Helping your parents downsize their home is no easy feat. There are a ton of logistical items to handle, emotions to keep at bay, and you have to ultimately be there for your parents when they need you most.

It’s a big ask, which is why we’ve put together this guide to help you navigate this, step by step. With important details and considerations for each part of the journey.

By the end, you’ll feel confident and know how to best help your parents downsize their home in BC.

Let’s begin.

1. Open the Conversation Early

If your parents haven’t come to you yet about downsizing, but you’re hearing all the pain points and reasons why someone may consider it, like:

  • Not using many rooms in the home,
  • High maintenance and utility bills to keep things going,
  • Tired of having so much stuff,

Then, it’s time to open up that conversation to see what they think about downsizing.

Before any major decisions need to be made, bring up the conversation to see if they are interested in the idea. It’s best to do this using a gentle approach to the topic. Such as bringing up the added lifestyle benefits of lower maintenance costs or more money for travelling, etc.

Your parents may be initially hesitant to the idea because they may consider what they could lose versus what they have to gain. Which is why we recommend starting off on a positive note for this conversation.

2. Start Early and Plan Strategically

After you’ve had some initial discussions and it’s come to the positive conclusion that it’s time to downsize, it’s best to start planning early and strategically.

One of the best ways to do this is by starting with the Pre-Planning stage in our checklist for downsizing your home. We highly recommend starting out with setting clear goals for their new living arrangement.

Understand the type of home you’ll downsize to

Before a timeline is established, you’ll need to understand what your parents will be downsizing to. Think about the housing style and required amenity levels for their stage in life.

For instance, building a plan to move into a retirement home or assisted living is different from downsizing to a condo or small 2 bedroom rancher home.

If you’re considering a retirement home, here is a guide to retirement homes for downsizing in the Lower Mainland. Or BCSLA has also put together this comprehensive BC Seniors Guide to check out.

Begin to build a rough plan and timeline

In order to help you get a handle on how much you’ll need to help and when, spend some time to help your parents build a timeline.

This will outline the ideal date they’ll move and you can work backwards from there. Important milestones can include:

  • Decluttering 3 rooms & garage;
  • Junk removal;
  • Listing home for sale;
  • Closing on new home purchase;
  • Etc.

Get help early

We highly recommend getting help early. Our team here at Metro Vancouver Life is here to help you to the fullest, from start to finish. We can take over the job of helping your parents downsize from start to finish.

Our connections, planning, and resources will take care of every detail so everyone in the family is happy and stress-free.

3. Break Down the Process

Now that there is a rough timeline in place and a clear direction for what the downsizing will look like, it’s time to break down the process further into more manageable steps.

List out Each Room

For each room, you’ll want to break the organisation into three steps:

  • Organising what you’ll keep;
  • Organising what you’ll donate or sell;
  • Organising what you’ll throw away.

We suggest doing this quickly and briefly to begin with. To help you see if there are any major or large items that you need to worry about first. For instance, a large piano that you can sell or donate will need more time to properly sell compared to old clothing.

This will help you when you need to actually get down to business with decluttering and organisation in step 5.

Begin the Home Search Process

A fun part about getting started with your downsizing process is helping your parents search for new properties. This is important to do early on to see what kind of properties they like and dislike. It will help you coordinate details with any important parties like a realtor or mortgage broker.

Head over to any popular real estate search site like:

Also, get your parents to fill out their wants versus needs for their new home. This will help you simplify their home search process and narrow down criteria.

Begin the Home Selling Process

Selling the home your parents have lived in for years is a very hard thing to do. The psychology of it is called Place Attachment. And you may have emotional attachment, too, or it may be hard to separate your parents’ attachment from your decision making.

That’s why we recommend working with an experienced downsizing realtor like our team at Metro Vancouver Life. In this phase, it’s best to think about and begin scouting for a reliable Realtor you can work with.

4. Keep Things Positive

By this point in the process of helping your parents downsize, it’s important to reassure positivity and keep things enthusiastic. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of downsizing, packing, decluttering, and home searching that comes with downsizing.

If you’re not working with a team to help you accomplish this for your parents, make sure you’re keeping a positive attitude and showcasing that to your parents. Being supportive and helping them through this process is a positive remark in itself, so be sure to keep that in mind.

5. Decluttering

Decluttering deserves its own step. It’s typically the largest step involved in helping your parents downsize. When it comes to selling the home, the paperwork, moving, junk removal and other tasks is where many other professionals get involved. But with decluttering, things become much more personal and are typically left to family to help.

When decluttering, spend time going through things to either keep, donate, or trash/recycle it. The best places to start will be the rooms you marked as having little items in them to go through from step 3. This will give you small wins to easily finish up some rooms and have momentum for the larger decluttering projects.

One thing to keep in mind with decluttering is that there are always storage options available. For example if there is a room full of sentimental items that other family members across the country may want, consider getting a storage locker. This will help you store things without feeling the guilt of having to get rid of sentimental items.

6. Consider Future Needs & Next Home

Now that you’ve helped your parents through some of the major initial stages of helping them downsize, it’s time to consider their future long-term needs and what that next home will look like.

Work with your parents to help them decide on a new neighbourhood that fits their future needs. This could be proximity to family, warmer climate, or closer to healthcare facilities.

Need help discovering neighbourhoods? Check out our City Guides like out:

City guide to White Rock, BC

City guide to Richmond, BC

City guide to Port Coquitlam, BC

And so many more! Check out individual lower mainland city guides.

You’ll also need to help them consider the size and layout of their new home. Will it be a ranch style, 1 floor home? Condo living? Heading to a retirement home? Some final decisions will need to be made for your parents regarding their next move.

7. Assist with the Sale of the Home

The most important step in helping your parents sell their home will be choosing an experienced Realtor you can work with. One with proven experience and education to help you along the way.

Downsizing is a major life step and also a major real estate undertaking. You need to sell your parents current home and get their new home secured, ideally in one go, to make things smooth and avoid several moves.

An experienced Realtor, like Daniel John, can do just that. Beyond just navigating the sale of the home, we can help you through all steps of the downsizing process. We’ll be able to handle all the other necessary details when it comes to selling.

When offers are received, it will be important that your parents are ready to hear the offers or you’re ready to chat with them about any potential offers.

8. Getting Them Moved & Settled

Once the home sale and new purchase has gone through, we’re almost at the finish line!

Again, the most important step here is to select reliable movers that can help get the job done. If you’re going to help a parent move yourself, it’s a big undertaking, especially if you’ve been helping up until this point in the process.

Helping them pack up fragile and sentimental items can go a long way, and leaving the actual heavy lifting to the movers is what we recommend. The movers will be able to put your belongings in certain rooms in the new place, assemble furniture, and leave your parents with a put-together home.

Once they’ve moved in, it’ll be important to help them get settled. This may involve helping them tour around the community, establish their new routines, or organize the home further.

9. Celebrate the New Chapter

Once they are settled into their new home, it’s time to celebrate. While you’ve done a lot up until this point, most people would appreciate a surprise party or planned celebration! Gather friends and family at their new home for an afternoon.

Final Thoughts

Helping your parents move is a big undertaking. By following these 9 steps, you can help them downsize with ease. And to make it even easier on yourself and your relationship, it’s always recommended to get professionals involved to handle all these steps for you. That way, you can help with the fun things and leave the rest of the complicated work up to us.

Nevertheless, follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to helping your parents downsize their home with ease.

Other Downsizing Resources

From Metro Vancouver Life

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