:55.704)
Kathy, how do you help someone plan for this transition when it's not needed in the immediate time?

Cathi Coridan (09:09.74)
That's a great question because people resist, really resist the notion of needing to look down the road and predict things that can happen. There's two things I say all the time. The first one is,

97 % of us want to age in the house that we're in. This is my home. I know where everything is. I love my house. And we'll share in a minute the story of how we got to this house. Yet even when I was living in a three story townhouse in Virginia, it was my home and it's what I knew. And I knew the neighborhood and I had people there and I lived in and out of that community for 25 years.

I really invested in that as a lot of people that are both younger and a little bit older than I am. I can use the example of my next door neighbor because he really wanted to stay there. His wife had died, he really wanted to stay there. And he recently passed away in that house. That really is the exception. It is not the rule. Most of the time there will be some health issue or some

other circumstance that comes up that we need to move someplace else. And so it's what I say to folks is to, like I said, two things. One is it breaks my heart when people come up to me and say, I wish I'd known you when my mom, my aunt, my grandma, because we came in and tried to figure it out and nobody knew what to do. And I don't think we did a very good job of it.

And I wish I'd known that you could be a resource, not just to sell the house, but for all the other pieces of it. The second thing I say is, don't you want it to be your decisions? Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was the assisted living that you had chosen? Wouldn't it be better if you decided whether to go live close to...

Janet Engel (11:18.392)
Mm.

Cathi Coridan (11:26.518)
child number one or child number two, which is your preferred community rather than having what I just said, there will be some crises happen, bad decisions are made during crises that can have emotional, physical and financial consequences that last for generations. Wouldn't you rather be the one?

that makes those decisions that other people can put into play, then fall, hurt yourself, and have other people have to come in and make those decisions for you, or have you all be making them in this very sad crisis situation. So I think.

Janet Engel (12:09.26)
And that's a very good point. That goes back to what you were saying earlier, helping the older adult remain in control. And that's how planning can help people remain in control.

Cathi Coridan (12:22.015)
yeah.

Cathi Coridan (12:25.942)
Right. I have a family member who has just moved into assisted living and she's struggling with it. And my heart aches for her because they had bought the smaller house that she was gonna age out in and it just became untenable for her to be able to be there. But she's been really struggling with that move. Yet what the family had done earlier was to have her go and choose it.

It is literally just down the street from where her house was, very short distance from where her daughter is. And so she may be unhappily there, but she's where she chose. And she knows that.

Janet Engel (13:09.62)
Okay, great point. Cathy, you recently moved cross country. You were living in the Washington DC area. Now you live in Texas. And as you said, you are the client that you are working with on the younger end. And how did you work through that move? And what were the choices that you made when you

Cathi Coridan (13:17.773)
Yes.

Janet Engel (13:39.264)
chose the house that you bought in Texas.

Cathi Coridan (13:44.505)
The story is that my husband and I about eight or nine years ago began talking about with, we married in our forties, we don't have children. And so it's just us. then we have, I mean, we have all of our planning done and we have his brother, my sister, God bless them both. And so, but we knew that we needed to be where we wanted to be. And we wanted to move.

thank you for the thing about not that old, because we wanted to be here before we retired. We wanted to be in a community and engaged in the community and active in life here before we came to stop. And I just think that that wouldn't work for me. What do I have to do? I don't know. So we had looked at several places in Florida and

East Coast and West Coast were cruisers. So every time we went on a cruise, we checked out a different kind of area and it just didn't fit us. So then we then looked at, we had spent time previously in North Carolina and South Carolina, and was just like, no, that's just really still not it. I had worked in my work with human services. I had been the grant writer and program development person.

for the Girls Incorporated of Metropolitan Dallas, which is a girls afterschool and out of school time programming national program, the Dallas Metropolitan Dallas affiliate. And so I had been here back and forth for a week at a time, two or three times a year for four years. My cousin lives as the crow flies for me about four and a half miles. And so I would come and stay with her.

So I had a sense, not just of the Texas suburbs or the Dallas suburbs, based on kind of staying with Jane and Alan when I was here and going out to dinner and going shopping. And so I was here for a week. But also because I was doing grant writing, I was in tune with the corporate development and the amount of moving and the amount of expansion in this area. Also of the...

Cathi Coridan (16:00.853)
philanthropic and the arts communities because the girls were involved in the arts communities. So I said to my husband, now the timing on this is about six years ago, why don't we look at Dallas? And he said, really? And I said, well, it's warmer. I should have been a little more specific about that, but anyway, that 108 degrees summers or something else, but it's warmer, it's growing.

It's got a major metropolitan area. It's got two, it's with Dallas and Fort Worth. You can fly in and out of here to go anywhere in the world. It's the second largest airport. So it has a lot of, so we came down five years ago for a week and my cousin showed us Texas. And my mother was born in West Texas as was Jane's mom. Jane's mom was the last of the family born before they moved to Michigan. And so.

She has two other sisters, one in Houston and one in Austin. She actually has six other sisters, two of them are in Texas. So it's kind of moving back to the family roots as well. And so we came down and we saw it and we toured the areas around her town and began to get a sense of it. And then Jane started sending us MLS listings. And then we came down and then we...

we're going to come down the original plan. Now, the thing about plans is when you make them, you can change them. When you don't make them, you're trying to figure stuff out. And that's really part of that difference. So our original plan was to buy three years out the kind of, it could be a little orphan house in a nice neighborhood that we would prep to have as a rental property.

Janet Engel (17:33.934)
Mm.

Cathi Coridan (17:51.456)
And then when we were ready, we were going to come and do the reno and move in, building equity while the time passed. When we came down, the second time we could get here was in April of 21 because of COVID. And by that time, the requirements from Freddie and Fannie on rental investment properties, the...

Janet Engel (17:59.254)
Right. Right.

Cathi Coridan (18:20.502)
Well, the rest of the rates for a primary home were two and a half to three. These were four and a half to five. And I said, they weren't like that. This was a COVID imposed restriction. So we said, no, we'll just wait. We'll just buy a nicer house when we get down there. So we went back in April. We were here in April for a week. We really did drive around, got to know the neighboring towns, drove downtown.

Janet Engel (18:27.278)
Mm-hmm.

Cathi Coridan (18:49.46)
spent time just kind of trying it on like like it was closed and our plan had been

almost two years later, because it timed with my husband being able to move forward with an opportunity that he had, that he was making, that once he started talking about moving down here, people had come to him and said, we have this idea. So that was supposed to be January of 23. We got in July of 21, he had a meeting at his office and they had made decisions to move the organization he worked with.

in a different way. And all of a sudden, it was July, a year and a half before we were planning on moving, but we knew where we were going. We knew what towns, we had the MLS searches. We knew that we were moving to Texas and where we were going was really clearly defined. We were just coming sooner. And so,

I had to make adjustments on my side to my business model so that I could incorporate ongoing business up there, which meant I had to partner with agents up there so that my business could continue to grow while I was establishing myself down here. And we did 10 weeks to Texas. I put the house on the market. We got it sold. We got down, downsized, gave stuff away.

It had to its way on the moving truck. And we were here in 10 weeks because we had a plan. But if we'd had that situation where he was then, and he was able to parlay that opportunity into half time down here to get it started, it didn't work out. He's doing something else he absolutely loves. But the initial job for him down here was that.

Cathi Coridan (20:56.106)
We were able to do all of that in 10 weeks because we had a plan.

Janet Engel (21:00.376)
Right. what are some key... Go ahead, Kathy.

Cathi Coridan (21:01.761)
And my, my.

Cathi Coridan (21:05.75)
I said my cousin is also a realtor. So it's part of that family business thing. So she was our realtor. So we had a realtor down here that knew what we needed and did really good for us. And we had an excellent realtor selling my house.

Janet Engel (21:09.162)
Okay, so that helped.

Janet Engel (21:19.878)
And what are some key factors that you think are important for people to have in place when you're talking about short term? And then also what are some key factors to have in place when you're talking about long term moves, for example, going from the home where you've been to transitioning either to a rental apartment or a senior living community?

Cathi Coridan (21:47.992)
Okay, well, I think I want to start with the place where you and I connect the most fully, which is the aging in place piece, because I don't want to leave that out. I want everybody to understand as much as we can that bringing a senior's real estate specialist into the process doesn't mean you have to be ready to sell your house. Those of us that are well trained in this understand that we are

resource central for all the other pieces and that it can be several years before, not just when you have the situations like I talked about, but when families are not sure what they want to do yet, want to know if they can make that house fit. I think getting us involved at the earlier place is a really smart thing to do because we can do two things. We can give them a very accurate

estimate of the market value of their house as it is and then with updates that we would recommend that they do to get better price for it. They can do some of those things while they're still there and in doing them they can make the house a little safer for themselves. They can increase the lighting. They can...

move the, we can do some decluttering so that they can move the furniture so the spaces are bigger. And so all of those pieces, the access to the bath and the access to the things that are important in the kitchen, put drawers in instead of lower cabinets, those kinds of things can be factored in a little bit of universal design. I don't think we want to go all the way down that path, but with some things that make their living there easier.

a walk-in shower in place of the bathtub is really an easy fix. It will improve the value of the property, but it also makes it so much easier to get in and out. You get the grab bars, all the things that make it safer for them to be there while they're making their decision. So the short-term piece for me is, is it safe for them to be there? How can we make it safest for longest? How can we have the family

Cathi Coridan (24:10.772)
involved in a way that is helpful and the most productive. If there aren't plans, if they don't have their wills done, if they don't have a trust if they want one, if they don't have durable power of attorney and medical power of attorney, it's an opportunity to put those pieces in place before we make this other big shift.

Selling a house is of the five most stressful things you can do in your life when you're 35, 55, or 85. And it becomes so much more stressful on that 75 to 85 range. And so having as many structures and supports in place as possible is really a good thing. So the short term is often prepped for the long term.

That short term could also be what my family member did, which is let's go tour some assisted livings. Let's go tour some independent living. Let's go tour where the, know, what's closest to the medical facilities that you may be needing. What are all the pieces that would be part of their life when they move?

And so those are things you can do in the short term that are both short term and prep for the long term.

Janet Engel (25:45.588)
and don't require any commitment.

Cathi Coridan (25:49.304)
Correct. And if it never comes to pass that they move to the assisted living community, fine. No harm, no foul. Just because it's a plan doesn't mean that you're giving up, doesn't mean you're gonna die, doesn't mean that the world's coming to an end. It means you have a plan and it can be on a shelf, it can be on a shared drive, whatever that is. The other thing that you can put into place is a communication plan between

Janet Engel (25:50.606)
Mm-hmm.

Janet Engel (25:58.478)
Mm-hmm.

Cathi Coridan (26:18.924)
the senior and those who are their caregivers. If it's, know, for Ned and myself, that's not children. For other people, it's their adult children. So that there's a plan that we communicate three times a week. If there's an emergency that we either have a code word or an emergency text that goes out that says, whatever you're doing, I need to talk to you right now. And with a pack that says,

Don't abuse that. And that way, everything isn't an emergency. We kind of pull back from that crisis mode to something, it's a problem to be solved. So how are we gonna work together, mom and dad, to solve this problem for you so that you have your best life you can have, that you have the most independence you can have?

Janet Engel (27:01.602)
Mm-hmm.

Janet Engel (27:20.768)
And that's a good lead into my next question. What about the holiday surprise phenomenon where you see people that you may not have seen in months and you're surprised by their current level of function versus how you remember them or perhaps the way they look. Maybe they've lost a lot of weight, which

Cathi Coridan (27:28.394)
You

Janet Engel (27:47.626)
I mean, all of us want to be thin, right? But when you're older, losing weight, if it's too much weight, it equates to frailty, which isn't good. How do you help people manage that once they're seeing a clearer picture of what's going on with mom and dad?

Cathi Coridan (28:12.236)
Yeah, well, we all want our parents to live forever, be in our minds. They are not any older than they were when we were 16 and we were all yelling at each other. so oftentimes when an adult child goes in and begins to, and it is usually the ones that live farther away, which is actually a blessing, because the ones that live closer, it's a gradual decline and you may not see it.

you know, over the river and through the woods, we're going to grandma's house for Thanksgiving. We've got the kids in the SUV and all the presents for Christmas, because we're not coming back until the spring. And we just, you know, we talk on FaceTime once a week and just check in with each other and they both say they're doing fine. And you pull in and, you know, the bushes are overgrown and the leaves are still all on the ground. And you walk in the house and

what used to be really well kept as stacks of newspapers and stacks of bills that haven't been opened, the mail hasn't been opened, and you begin to have this sinking feeling that something isn't right. I think the most important thing to understand is that you need to have the time to really do some questions and some...

conversations with the seniors to find out what's really going on. Is it somebody got sick last week and they just had gotten way behind or they got sick two weeks ago and they haven't caught up because they haven't felt well? And it isn't just having everybody come in and help clean up the house, but it's also checking on the meds and making sure that they're in a

little pill box with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning and night and putting some place things in place so that they feel.

Cathi Coridan (30:18.07)
they feel like they can relax. Or is it that there has been some decline and dad takes you aside and says, mom's not doing real well, but I'm committed to being here to take care of her and she won't let me help around the house and I don't know what to do. That's really different. So that you spend some time with dad and mom unpacking what all that means.

Do they have power of attorney? Do they have medical power of attorney? Is it possible for them to sign a HIPAA release so that you can speak with the doctors? Has she had a neurological exam? Have all of the pieces of an assessment been done? Do they know what they're dealing with? Or is it just dad trying to wrap his, literally wrap his caring, loving arms around his wife and protect her?

so that you spend that time kind of discovering what it is. One of the risks that happens is that, I've already said, you pack the teenagers in the back of the SUV, and so you've got people that live far away with a very full life of their own. And now, what do we do? And so we go into reactive mode and sometimes tend to make a crisis out of something that...

Janet Engel (31:29.091)
Mm-hmm.

Cathi Coridan (31:39.274)
needs time and as a process and needs time to unfold and to get the best local resources that you can. They say best and I when I write this out local is capitalized and usually in a larger font. We don't want them going on Google and finding some national service that's not going to be knowing exactly what resources are in your community. If you don't know you call the senior services of the area

agency on aging, and whoever named that. I always tongue trip over it. Or if they know someone that a placement professional that knows a care coordinator, which is a certified senior housing, I'm sorry, certified senior...

Janet Engel (32:12.46)
Yeah, I have the same problem when I say those words.

Janet Engel (32:35.682)
real estate specialist.

Cathi Coridan (32:38.014)
No, not the real estate certified senior advisor is that really has gone through the training so that they are a senior's real estate specialist because we know in that community who to go to. And so, you know, I would start with the Chamber of Commerce before I'd start with anything on Google. So how do you find those?

Janet Engel (32:41.761)
Okay.

Cathi Coridan (33:04.31)
the best people. So if you live in, you live in Florida and I live in Texas, then

Cathi Coridan (33:16.232)
maybe call someone that you know in Florida and reach out to them and say, who do you know in North Texas? And can you do a quick introduction for me? Mom's blah, blah, blah. I need to know blah, blah, blah, blah. And I need connections in that network to get started so that you're working really with the local folks. And then I'd say, think of that short term and the long term piece again.

Janet Engel (33:36.654)
Mm-hmm.

Cathi Coridan (33:45.76)
what needs to be done to ensure safety, what needs to be done Thanksgiving weekend, because we're going to go home on Sunday, versus what needs to be done in the next before New Year's, before the spring, and then parse it out. But to be really thoughtful and to remember that as stressful as it is for the adult child, it is 10 times more stressful for the senior.

Janet Engel (34:13.588)
Mm-hmm. I can see how that's the case because they may be worried that their daughter's coming into town and now they're going to see all of these things that they've been trying to hide and now that they're present it's not so easy to hide them and they also don't want to lose control.

Cathi Coridan (34:34.679)
Mm-hmm.

Cathi Coridan (34:38.304)
Right, and I'm glad you used that word because there's a great resource. David Solly, S-O-L-I-E, wrote a book back and I think it's probably 2006 or 2007. So there's pieces of it that are a little out of date because of technology and stuff, but my God, it is just a treasure trove of resource for families.

to understand the developmental process and the needs of an aging parent or aging family member. And it's called How to Say it to Seniors. And I wish I'd had this book before my father's last couple of years, because we got in loggerheads at 16 and we got in loggerheads at 60. It was a struggle for us because

Yes, he was being really stubborn, but I now know why and I know more about the dynamics that underlie it. And I could have come in with questions that were really different and not gotten us into almost a because I said so kind of conversation, which isn't helpful. It's but David Sally talks about the developmental needs of aging seniors as the need to leave a legacy. So what has my life meant?

and the need to maintain control and as much independence as I can have. The neat thing about making plans is it takes both of those things into consideration. It takes the need to stay in control because that's the plan, but the plan can also be turned in terms of the legacy. And so this is what I want, this is what I want, know, oftentimes the stuff is

a major stressor for the seniors, it's a major stressor for the kids, will begin to do some of the downsizing by having family members that have always wanted that painting, that music box, that to let them go ahead and give those things away, that be part of that legacy planning, that if you sit down and talk about it, it makes perfect sense. If you kind of say, wait until you die, it becomes an argument.

Cathi Coridan (36:59.41)
So, and the last thing, I mean, one of the things that happens that's, I think, for the adult children that are listening is that the default on making those decisions, okay, so mom and dad are moving into the assisted living and we are gonna sell the house, but there's all this stuff that is just, it won't make enough money selling on the regular market. We really need to,

wait until we can get best price for it. So we're going to get a storage unit for $250 a month.

Janet Engel (37:34.698)
Yeah, and I think that's such a great point, Kathy, what you're saying with that there are so many different aspects to planning and how you can plan ahead even when you're not ready to make a move. And I think when it comes to stuff, that's definitely an area where you can plan ahead before you're going to move and getting rid of stuff early, giving it away to people who actually want it. Right.

I know as a therapist doing home health, I was the heir or recipient of several sets of and cooking ware that their children didn't want. And it was expensive china too. And because it had a pattern that had flowers and was more traditional, their children simply didn't want it. And no one needs three sets of china. Right? So

Cathi Coridan (38:14.936)
you

Janet Engel (38:33.42)
doesn't matter how much you entertain. And it's very important to be able to slowly get rid of stuff when it's not imperative that the stuff, leave the house, get sold.

Cathi Coridan (38:50.104)
We had a situation in the late early summer where the very specially built storage shed that we had that was climate controlled flooded and it had Christmas in it. And I had a very large, beautiful colonial in New England. So I have dozens and hundreds of Christmas stuff. And so as we had to throw away probably 25 % of it,

the rest that was left that we don't have space for, and we're not gonna get that much Christmas stuff out anymore. I've packed five boxes and I'm sending them to the nieces and nephews so that they can enjoy while they have little kids the really fun Christmas stuff. And they've so appreciated it, because some of it is stuff that was my dad's when he was a kid. And the little kids just get a big kick out of that.

So doing that feels good all the way around. And I think people don't stop to think about that. And we want a win-win whenever we can.

Janet Engel (39:56.846)
Kathy, how important do you think self-care is for seniors and strategies to help them maintain their well-being while they are going through a transition such as moving?

Cathi Coridan (40:16.266)
It's extremely important. There's the old saying, can't pour from an empty cup. along with you, I am on a number of discussion boards in Facebook of adult children who are caring for their parents. And whenever you just feel their pain and the struggle and the guilt they have about taking care of themselves because mom needs me.

And I think if we can frame it for them in, when you were in a job and there was a crisis at work, wasn't it important to kind of get some space from it to be able to make good decisions? How important was it in other places to be able to get some rest and get some perspective to make really good decisions? You're in that place now where you need to make really good decisions and...

being overtired and totally stressed out. There is the ability to have someone from a care agency or a home health care just come in for an afternoon or a weekend and give you the respite and the ability to go, feel yourself and be yourself again. Because it's only when you have that capacity to really be yourself that you can be of service to

your parent or your grandparent, whoever it is that you're working to take care of. And just, I do the thing of trying to tie it back to a different example that has nothing to do with this and they would be able to say, yeah, I get that. Well, then that's this situation. Yeah, but yeah, but yeah, no, you know, when it's a toddler or a preschooler who hasn't had enough sleep, you get them to rest so that you can get some rest too.

You take them to mommy's morning out so that you can be, this is that, you gotta have that same wisdom here because you really need to be at your best. if you're not, bad decisions get made. So.

Janet Engel (42:26.274)
Hmm. Kathy, what are some misconceptions about transition planning for seniors and how can families, especially now that the holidays are coming and they may be seeing their family member, you know, for the first time in six months or perhaps even a year, how can they approach these conversations more effectively so that it goes better and not the way it went with you and your dad?

Yeah.

Cathi Coridan (42:57.773)
It wasn't all that way. Those were just the bad moments. There were lots of other moments in there as well that were really great. And I think it's to, again, I have an acronym of CARE when it comes to doing this. Clarity, making sure that you really understand what's going on and that you're hearing it from, not just hearing it to give the next answer, but really listening to the senior.

Janet Engel (43:02.775)
Okay.

Cathi Coridan (43:26.122)
attention, paying attention to their environment, looking how they interact with other people. Are you their safe place where they can act out and they're doing fine other places? How do you see, we talked about the environment of the house, how do you see them in their environment? R is respect. Really respect who they are and what the stuff means to them. Thank you for taking those.

China surfing settings because that means a lot that, I also, when you were saying that adult children take it, give it to Goodwill at home, say thank you, ooh and over it and don't refuse it because it's, I understand I'm still, I have brown furniture waterford in China. So I understand it. I bought those things to be special and to be heirlooms and I know they're not, but it's still.

hard for a lot of people to give up that emotional connection with it. So to really respect the senior and listen to and not use a jargon, think, especially the professionals, not using the jargon of talking about senior living communities in shorthand and talking about the condition of the house, to be really thoughtful about how you do that as well and the adult children, how you do that. What happened? Why is this place such a mess? No.

I'm really concerned because this, you know, this isn't exactly how you've always done it. What can I do to support you? And the last one is empathy, that whatever happens is going to be hard. And to that's my excellence and empathy. have to be excellent as in my world as a realtor. We have to, I have to know how to sell a house and have that part down cold or the rest of it doesn't matter because that is this much of this much. It's the transition.

and how I can enter into their world for a little while, see the world through their eyes, and so help guide them to make good decisions by providing ideas and other options that they don't have any way of knowing about. And I think some of the misconceptions is, you know, they see it as the end. If I'm going to do this, there's nothing else, so I might as well roll it up.

Cathi Coridan (45:54.772)
It's all or nothing. My life's gonna end because, you know, with my father, he's not going into the office anymore. That was a real hard one for him. I literally would go in, the Wall Street Journal, balance his checkbook, and go across the street to go to lunch. That still meant so much to him.

And it wasn't just an activity, it was his way of staying engaged and being able to see that and understand it. And I'm the one that advocated for that with my siblings who were, you know, thinking that he just needed to take better care of himself and roll it up. Planning means doing it now. It's another misconception. And that's, and we've talked a lot about that all the way through. Planning means just having a plan. And you can take pieces of it as you need it or not.

it's still the way you want to have happen. And wouldn't you rather be the one to make these decisions than end up in the hospital and have a rehab nurse and me from four states away trying to make good decisions for you. And they also, I think sometimes feel like it's accepting defeat. I really wanted to do this and I can't. I have my own personal thing is what I can do. And...

in that can-do model, we really focus on, yes, we accept the losses and the things that are different, yet we focus on what we can do. What we can do together as a family, what we can do to support you, what we can do to make your life less stressful. And that may mean moving to an assisted living, but why don't we come and look at it? Because one of the myths is, it's the old home.

folks home and everybody's in the hallway drooling on their wheelchair. And that just isn't true. These are beautiful state of the art communities where people are outside working in the garden and they're having paint classes and doing Zumba and they have swimming pools. So why don't we go explore it? I'll go with you and we'll explore it. You don't have to do it. But like I said about that family member,

Cathi Coridan (48:17.738)
you can make that decision and tell me which one you like best so that if the time comes, I'm doing what you want me to do, not just trying to figure it out.

Janet Engel (48:26.67)
Mm-hmm.

Well, very well said. Kathy, thank you so much for being with us today and educating us on planning for transitions. How can a caregiver find you?

Cathi Coridan (48:33.228)
Thank you.

Janet Engel (48:44.64)
if they want to hire you for your expertise and then also a real estate agent who is interested in doing what you do and you know doing it better and getting into this senior niche. How can they find you?

Cathi Coridan (49:01.784)
It's Kathy, C-A-T-H-I, and it's been written on my picture, yourtransitionpartner.com. And they can send me an email and let me know how I can help, and I'll be happy to spend 15, 20 minutes on the phone providing any kind of resources that I can, both with families that are really struggling. I have a network of 2,800 agents across the country.

and we have a directory. I just did it earlier today. Someone said I need someone in a small town and I was able to find a seniors real estate agent that could support them and get them connected with the resources in town. So I am happy to do that for families, for seniors and of course

If someone wants to be a member of that network, I would love to have them in there because we do several resource development and professional development programs a month.

Janet Engel (50:04.952)
Well, that's great. And that goes back to what you were saying earlier about vetting professionals in your local area. So very important, just like we want to buy food that's local, we also want to hire professionals that are local. Well, Kathy.

Cathi Coridan (50:14.018)
Yes. Yeah.

Cathi Coridan (50:22.07)
Right. Right. And Google is our friend for a lot of things, but it's not our friend to find really high quality resources for our seniors.

Janet Engel (50:34.09)
Yes, I agree. Thank you very much, Cathy, and it was great spending time with you.

Cathi Coridan (50:39.594)
Absolutely. It's been wonderful to spend the time.