Depreciation

COH & ACOA Joined: Jul 22, 2006 Posts: 1870 Location: Cabo

From a member of the COH Yahoo Group. Also a member here at community-let me know if you want her contact info.-Donna
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Quote:

I'm now in the process of selling my mom's home for her.
(I'm her legal guardian.) Her house was condemned as
"unfit for human habitation." The heat doesn't work, and
neither does the hot water. The plumbing needs to be replaced
as well. There's flood damage also.

The market value of this house (and land) should have been
somewhere around $325,000 to $380,000 if it was in good
condition. But it's starting to sound like she may only
get about $125,000 for it. (One Realtor said that the town
almost certainly won't grant a "certificate of continued
occupancy," whatever that is.)

The shame of it is that she's now in an assisted living
facility (she has Alzheimer's Disease). The money from the
sale of the house will support her for only two years
(room and board there now is over $5,100 a month). If
she and my adult brother (who lived with my parents all
his life) had taken care of the house, not allowed it to
fall into filth and disrepair, the sale of the house would
have supported her for maybe six years, by the end of which
her mental faculties would probably have deteriorated to the
point that it wouldn't have been so bad to move her into a
nursing home. (Medicaid will pay for a nursing home but not
for assisted living. Unfortunately, most people decline quickly
in nursing homes.)

I'm posting this to help make others aware of the depreciation
of a house that's been neglected, as well as the high cost of
assisted living care.