Specialists make moving easier for older adults

Oct 5, 2022 • 4 min. read | By Miriah Hamrick

Debbie Elliott is a real estate agent and a Seniors Real Estate Specialist. Seniors Real Estate Specialists undergo training by the National Association of Realtors to be better equipped to help older adults in the real estate market. (Photo by Miriah Hamrick)

 

Last year, Linda Slaymaker found herself at a difficult crossroads. 

 

Slaymaker and her husband Clarke moved to Kure Beach in 2014 to enjoy their retirement together. Her husband wanted to be close to the water and she wanted to be close to a city, so the Wilmington area felt like a good fit. 

 

The couple bought a big beach house thinking it would be the last place they lived, but after Slaymaker’s husband died in 2021, she found herself creating a new plan while grieving the loss of her husband.

 

“I needed to move out of that house as soon as I possibly could. It was just too painful to live there any longer,” Slaymaker said. “So then I had to go on a quest to figure out: What do I do? What is my next step?”

 

Slaymaker hired Debbie Elliott, a real estate agent and certified Seniors Real Estate Specialist, to help her sell the Kure Beach house and find a new home. Slaymaker said it was important to her to work with someone who knew how to navigate issues that older adults face when moving. 

 

Real estate agents with a Seniors Real Estate Specialist credential are trained to learn more about services and opportunities that are beneficial for older adults in the real estate market. Elliott said she finds this work fulfilling.  

 

“Helping them transition from one time in their life to another, making it as positive as possible, is very satisfying,” Elliott said. 

 

A benefit of working with a Seniors Real Estate Specialist, Elliott said, is their connection to a network of professional contacts who are also specialized in working with older adults. One service that Elliott frequently recommends to her clients is a Senior Move Manager. 

 

Jane Roberts, owner of Carolina Move Managers, was referred to help Slaymaker downsize from her beach house to a villa at Plantation Village, an independent retirement community in Porters Neck. 

 

Roberts frequently helps older adults who are downsizing into smaller homes by helping them to plan their move, including what will come with them – and what will not. 

 

“You spend your whole life building and buying more and more and more. Your houses are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden, we get to a point where you have to put the brakes on and go in reverse and start getting smaller and smaller,” Roberts said. 

 

That change is often difficult to implement and Roberts helps clients envision what their life will be like in their new home in order to plan what possessions to keep.  She said she always tries to encourage clients to be realistic about how their lives will be different in this new chapter.

 

“Life can get a lot simpler if you go in the right direction and you let go of the things you don’t need anymore, that don’t serve you anymore,” Roberts said. 

 

Roberts helps clients decide what to bring by measuring their new home, the possessions they plan to bring and creating a floor plan to scale to determine if their current plan is realistic.  

 

After a plan is made, Roberts coordinates the move for her clients and gets their new homes set up, even hanging art and stocking the pantry. 

 

“They need to make the decisions, but we can be their hands and feet for them,” Roberts said.

 

Slaymaker said using both Roberts and Elliott helped her during the difficult transition she faced last year. 

 

Although she and her husband didn’t use a real estate agent specialized in working with older adults or a move manager when they moved to Kure Beach years ago, Slaymaker said that looking back, it probably would have been helpful to get more perspective on what to expect next. 

 

“At our age at that time, with our health condition, we were charging forward and not thinking a lot about it,” she said. 

 

Info: Seniors Real Estate Specialists, Senior Move Managers