Family Reunion

Real-Life Advice

In Longmont, Colo., outside Boulder, Diane Stow, CRS, with RE/MAX Traditions, wishes builders were doing the same in her community. “There is a growing need for this type of housing and it just isn’t there,” she says. “It is a huge void.”

Where are Multigenerational Families Living?
Region	Percent
West	6.7%
South	6.0%
Northeast	5.5%
Midwest	4.2%

Because of the shortage of homes in her area that work for such families, Stow typically helps these clients find homes that can be remodeled to fit their needs. She accompanies her clients to meetings with builders and architects and provides advice on design and other key modifications. In many cases, design changes, such as adding a second kitchen, require a zoning variance, and Stow guides her clients through that process as well.

States with the highest number of multigenerational households:
California	696,401
Texas	432,509
New York	302,534
Florida	268,641

Stow is uniquely qualified to advise multi­generational homebuyers because she was once one herself. In the late 1990s, she and her husband designed and built a 5,000-square-foot house to share with her elderly parents, and made sure there was also room to accommodate extended return visits from her four grown children.

On the home’s ground level, her parents had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen and their own entrance to the house. Spread across two levels above them, Stow and her husband had three bedrooms, a study, three baths, a living room, family room, rec room, dining room and an eat-in kitchen, as well as their own front entrance.

“Having experienced designing and living in such a home, I learned what will work and what doesn’t,” says Stow. “Most important, everyone needs their own private space, for the dignity of the elderly parents and the sanity of the younger members.”

Dyan Nelson Blass, CRS, with Keller Williams Real Estate, agrees. For the last eight years, she and her husband have shared a house in Philadelphia with his 93-year-old father and, for much of that time, with one of their grown daughters as well. She agrees with Stow that clients benefit most when you have lived through it yourself.

Last summer, she helped a couple, their two teenage children and the wife’s elderly mother find a 2,700-square-foot home to share. Nelson Blass’s advice was key to making the situation work. For instance, because the family room had a full bathroom next to it and was on the first floor, she counseled them to turn that into the mother’s bedroom, and then convert the traditional living room into a family room. She pointed out the importance of wide doorways to accommodate walkers and wheelchairs. Nelson Blass also suggested they create what she calls a “minimalist” kitchen for the mother with a small cook top, mini fridge and microwave, similar to what she has in her own basement space for her father-in-law. “Two kitchens are absolutely imperative,” says Nelson Blass. “There are no two ways about it.”

Seeing how happy all three generations of the family were with their new home was incredibly gratifying, says Nelson Blass. “I get great joy from helping families be able to come together. It is a powerfully good feeling.”

 

Daniel Rome Levine is a writer based in Wilmette, Ill., and is a frequent contributor to The Residential Specialist.

The CRS course “Bridging the Generation Gap” teaches you how to market to different generations.