We Make Downsizing For Seniors a Stress-Free Experience.
We offer a complete, end-to-end downsizing service for your elderly loved one, to make the sale of their home as easy as possible for you, resulting in a quick turnaround for everyone involved.
How we can help
Senior downsizing services
Downsizing can be incredibly stressful for both you and your family member. By handling every major task, our professional downsizing services are designed to take all the stress away for you and make the process as smooth as possible, so that your elderly loved one can relax in their new home and you have more time to focus on them and their situation. Downsizing often begins with a careful review of belongings. Our team can provide professional decluttering services to help make the process smoother and less overwhelming. Here are the most important tasks we complete when downsizing:
We clear the property by working through every room, and collating the items within a home.You can be involved as much as you like in this process.
We sell each item through the selling channel that will achieve the best financial return. In cases where we have to deal with inherited property, families may also require professional deceased estate clearance services to manage the full transition process.
We donate any items that are not cost-effective to sell, and reuse, recycle and repurpose what is left in the home.
We prepare the property for sale by deep cleaning, property maintenance, painting, landscaping or gardening, and renovating entire rooms if required.
We arrange a local estate agent from our list of trusted contacts to help you sell the property. We assure you that the estate agent we recommend will be the best in their suburb and has been used by us in the past.
How we manage your family member’s belongings
We accumulate a lot of household items over the course of our lives, some of which have special memories for us throughout our lives. So when it comes to downsizing, knowing what to keep and what to let go can be a painful process for your elderly family member or anyone involved. Our goal is to transform this process from something that is highly stressful and overwhelming to something manageable.
This is how we manage the belongings that we find in your family member’s home:
- Before we start clearing the property, we ask that you remove items you definitely want to keep, or any items that are outlined in the will. Otherwise, we can locate these for you, put them aside, and deliver them to you or a family member.
- We work through each room, collate the items, and work out the best means of sale for each item.
- We work with you to determine which items are cost-effective to sell, which can be donated, and which must be disposed of throughout the home.We list each item for sale using the most profitable selling method for its type, and donate items to the most suitable charities through our Pass It Forward Program.
- If there are items you have decided to keep, we pack and post them to you or a family member using one of our local or interstate couriers.
We recognise how stressful and tiring this process can be, so we customise our approach to your unique circumstances, to make things easier for you.
Why use our senior downsizing services?
Alleviate the stress of clearing and organising your family member’s home
Make your family member’s move as easy as possible for you and everyone involved
Take care of every single item in the home that needs to be returned
For assets that are being sold, we will get the best financial return
Donate items that are being let go, with a chance of them being valuable to someone again
Help you to resolve estate issues that seem overwhelming, even insurmountable at times
We offer compassion and respect for your family member’s belongings
Provide you with a flexible clearance service that suits your precise needs and requirements
Many families choose downsizing as part of transitioning to care support, ensuring the move into aged care is as stress-free as possible.
How our downsizing service works
- Consultation about your family member’s estate, to familiarise ourselves with your situation.
- Develop a customised service outline and quote.
- Clear the property, selling cost-effective items, and donating or disposing of the rest.
- We will provide a detailed breakdown of sales, and transfer the final amount to you.
- Organise a local real estate agent, to help you sell the property.
How we can help
The challenges of downsizing for your elderly parents, and how we overcome them
Organising and selling a home is a huge project, and can be even tougher when you’re helping an elderly family member to downsize. Downsizing is not just about reducing possessions — it’s also about creating space for wellbeing. Explore our tips for healthy ageing to make this next chapter a positive one.
Whether your family member lives in a one-bedroom apartment or a six-bedroom house, clearing, organising, and selling the property is a big task. Not only does every item need to be sorted and collated into groups, but the property also needs to be cleaned, maintained, and potentially renovated before being listed for the sales market.
For many people, this process can be very overwhelming, and in some cases can be delayed for years. Our experience with property clearance allows us to plan and complete the project quickly and efficiently for you and your family, removing an upsetting burden so that you can focus on helping your elderly loved one into their new home.
When it comes to decluttering, many of us have fallen prey to the “I’ll use this in the future” mentality, only to discover the item years later, covered in dust, and buried under other items, and haven’t been used since we last put it there. Items have memories attached to them, and selling them can feel like you’re getting rid of the memory itself.
Thankfully, we are able to approach your elderly loved one’s possessions from a neutral perspective, and can work with you to identify which items should be kept, donated, or thrown away (as a last resort). This makes the process much faster, allowing us to move forward with the property’s preparation for sale.
With so many methods for selling items, it can be tough knowing which to use and which one will get you a better return. Often, each item type has a selling channel that is most profitable, whether it’s at auction, an online marketplace, or through an industry contact. After years of selling items of various types, we know the most profitable channels for items, allowing us to pass on the best financial return to your elderly family member or to the estate.
Once the immense task of organising your family member’s assets has been completed, and the property is clear of items, the next major challenge is to prepare the property for sale.
To achieve the best price for the property, it must be spotlessly cleaned, any maintenance issues undertaken, and the gardens freshly landscaped to make it more appealing to potential buyers. This is not only time-consuming, but can quickly become expensive if you don’t stay within your allocated budget.
This is where we can help. At Property Clearance, we complete this all for you as part of our downsizing service, taking the stress away from you, and ensuring that you get the best possible price for your family member’s home. We will also arrange a local Real Estate Agent for you, and work with that agent to ensure that every essential task is completed for the property’s sale.
Downsizing tips for Seniors
Whether you’re downsizing your home for retirement, or helping your mum or dad move into a smaller home, you have a huge project in front of you. Here are our most helpful tips when it comes to downsizing for seniors.
Downsizing is a colossal project with many components, so it’s important to create a comprehensive plan for yourself. Necessary considerations include:
- A timeline for the sale of the property
- How much everything will cost
- What to do with items that are being let go
- What needs to be done to prepare the property for sale (this can be extensive)
- Finding a desirable suburb and new home
When we’re faced with a difficult task, it’s tempting to put it off until the last minute. But doing so just piles on more stress. When it comes to downsizing, give yourself plenty of time to organise and sell your family member’s property, so that you don’t have to experience any more stress than is necessary.
Moving home involves a number of different costs and payments, which must be carefully managed to ensure you stay in the black. These include:
- Estate agent (or marketing) fees
- Conveyancing fees
- Costs of preparing the property for sale, including cleaning, maintenance, landscaping, and renovation
- Moving costs
- Utility transfers
- Mail redirection
- Temporary self-storage
While sentimental items are easy to place in the “keep” pile, others are not so easy. Try to be as quick as possible as you’re working through the items, not hesitating for too long for each. If it helps, try using the Konmari method, which involves asking the following questions:
- Does this object bring me happiness or spark joy?
- Am I holding onto this possession out of guilt or duty?
- Do I think I will forget this person or moment if I discard the item?
- Can this item be repurposed and turned into something new I can display proudly in my home?
- Do I really need this in my life right now? What is the purpose of this item? Do I actually use it or look at it regularly?