The children have flown the coop. So what’s an empty nester to do?
The stress of managing a larger home isn’t going to disappear just because the kids have. Heating and cooling a house is pricey. And you still have to pay property taxes.
“People downsize because they want to simplify,” says Mary Frances Weir, a Re/Max Beyond 2000 real estate agent. “Having less space, lower bills and smaller taxes tends to reduce stress. Life becomes simpler without the clutter.”
Plus there’s nothing like striking while the market is hot. Thanks to favorable interest rates and younger buyers looking to expand, larger family homes are a hot commodity. “I cannot imagine a negative repercussion for downsizing,” Weir says.
For some extended families, though, the family home is priceless. Parents whose kids move away might have an excellent reason to stay. “People whose extended families and grandchildren come back for Thanksgiving, Christmas and summer reunions enjoy staying at the family home,” Weir says. “It’s the home base for dinners, events and activities. It’s also a nostalgic place for grown children to reunite with high school friends.”
Whether to stay put or fly the coop is a very personal decision. A real estate agent can help you estimate the value of your home, and then you can weigh that value against the lifestyle value you and your loved ones might glean from a few more years with the family home.
But Weir says to also think about prepping a house for sale — clearing clutter, maintaining the yard, fixing any issues — while you still have the energy to do so. “The preliminary stuff [of selling a house] does matter,” she says. “If you fixed everything up and staged it, you could increase up to 15 percent of the home’s value.”
