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Welcome back to Real Estate Connections podcast.
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Today, we're going to have a heart-to-heart conversation with a person who not only teaches us about multi-generational living, but she actually lives it and has been living it for 11 years.
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Juli Ford is a realtor, a lender, and had spent 20 years as an affordable housing advocate in the state of Massachusetts.
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Before she went into this role of being an expert, a strategist on multi-generational living, she went from having her mom homeschool her kids to now seeing her mom through her own aging, which is just fantastic.
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What is especially important about this discussion is that she shows how we thoughtfully share resources, combined family resources in order to enrich the whole family's life.
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Let's welcome Juli Ford.
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Welcome to Real Estate Connections podcast, where relationships open doors.
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I'm Mary Foerster, and housing is a universal need.
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We are often thinking about our existing housing, our future housing, that possibly of family members.
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This is where you're going to hear the issues and the people who are working the issues every day.
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Please hit subscribe and like if you find this podcast helpful to you.
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Thank you.
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Welcome again to Real Estate Connections podcast.
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Today, we are blessed to have a mover and a shaker on our program.
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This is a person who is contributing to a change in our culture.
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I want you to meet Juli Ford, whom I've only run into a couple of months ago, and I am devouring everything she distributes to the world, and I know you will too.
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Today, our visit with Juli is to learn all about what she is doing and others are doing to change our culture.
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Our culture, which has largely boxed up our generations and kept us separate.
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And now, for a variety of reasons, maybe a failure of national health insurance policy in the area of long-term care, economics, whatever.
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We have Juli, who is changing our views on multi-generational living.
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Welcome, Juli.
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Hi, Mary.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I've been so looking forward to this conversation.
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How does it feel to be an idol?
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I don't think I'm an idol.
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You are mine.
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Well, let's say this.
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If you're going to turn into an idol, you might as well be 57 years old when it happens, right?
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Yes, that's exactly right.
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That's exactly right.
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Well, I missed that one, but maybe another version of that would be great, really good. 77 years old.
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Whatever, yes.
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That's great.
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That's really good.
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Juli does an amazing job issuing, providing content with feeling, with real life examples of the way people's lives are changing.
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She's out there providing seminars and workshops on how the practicalities of making these multi-generational living options happen or can happen.
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And then she's also in service to people as a professional real estate agent and a lender.
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And there's more.
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There's so much more.
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This is all I've discovered so far.
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And we're going to hear more.
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Juli, I know you've probably told your story a million times, but there is a reason you are where you are today.
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There's at least one reason you are where you are.
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There's probably about a million.
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And one of the things I love about talking about this is I'm a huge fan of It's Never Too Late and that all the pieces of our lives can eventually come together and make a kind of sense if we're open to it.
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So which I'm sure you can appreciate, Mary.
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And as someone who's been a lifelong learner and sort of following the breadcrumbs of the things that interested me, the things I felt passionate about, it's been a pleasure to this past couple of years.
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We've together the various elements of my professional and personal life into a way that I feel like I can finally be of service at a scale that I was hoping I could be in offering support, education, inspiration, I hope to people who really need it.
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Because as you know, we've got a tremendously rapidly aging population, an elder care crisis, an affordable housing crisis, and families, especially women my age, are really at the center of trying to solve this problem for our families.
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And the more of us that are out here talking about potential solutions, and for me, it's multi-generational living that I talk about all the time because I live it and help other people live it, the more of us that can be talking about solutions, the better, right?
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And you've identified a number of ways to do that so effectively.
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And with the help of
Load full transcript
all this digital technology, we are hearing it and we're hearing it more and more, and we'll be spreading it around more and more.
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And I was thinking before we started today that I was raised in the 50s and 60s in ethnic communities around Boston.
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And the goal, even though there were generations living together, the goal of our parents was to not have that.
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We don't want to be a burden to you, right?
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Yeah.
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That culture, where did that culture come from?
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It just, we've always had multi-generational living and maybe not wanting it, but we've had it.
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One of my favorite things that happens in my content now is when someone comes into the content, especially from another country, and says, kind of, "Lady, what are you talking about?
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This is just normal where I live." And I say, "That's the funny thing." It's as if I'm saying something brand new, but I'm not, right?
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It's just the fact that we're all talking about the possibilities of multi-generational living now, and we haven't been for the last 80 years here in the United States, but in many parts of the world.
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And everywhere, forever, it was just living.
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Like, we didn't need a special name for it, but we really did move away from it.
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I mean, I think it was post-World War II, suburban sprawl, just a new way of thinking about independence.
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I think also, honestly, like our culture, it's interesting, I married my husband from Brazil.
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And so when you marry somebody from a different culture, you just learn different things that you just took for granted aren't normal in other cultures.
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And so our culture here in the US of kids moving away to college was very different for him.
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He's like, "Well, we all went to college, but we lived in our parents' houses while we went to college.
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People didn't go live at college." And here in the US, so many people do that.
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And oftentimes, you end up making a life in the place that you moved away to.
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My son is a perfect example.
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He went to college in Colorado.
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He hasn't come back.
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I don't think he's coming back.
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So I think this also contributed to it.
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So many people, you know, you spend four years and make a ton of friends and then get a job far, far away from your family.
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It's not a surprise that you might just establish a new life there and not move back.
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So I think that had something to do with it, too.
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But now by necessity, we are figuring out that there is a lot of wisdom in combining resources and leveraging resources and bringing families together to support each other.
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And I think courage, you know, because it is a shift.
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It's a real, real big shift.
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Yes, I lived away 49 years from Massachusetts in D.C.
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I never expected to come back to Massachusetts ever.
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I get it.
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I really get it.
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I'm glad I did.
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And so many of my clients, as I was a realtor in Northern Virginia and D.C., were from overseas.
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So I was always helping them buy houses or rent houses that were big enough to have all the independence within the household.
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And you talk about those issues very, very, very succinctly and very nicely in your programming.
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Thank you.
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So a lot of these pieces came together for you.
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I know you started in Quincy helping people buy their first homes.
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Right.
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You were in a way a public servant.
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Well, I worked kind of behind the scenes.
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So my story is I grew up in Quincy.
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My mom is really the foundation of so many of my stories.
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She was in 1981 hired by a company called at the time it was called Neighborhood Reinvestment.
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Now it's called Neighborhoods America to create a neighborhood housing service in the Southwest neighborhood of Quincy.
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And that organization's purpose was really at that time they weren't even doing first time home buyer education.
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They were really helping homeowners get low interest loans.
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And you'll laugh at this because you'll probably remember it.
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Back in the 80s, a low interest loan was like seven, eight, nine percent.
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Because interest rates were 17, 18 percent at the time.
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Early 80s.
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Let's see my first home.
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I was OK in the 70s.
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I paid 16 percent.
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Yeah.
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So so they were helping homeowners oftentimes elderly homeowners like repair their roofs or install a ramp or have an accessible bathroom door, things like that.
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And helping homeowners maintain their home so
they weren't falling down around them.
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So that was really the foundation.
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My mom worked in affordable housing for years and years.
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And then when I was in my 20s, I started she went out and started a grant writing.
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Fundraising consulting business for those nonprofits she had worked for.
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And I just started working with her doing grant writing at the time.
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At the time, I was a songwriter and it was very hard to make a living.
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You can see my guitars here in the back.
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Well, it's hard to make a living doing that.
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So I was supplementing my income, which turned into a career of 20 years working in affordable housing.
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And then that did turn into establishing a homeownership centers and foreclosure prevention.
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Supportive housing for formerly homeless families and veterans and domestic violence survivors.
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So so that was really my career from like age 30 to 50.
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And during that time, I was mostly behind the scenes.
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So I would like write the grants that would fund our first time home care education centers and write the strategic plans and that sort of thing.
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So I didn't shift to working one on one with families until I had an overlap there.
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I started doing residential real estate.
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And then I saw the future college bills coming for our kids and we were like, hmm, maybe we could do some extra income.
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So I doubled up there for a little while and then eventually moved on from the nonprofit.
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Absolutely loved that work, but just felt I had grown in the ways that I was going to grow there.
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And I didn't be honest with you, Mary.
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Didn't love traditional residential real estate, love houses, love working with people.
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But it can be kind of a cutthroat world in real estate.
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There's a lot of downside to it that didn't match my personality or the fact that I had been working for mission based organizations for 20 years.
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But then I found worked working with older adults.
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So I became a certified senior adviser and I worked with an organization that was helping a lot of families do downsizing.
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So selling their homes at 40, 50, 60 years.
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And that was highly emotional work that I felt like I could bring more to the table alongside the real estate transaction.
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And so I did that work for a number of years.
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And about a year and a half ago, I thought, why aren't I ever talking publicly about how we live in this multi-generational home?
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Because every time my mom or I would bring it up to our friends, everyone would be so interested.
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Oh, how did you do that?
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How did you decide?
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Like, how does the money work?
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How does it work in the space?
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How did like, how is it?
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How did it work?
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And so I thought maybe I should start talking about this because it's changed our lives.
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So our story was and I can pause here if you have questions.
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No, no, no, no, please.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, go right ahead.
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I want you to go on and on and on.
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Our story was my dad passed away in 2011 and he was sick prior to that.
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So we knew his his death was coming.
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And so during the time when we knew he would be leaving us soon, we were having a lot of conversations about like, well, where's mom going to live?
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What's going to happen?
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They'd been together since they were 15 years old and they were only 68 at the time.
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And so we talked about potentially adding on to the home that we lived in at the time, which was like really impractical.
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There's so many reasons why I probably wouldn't have worked in that home, but we liked thinking about it.
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And the truth was behind the scenes, we didn't know this really till later, but my mom was humoring us.
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She's like, I don't think I'm ready for that.
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Like, I don't know what I want to do when your dad is gone.
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And but my dad loved talking about that.
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My dad was in construction his whole life.
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We do plan.
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Anytime I had an idea, my dad would draw a plan for it.
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So we were, my dad and I, drawing plans for this ADU that we would add to the house that we lived in at the time.
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And my mom was just kind of humoring us and going along because it was very comforting to my dad to think that she would be with us.
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So my dad passed and my mom was like, I'm going to sell the house, but I'm going to get an apartment downtown because I've never in my life had a place of my own.
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I went
from my mom's house to your dad's house.
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Like, it says I've never had a chance to choose to live on my own.
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I need some time.
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So she did that for three years.
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But then after a little while, she was wintering in Tucson, summering in Massachusetts because she had friends in Tucson who, you know, it was just a time for her to explore and live a little bit differently than she'd been living with my dad all those years.
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And then it started to seem silly that she was supporting two different apartments.
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And then the house we're living in right now, which has a beautiful in-law apartment.
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Beautiful.
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Yeah.
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It's so great.
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Yeah.
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It really is a great house for us.
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And so it came in the market and I just showed it to her and my husband.
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I said, anybody want to go look at it?
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And, you know, within a week we were under contract buying it and selling our other house.
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But it all came together because everyone was ready at that time.
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And the unit downstairs that you prepared for your mom, was it moving ready or did you redesign it?
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Yeah.
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The people who had lived here before their parents had lived downstairs.
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So it had been built for this.
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And so it was really it was ideal.
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When you see Juli, Juli is often filming from her home.
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And it's a beautiful home.
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Beautiful architectural detail.
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I mean, just very special, welcoming place.
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A very welcoming place.
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Thank you.
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I do have some tours on my social media because people are always asking me all the time, like, what is the house?
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Your house work?
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What does it look like?
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So, yes, we've been here for 11 years.
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And one of the reasons that I'm so, so passionate.
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Well, there's many reasons I'm so passionate about helping other people figure out multigenerational living is that they're in the beginning where so many benefits for my kids who were 11 and 12 ish when we moved in here.
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And, you know, my mom helped homeschool them.
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She drove them around all the time because I was always, you know, part time working mom.
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And so she helped us so much with that.
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And now that she's older and having some health problems and life is more difficult for her, we're able to help her more.
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So on an emotional and a care and a relational perspective, it's been tremendous for us.
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But it's also been tremendous for us financially.
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And I am very passionate about helping people understand the benefits.
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Yes.
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I was so impressed by the stair that you've described in the past about how you went from living with your family to your mom, to helping a brother all through, which is taking the equity out of one property and moving into another.
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Please, please tell the audience that.
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Yeah.
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And this is something I think people can think really strategically about.
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So what happened with us and there's so many different ways because people ask me this all the time.
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There are so many different ways you could set up ownership and contributions in a multigenerational home.
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And it will look different for every family.
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I have guides that can help walk you through that.
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But it really depends on your resources, your needs, everybody who's involved.
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So in our particular situation, we did it this way.
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My mom did not want to own a house after my dad died.
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She sold their house.
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She banked the money for a while and rented an apartment.
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When she moved in with us, she did not want any ownership.
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And by the way, that's a whole other conversation we could have about future elder care planning.
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But there are benefits.
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There are extra benefits to that we weren't even thinking of at the time.
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And you have siblings.
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You have a sibling?
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Yep.
00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:40.750
And the sibling conversation is so important.
00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:41.875
I have one brother.
00:16:41.916 --> 00:16:47.250
He is not financially involved in this, but he is involved conversationally.
00:16:47.457 --> 00:16:48.916
So I'll explain how that works.
00:16:49.375 --> 00:16:52.916
So my mom invested a down payment.
00:16:52.916 --> 00:16:56.250
So she helped pay for the down payment on this house 11 years ago.
00:16:56.250 --> 00:17:00.041
She just took a chunk of money and we all considered that to be.
00:17:00.041 --> 00:17:01.041
And we have this in writing.
00:17:01.625 --> 00:17:04.915
Basically the equivalent to what would have been five years of rent for her.
00:17:05.415 --> 00:17:12.708
And it was always agreed that after five years, we could re-examine that and see how financially everything was going.
00:17:13.040 --> 00:17:24.125
But if she passed before, if my mom had died before the five years were up, whatever was remaining in her estate would be recalculated, not 50 50 between my brother and I.
00:17:24.125 --> 00:17:27.500
But we would take into consideration the investment that she made in my house.
00:17:27.625 --> 00:17:29.250
So I would have got a simplified.
00:17:29.375 --> 00:17:30.415
I would have got a little less.
00:17:30.415 --> 00:17:32.083
My brother would have got a little more.
00:17:32.790 --> 00:17:33.750
But that didn't happen.
00:17:33.790 --> 00:17:35.708
This was that was five years in.
00:17:35.708 --> 00:17:39.833
So after five years, we considered all of us that to just sort of be clean.
00:17:40.500 --> 00:17:43.833
And then we went another five years with nothing really changing.
00:17:43.833 --> 00:17:47.958
She gave us just a little bit of money like towards the electric bill, but almost nothing.
00:17:48.333 --> 00:17:51.125
And then because we didn't feel like we needed it.
00:17:52.040 --> 00:17:56.583
But after 10 years, this house got more expensive to run and maintain.
00:17:56.583 --> 00:17:58.083
Insurance goes up, taxes goes up.
00:17:58.290 --> 00:17:59.958
So we had to re-look at that.
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000
And now she makes a monthly contribution.
00:18:03.250 --> 00:18:06.915
Still so much less than anything she would pay anywhere.
00:18:07.083 --> 00:18:10.000
So it's extended her retirement planning years.
00:18:10.708 --> 00:18:14.790
But it's helpful to us because it just buffers the extra expenses of having this large house.
00:18:14.790 --> 00:18:16.333
Now our kids aren't even living here now.
00:18:16.333 --> 00:18:18.915
So we're still here for us and for her.
00:18:19.415 --> 00:18:21.625
So all of that gets talked about with my brother.
00:18:21.625 --> 00:18:27.500
Anytime we make a decision and he's always totally supportive and on board, but it affects him in some ways.
00:18:27.500 --> 00:18:28.500
So we talked to him.
00:18:29.083 --> 00:18:34.250
But what happened during that time was that the house kept increasing in value.
00:18:34.708 --> 00:18:37.250
And my brother's family went through some really difficult times.
00:18:37.250 --> 00:18:39.750
They my sister-in-law was hit by a drunk driver.
00:18:39.790 --> 00:18:43.290
She had a traumatic brain injury from which she has recovered remarkably.
00:18:43.333 --> 00:18:47.333
She still has lasting effects, but it changed their life dramatically for a long time.
00:18:47.333 --> 00:18:48.040
She couldn't work.
00:18:48.500 --> 00:18:51.583
They went through a foreclosure and they were without a place to live.
00:18:52.665 --> 00:18:55.790
So about four years in.
00:18:55.915 --> 00:18:57.333
I'm pretty sure it was four.
00:18:58.708 --> 00:18:59.790
Now I can't remember Mary.
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:01.165
Life goes by so quickly.
00:19:01.208 --> 00:19:01.583
I don't know.
00:19:01.625 --> 00:19:03.415
Somewhere between year four and year seven.
00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:09.750
We took a home equity line of credit against this house and put a down payment on a house to rent to my brother.
00:19:10.250 --> 00:19:15.290
And we bought a house that we could barely make the math work.
00:19:15.290 --> 00:19:15.540
Right.
00:19:15.540 --> 00:19:20.000
Like we wanted to keep it as affordable to him as possible, but so it could barely cash flow.
00:19:20.165 --> 00:19:20.875
That was the goal.
00:19:21.083 --> 00:19:22.375
Nobody was trying to make money.
00:19:22.375 --> 00:19:26.540
We were trying to keep them nicely housed and just not lose money.
00:19:26.708 --> 00:19:26.915
Right.
00:19:27.750 --> 00:19:28.583
And so that's what we did.
00:19:28.583 --> 00:19:30.208
And for two years we did that.
00:19:30.415 --> 00:19:35.125
And then my brother recovered his credit that had been a long ongoing thing.
00:19:35.125 --> 00:19:39.208
People who know about credit know it takes like seven years to recover from a foreclosure and everything.
00:19:39.208 --> 00:19:40.958
But he did eventually recover his credit.
00:19:41.333 --> 00:19:45.625
He was able to buy the house from us at a market rate.
00:19:46.458 --> 00:19:48.125
He got a great interest rate at the time.
00:19:48.125 --> 00:19:49.583
So it was good for everybody.
00:19:50.083 --> 00:19:54.665
And we thought we were going to just pay back the HELOC and then put the rest of the money in the bank.
00:19:54.958 --> 00:20:00.083
But instead we bought another property that we used as an Airbnb for four years.
00:20:00.458 --> 00:20:03.415
It was also a vacation home, but it was more an Airbnb.
00:20:04.208 --> 00:20:09.165
And so we ran that business as an Airbnb for four years and that property increased in equity.
00:20:09.375 --> 00:20:18.500
And probably anybody investing in real estate would have told you the smart thing to do with our two and three quarter percent interest rate would have been to hold onto that property forever.
00:20:18.750 --> 00:20:20.415
But it didn't cashflow all the time.
00:20:20.708 --> 00:20:26.333
And we had tremendous like hundreds of thousands of student loans to pay for our kids college.
00:20:26.665 --> 00:20:34.040
And so we had parent loans and we had a property that we loved was increasing in value, had a low interest rate, but it also it didn't always cashflow.
00:20:34.333 --> 00:20:39.833
So the pressure on us financially felt very heavy because of all of our obligations.
00:20:39.833 --> 00:20:44.665
So we made the decision to sell it and cash it out, pay off the student loans.
00:20:44.708 --> 00:20:50.708
And wow, was that a relief to us financially long term?
00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:52.375
Would it have been better
to keep it?
00:20:52.375 --> 00:20:57.375
Maybe, but it was actually a beautiful decision for our family and a great gift to our kids.
00:20:58.165 --> 00:20:58.540
It served you.
00:20:58.708 --> 00:20:59.500
It served you.
00:20:59.958 --> 00:21:01.708
That is the most important thing.
00:21:01.958 --> 00:21:04.790
Rather than up here, you should keep it.
00:21:04.833 --> 00:21:05.915
Do everything you can to keep it.
00:21:06.250 --> 00:21:07.375
That kind of mentality.
00:21:07.375 --> 00:21:09.625
It served you and your family as you needed it.
00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:10.500
Exactly.
00:21:10.500 --> 00:21:13.708
It's a good, it's probably a good example of how I look at everything.
00:21:14.333 --> 00:21:26.833
I like to look at everything holistically and holistically speaking, the the benefit of our being out from under that pressure was it was hugely advantageous to us at this time in our lives.
00:21:27.250 --> 00:21:30.000
And it also paid off the kids college.
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:38.125
You know, it's all of that happened though, Mary, like my brother is a homeowner now with this beautiful house and a lot of equity.
00:21:38.375 --> 00:21:40.165
My kids don't have college debt.
00:21:40.790 --> 00:21:43.040
We have a lot of equity built up in this house.
00:21:43.083 --> 00:21:44.333
My mom is still secure.
00:21:44.333 --> 00:21:53.540
Her expenses are really low. 11 years later, this all happened because we chose to combine resources as a family 11 years ago.
00:21:53.875 --> 00:22:08.290
And you have a really, you have a series of guides or at least one that you have a small fee for, but you have other guides as well as to take a look at what the cash and non-cash contributions are when families merge.
00:22:08.583 --> 00:22:15.208
And, and we talk a little bit about that because some of the non-cash is really valuable, invaluable.
00:22:15.415 --> 00:22:16.500
It's invaluable.
00:22:16.540 --> 00:22:17.083
Yeah.
00:22:18.040 --> 00:22:19.540
Every family has to look at that.
00:22:19.833 --> 00:22:26.750
And it is so common that families when they're combining households have unequal contributions in everything.
00:22:26.875 --> 00:22:29.040
Some part of the family is going to have more money.
00:22:29.250 --> 00:22:35.290
Some part of the family is going to have more future earnings that they, you know, have years to tap into.
00:22:35.665 --> 00:22:44.333
Some part of the family is going to have more physical capability to mow the lawn, prepare the meals, shovel the snow, do the groceries.
00:22:44.540 --> 00:22:46.750
So I talk to a lot of families.
00:22:46.790 --> 00:22:55.040
One of my favorite things I do in my business is I offer these free clarity calls, like anyone can schedule one appointment with me for 30 minutes for free on Zoom.
00:22:55.375 --> 00:23:00.708
And we will just get together and talk about what they're trying to figure out usually related to multi-generational living.
00:23:01.040 --> 00:23:03.000
I learn so much.
00:23:03.083 --> 00:23:09.540
It's selfish of me to almost to offer these calls because I learn so much every time I talk to a new family.
00:23:09.958 --> 00:23:25.165
And so it is completely normal and common that families come into these situations with varying degrees of financial resources, physical resources, energetic resources, health resources.
00:23:25.375 --> 00:23:35.790
And so when you're considering what combining households and finances looks like, you have to value the contributions that are not financial.
00:23:36.165 --> 00:23:42.290
Now it's up to you as a family how you weigh that, how valuable you feel those things are.
00:23:42.750 --> 00:23:44.000
Value of cooking.
00:23:44.040 --> 00:23:45.125
Yes, exactly.
00:23:45.125 --> 00:23:47.458
So as a family, you have to have those conversations.
00:23:47.458 --> 00:23:52.333
And that's one of the things some of my guides do is help walk you through how to have those conversations.
00:23:53.165 --> 00:24:00.915
But it's really important because we're never going to have, I mean, it's very rare that you would have a completely equal playing field in every aspect.
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:04.750
So that's what I mean by the non-financial contributions.
00:24:04.750 --> 00:24:06.208
And fascinating.
00:24:06.208 --> 00:24:16.915
We're thinking about, you know, multi-generational housing is helping elderly people of maybe limited means or physicality move in with younger people.
00:24:17.165 --> 00:24:23.708
But what we're seeing right now in the housing crisis is younger people cannot afford housing.
00:24:24.208 --> 00:24:24.625
Correct.
00:24:24.750 --> 00:24:27.500
And so there's a kind of a change.
00:24:27.583 --> 00:24:30.415
We've had a change and we are having a change in that area.
00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:32.958
I have a niece who just finished.
00:24:32.958 --> 00:24:34.290
They just moved in in April.
00:24:34.333 --> 00:24:40.708
She and her wife built an ADU, a beautiful ADU on her wife's parents' property.
00:24:40.915 --> 00:24:43.750
So they had been approved to buy their first home.
00:24:43.790 --> 00:24:44.583
They had a budget.
00:24:44.583 --> 00:24:47.708
I think their budget for their first house was somewhere between four and five hundred thousand dollars.
00:24:47.708 --> 00:24:49.165
Like that's what they were approved for.
00:24:49.375 --> 00:24:54.833
Well, you and I both live in Massachusetts and you know, sadly, that buys almost nothing in Massachusetts.
00:24:55.040 --> 00:24:58.333
And if it does buy something, it probably needs a ton of work.
00:24:58.458 --> 00:25:00.000
It was built 200 years ago.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.000
You know, something like that.
00:25:01.415 --> 00:25:01.750
Yes.
00:25:01.790 --> 00:25:02.000
Yeah.
00:25:02.125 --> 00:25:06.250
Or it's never been cared for and it's going to be just a maintenance nightmare.
00:25:06.290 --> 00:25:06.625
Right.
00:25:06.875 --> 00:25:17.540
So they were looking for a couple of
years and then they started talking with her parents' family and my niece's wife's parents and they had room on their property.
00:25:17.583 --> 00:25:21.750
And now in Massachusetts, we are allowed to build an ADU by right.
00:25:22.040 --> 00:25:23.375
And so that's what they did.
00:25:23.458 --> 00:25:31.625
And you know, all in, I think because I think it's important people understand this, all in it was probably like a four hundred four hundred fifty thousand dollar investment.
00:25:31.875 --> 00:25:42.500
It required a new septic system, you know, and they worked out as a family who paid for what and how that all works long term and how they were going to pay for it and how they got the money for it was a combination of things.
00:25:42.500 --> 00:25:44.125
And it will be different for every family.
00:25:44.875 --> 00:25:50.458
And I do think people need to understand it is pretty expensive to build a detached ADU.
00:25:50.458 --> 00:25:51.625
There's a lot involved in that.
00:25:51.625 --> 00:26:00.165
However, the house that they ended up with so much better than what they could have afforded if they'd bought just a single family home.
00:26:00.583 --> 00:26:08.458
And one community that I always kind of I didn't identify until I talked to Representative Osiero was the disability community.
00:26:09.208 --> 00:26:11.708
That's important in your state, my state.
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:13.790
The housing stock is so old.
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:19.375
Yeah, it is so impenetrable by people who have mobility limitations.
00:26:19.500 --> 00:26:19.790
Yes.
00:26:19.875 --> 00:26:30.290
That the ability to put a nine hundred square foot property one level, maybe with a garage on mom and dad's property is awesome.
00:26:30.665 --> 00:26:31.375
It's amazing.
00:26:31.375 --> 00:26:34.833
And because it's a new build, you can build it for what you need.
00:26:34.833 --> 00:26:36.333
You can have wider doorways.
00:26:36.333 --> 00:26:38.708
You can have ADA compliant bathrooms.
00:26:38.708 --> 00:26:42.165
You can have no threshold entries between rooms.
00:26:42.165 --> 00:26:53.250
You can really build something that actually works for your needs, whether it's because of a disability, because you're getting older, or maybe you just want to build it so that 30 years from now or 20 years from now, you could age into place.
00:26:53.333 --> 00:26:54.958
A lot of families are switching houses.
00:26:54.958 --> 00:26:55.915
Have you heard about that?
00:26:56.540 --> 00:26:59.375
Like so I guess they're moving into the ADU.
00:26:59.375 --> 00:26:59.875
Is that right?
00:27:00.540 --> 00:27:03.958
Like the older generation house, but moving into the ADU.
00:27:03.958 --> 00:27:04.290
Yes.
00:27:04.290 --> 00:27:08.915
And I talked to some families that love that because they're like, well, now we get to build a brand new house.
00:27:09.250 --> 00:27:12.000
Like this is we're going to build it how we would want it now.
00:27:12.083 --> 00:27:17.750
Or they build it with the idea that they might switch later when the younger generation has children like and they need more space.
00:27:17.750 --> 00:27:19.500
So there's lots of options there.
00:27:19.665 --> 00:27:20.040
I love it.
00:27:20.290 --> 00:27:21.625
I really love it.
00:27:22.458 --> 00:27:27.290
I have to say you are a source of so many resources.
00:27:27.750 --> 00:27:42.625
So you, you put out something called Sunday notes, which I couldn't believe when I first saw the first one, it is, you know, here's important things about living together, here are important things about the house.
00:27:42.625 --> 00:27:44.250
This is a gadget that might be useful.
00:27:44.375 --> 00:27:45.415
Here's a recipe.
00:27:45.958 --> 00:27:51.875
And I've been a real estate professional for so long and they're telling us do not use recipes.
00:27:52.500 --> 00:27:53.708
It is so cozy.
00:27:53.915 --> 00:27:55.333
Everybody loves those recipes.
00:27:55.375 --> 00:27:59.790
It was like a baking spree this summer with my husband so we couldn't stop ourselves.
00:28:00.165 --> 00:28:03.000
It was, it was, it was so, it's so cozy.
00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:07.583
I mean, it is so holistic, is I guess is the word that you use.
00:28:07.583 --> 00:28:08.290
That's right.
00:28:08.708 --> 00:28:11.540
I mean, this is, I think what we all need, right?
00:28:11.875 --> 00:28:14.875
When you think about a home and I'm sure you love this about real estate.
00:28:15.500 --> 00:28:16.665
It's not just the house.
00:28:16.665 --> 00:28:18.750
It's not just a financial transaction, right?
00:28:18.790 --> 00:28:22.290
It's about our lives and the way that we live.
00:28:22.500 --> 00:28:24.000
And that's what I'm interested in.
00:28:24.290 --> 00:28:26.625
That's what I love to talk with people about.
00:28:26.665 --> 00:28:32.665
So yeah, so sometimes I share a cleaning spray or, you know, almond fig cake.
00:28:33.625 --> 00:28:40.540
But I also share market data and, you know, aging in place information and other things that are relevant to my audience.
00:28:40.540 --> 00:28:44.540
And here's a mechanism to deal with that conflict, you know, whatever it was.
00:28:44.790 --> 00:28:49.458
And the other day I believe I saw you playing a guitar on your social media.
00:28:50.125 --> 00:28:50.415
Okay.
00:28:50.415 --> 00:28:52.000
So I play very poorly.
00:28:53.875 --> 00:28:57.833
I keep these around to kind of remind me of like who I am in my soul.
00:28:58.915 --> 00:29:04.500
I was always a decent singer, pretty good songwriter, terrible guitar player, but I do love it.
00:29:04.958 --> 00:29:05.165
Yeah.
00:29:05.165 --> 00:29:05.375
Lovely.
00:29:05.665 --> 00:29:09.958
Well, we're a musical family, Berkeley College of Music, you know, the whole nine yards.
00:29:09.958 --> 00:29:10.208
Yes.
00:29:10.208 --> 00:29:12.208
And that's what real estate paid for, by the way.
00:29:12.208 --> 00:29:14.333
Real estate commissions.
00:29:15.375
--> 00:29:17.750
I paid for that for sure from Virginia.
00:29:18.125 --> 00:29:21.833
But the couple and I've been to two of your seminars.
00:29:22.083 --> 00:29:26.875
One was on home equity conversion mortgages.
00:29:27.540 --> 00:29:28.250
Is that what it's called?
00:29:28.333 --> 00:29:28.708
Conversion.
00:29:28.708 --> 00:29:31.790
It was probably, yeah, it was reverse mortgage.
00:29:32.208 --> 00:29:32.750
Reverse mortgages.
00:29:32.958 --> 00:29:33.083
Yeah.
00:29:33.083 --> 00:29:34.000
One of the names for it.
00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:34.790
Home equity conversion.
00:29:34.915 --> 00:29:35.125
Right.
00:29:35.665 --> 00:29:38.165
And your partner, Michael Panko.
00:29:38.583 --> 00:29:40.375
Michael and I partner in the lending world.
00:29:40.375 --> 00:29:45.125
So Michael is an independent lender from me, but I am what's called a REMLO agent.
00:29:45.125 --> 00:29:54.708
So if you're a real estate agent or broker like I am, you can also be a mortgage loan officer and get your lending license.
00:29:55.125 --> 00:30:01.250
And there's some guidelines for how that has to be done because I'm not only doing that, right?
00:30:01.250 --> 00:30:05.083
I'm a real estate broker, but I'm also able to help with lending and originate mortgages.
00:30:05.083 --> 00:30:11.665
So I'm partnered with Michael because he is really the expert in that area, especially with reverse mortgages.
00:30:11.875 --> 00:30:17.875
And so I can help people access any kind of financing products, actually unlicensed in all 50 states.
00:30:18.458 --> 00:30:23.458
But I always do it with Michael because he's like he's my right hand because he's the expert there.
00:30:23.458 --> 00:30:27.290
And he is actually a nationally recognized expert in reverse mortgages.
00:30:27.458 --> 00:30:30.458
He's really a subject matter expert, one of the leading ones in the country on that.
00:30:30.790 --> 00:30:39.250
Then you did another session on how to afford buying a multiple family residence.
00:30:39.583 --> 00:30:39.790
Right.
00:30:39.790 --> 00:30:44.540
We call it the multi-gen finance workshop because there's so many ways that you can finance a multi-gen home.
00:30:44.540 --> 00:30:45.708
So many.
00:30:45.833 --> 00:30:46.375
So many.
00:30:46.458 --> 00:30:46.750
Yeah.
00:30:46.833 --> 00:30:55.040
Now, were you the person who said the data is 22 percent of all new mortgages, people 65 and over, are from multi-gen families?
00:30:55.500 --> 00:30:56.833
I don't think I said that.
00:30:57.500 --> 00:30:58.500
Maybe Tristan Ahomada said that.
00:30:58.500 --> 00:31:01.250
That's not the number that's being true with me, but it doesn't surprise me.
00:31:01.415 --> 00:31:10.875
I mean, in 2024, I think it was 21 percent of all home purchases by Gen X buyers, like my generation were multi-gen homes.
00:31:11.125 --> 00:31:15.333
And about 17 percent of all home purchases were multi-gen.
00:31:15.333 --> 00:31:16.458
And we're just going to see that grow.
00:31:16.540 --> 00:31:18.833
It used to be seven percent, like a few decades ago.
00:31:18.833 --> 00:31:20.833
So that's just going to keep on growing.
00:31:20.833 --> 00:31:22.208
And that's that's terrific.
00:31:22.375 --> 00:31:29.333
So these seminars that I listened to one, you know, driving up to New Hampshire, listening to every word.
00:31:29.665 --> 00:31:34.500
And then the other one was fascinating, just really, really fascinating.
00:31:35.290 --> 00:31:42.415
So I urge people to look up, you know, what you're offering and do you record those and share them or are they two times?
00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:43.040
I do.
00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:43.750
And they're free.
00:31:43.750 --> 00:31:45.915
So anybody can go to my Web site.
00:31:46.333 --> 00:31:47.458
You'll put it in the show notes.
00:31:47.500 --> 00:31:47.875
Yeah.
00:31:47.915 --> 00:31:49.040
JuliFord dot com.
00:31:49.125 --> 00:31:50.125
There's no way on Juli.
00:31:50.833 --> 00:31:53.083
And everything I do is really on there.
00:31:53.083 --> 00:31:54.540
So there's an events page.
00:31:54.540 --> 00:31:57.500
You can look at resources and any any workshops I have coming up.
00:31:57.500 --> 00:31:58.165
I also do.
00:31:58.583 --> 00:31:59.375
These are all free.
00:31:59.665 --> 00:32:04.375
So I do a monthly coffee chat, I call it, where people can just drop in.
00:32:04.415 --> 00:32:05.290
I think you've come to one.
00:32:05.290 --> 00:32:06.040
I went to one.
00:32:06.208 --> 00:32:06.833
I got one.
00:32:06.833 --> 00:32:13.000
I I missed my rotary meetings with great shame to make sure I got to one.
00:32:13.540 --> 00:32:16.500
Well, those are the only thing that are not recorded.
00:32:16.708 --> 00:32:17.000
Yes.
00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:23.665
And that is an intentional decision because I feel like we're just recorded all the time in the world right now.
00:32:23.875 --> 00:32:34.915
And I wanted one place where families could just come and just talk and just talk about what they're struggling with, with multi gen or thinking about crowdsource from other people.
00:32:35.125 --> 00:32:41.458
And I thought everyone would feel much more free to just have these personal conversations if they weren't being recorded.
00:32:41.540 --> 00:32:45.290
So that is the one place that I don't record the workshops, of course, we record.
00:32:45.540 --> 00:32:45.708
Right.
00:32:46.290 --> 00:32:50.125
So, yeah, so you can register for those and get the recording, the multi gen chat, the coffee chat.
00:32:50.125 --> 00:32:50.875
You just have to come live.
00:32:51.040 --> 00:32:51.415
Right.
00:32:51.500 --> 00:32:53.125
And and it's worth going.
00:32:53.125 --> 00:32:55.625
It's worth missing your rotary meeting if you have to.
00:32:56.040 --> 00:33:03.333
But there were 30 some people on the call and people at very different stages of their desires and making it happen.
00:33:03.500 --> 00:33:04.915
Some people are already living it.
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:06.333
Some people are planning it.
00:33:06.333 --> 00:33:07.833
Some people are hoping to make it work.
00:33:07.833 --> 00:33:13.375
Some people have lived it before, like with one generation and getting ready to do it with the up and coming generation.
00:33:13.958 --> 00:33:15.083
That's been exciting to me.
00:33:15.083 --> 00:33:19.290
I'm glad you mentioned how many people were on it because I have this idea to do that last December.
00:33:19.290 --> 00:33:20.750
It was just an idea.
00:33:20.750 --> 00:33:22.540
And I thought, is anyone going to come?
00:33:22.915 --> 00:33:23.540
I don't know.
00:33:23.958 --> 00:33:28.125
And we had maybe like five, six, seven people come to the first few.
00:33:28.583 --> 00:33:31.540
And then I don't know, then in July, there was like 17.
00:33:32.125 --> 00:33:33.958
And then this month there were 30.
00:33:34.250 --> 00:33:35.915
Oh, this is growing.
00:33:35.915 --> 00:33:36.750
This is working.
00:33:36.750 --> 00:33:37.750
People are getting it.
00:33:37.790 --> 00:33:38.290
Yes.
00:33:38.583 --> 00:33:39.375
It's awesome.
00:33:39.415 --> 00:33:40.625
It's really, really awesome.
00:33:40.625 --> 00:33:41.083
Thank you.
00:33:41.250 --> 00:33:52.875
I thought before we close, it might be helpful to our listeners to hear the various configurations that people can can have shared housing.
00:33:53.290 --> 00:33:59.415
So whether it's a bedroom first or a suite first or whatever, maybe just go over a few of those so that.
00:33:59.415 --> 00:34:01.790
Yeah, there's I'm glad you asked that.
00:34:02.083 --> 00:34:05.540
There's so many different ways that you can create a multigenerational home.
00:34:05.540 --> 00:34:15.291
I do have, again, on my on my website, another resource, a free one that I've recently created that is a like a floor plan and ADU guide.
00:34:15.333 --> 00:34:17.958
And it's not me creating floor plans.
00:34:17.958 --> 00:34:28.208
It's me directing you to where I found good floor plans, including the floor plan in our house, just so people can kind of see what our setup is like, because there's not just one way to do it in our house.
00:34:28.250 --> 00:34:32.375
What we have is a full in-law apartment in a walkout basement.
00:34:32.958 --> 00:34:38.333
And I advise, by the way, if you're going to put an apartment in your basement, make sure it's a walkout basement.
00:34:38.333 --> 00:34:41.041
So you have like a lot of light and exits and all that.
00:34:42.208 --> 00:34:46.666
You could do a an attached garage that you've converted.
00:34:46.708 --> 00:34:52.666
You could build a completely like my niece and her wife's separate home on your property.
00:34:52.916 --> 00:35:01.666
You can buy some parts of the country where they have more land and more people in the kitchen are doing what they're calling next gen homes out west.
00:35:01.666 --> 00:35:02.500
There's a lot of these.
00:35:02.500 --> 00:35:09.208
And I think in Florida, too, where they're building homes that actually are all on one level and have two different entrances.
00:35:09.208 --> 00:35:14.416
So they're basically like an attached duplex almost, but laid out differently than that.
00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:18.250
But multi-gen living could be just an extra bedroom.
00:35:18.291 --> 00:35:20.000
Maybe you have an extra primary suite.
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:26.333
Maybe you convert an unused family room into a bedroom sitting area, mini kitchen room.
00:35:26.333 --> 00:35:27.958
There's so many different ways you can do it.
00:35:27.958 --> 00:35:33.416
Or if you're really brave, just all move into a same same old regular single family house.
00:35:33.416 --> 00:35:34.375
And God bless you.
00:35:34.375 --> 00:35:38.083
And you try to make it work as fast as it does.
00:35:38.125 --> 00:35:38.958
Go from there.
00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:39.500
Yes.
00:35:40.166 --> 00:35:45.208
It really speaks to the creativity, you know, the creativity that's available.
00:35:45.500 --> 00:35:51.208
And also and you have warned also the importance of having private spaces.
00:35:51.500 --> 00:35:51.750
Yes.
00:35:52.416 --> 00:36:05.250
You know, in private privacy agreements, I think is part of it, because money really does impact what you're able to create space wise, how much space you can claim for privacy in private areas of your own.
00:36:05.291 --> 00:36:09.625
And I do love to say if you have a door that can close, that's your private boundary.
00:36:09.958 --> 00:36:11.750
That is super, super helpful.
00:36:12.083 --> 00:36:14.250
Not everyone is going to be able to make that happen.
00:36:14.875 --> 00:36:18.583
Usually it's about money, maybe time or logistics.
00:36:19.041 --> 00:36:27.500
So if you can't make it happen physically, you need to make it happen in your agreements with one another, which means you're going to need to have brave conversations.
00:36:28.458 --> 00:36:34.958
You're going to need to be able to say, I cannot physically speak to anyone until 10 a.m. every day.
00:36:34.958 --> 00:36:36.333
You know, whatever that is for you.
00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:38.458
That's actually kind of mine.
00:36:40.791 --> 00:36:43.625
Like two cups of coffee and a lot of alone time.
00:36:44.250 --> 00:36:45.416
I can talk to anybody.
00:36:45.416 --> 00:36:47.541
Luckily, my mom is like kind of the same.
00:36:47.750 --> 00:36:49.250
So we never would talk in the morning.
00:36:50.250 --> 00:36:50.958
Excellent.
00:36:51.041 --> 00:36:52.000
It's in the jeans.
00:36:52.416 --> 00:36:52.791
Yes.
00:36:53.125 --> 00:36:53.916
It's in the jeans.
00:36:53.916 --> 00:37:03.833
I was just speaking with the director of pre-construction at Bensonwood, which is a panel built modular housing system.
00:37:04.166 --> 00:37:05.583
Not inexpensive.
00:37:05.750 --> 00:37:06.041
OK.
00:37:06.500 --> 00:37:09.833
But they talk about the importance of acoustic privacy.
00:37:09.916 --> 00:37:10.791
Oh, my gosh.
00:37:10.791 --> 00:37:11.750
This is a big one.
00:37:11.750 --> 00:37:12.208
The big one.
00:37:13.375 --> 00:37:19.916
We share a story that our lives changed when my mother got Bluetooth hearing aids because especially if you expect.
00:37:19.958 --> 00:37:20.916
Well, you know, it depends.
00:37:20.916 --> 00:37:22.166
It depends on who's living in your house.
00:37:22.166 --> 00:37:25.916
But with an aging person in your house, hearing often declines.
00:37:25.916 --> 00:37:27.083
It's so normal.
00:37:27.291 --> 00:37:29.125
And then the volume of everything gets turned up.
00:37:29.166 --> 00:37:30.708
So for my mom, it was the TV.
00:37:30.750 --> 00:37:33.125
You can hear it in our living room.
00:37:33.208 --> 00:37:34.500
And that wasn't too fun.
00:37:34.750 --> 00:37:37.250
She got Bluetooth hearing aids that connect to her TV.
00:37:37.250 --> 00:37:38.208
We never hear her TV.
00:37:38.291 --> 00:37:41.041
So things like that make a world of difference.
00:37:41.291 --> 00:37:44.041
But also on the flip side, you know, kids can be noisy.
00:37:44.083 --> 00:37:45.916
Teenagers can be noisy.
00:37:46.208 --> 00:37:48.583
So you do need to think about those things.
00:37:48.625 --> 00:37:49.041
You do.
00:37:49.583 --> 00:37:49.791
Yeah.
00:37:50.041 --> 00:37:53.125
I want to thank you so much for everything you're doing.
00:37:53.333 --> 00:37:55.291
Thank you for your time today.
00:37:55.458 --> 00:37:56.416
I feel so blessed.
00:37:57.333 --> 00:38:03.250
And so when the Juli Ford Fam Club does form, I want to be a member.
00:38:03.291 --> 00:38:07.916
And and I'm so grateful to you and thank you for what you're doing for our society.
00:38:08.541 --> 00:38:09.000
Thank you.
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:10.666
I appreciate you so much, Mary.
00:38:10.666 --> 00:38:11.791
I appreciate this conversation.
00:38:11.916 --> 00:38:15.208
And thank you for giving me another another opportunity to help spread the word.
00:38:15.416 --> 00:38:16.583
Of course, of course.
00:38:16.625 --> 00:38:18.416
JuliFord dot com.
00:38:20.250 --> 00:38:22.625
Thank you so much for joining us today.
00:38:22.791 --> 00:38:28.166
And I hope you found this conversation useful to you and your real estate goals.
00:38:28.916 --> 00:38:34.875
You'll find the contact information for our guests and any links they recommend you have in the show notes.
00:38:35.333 --> 00:38:45.791
And should we be able to help you identify some strong real estate professionals in your area, drop us a note at info at real estate connections podcast dot com.
00:38:46.458 --> 00:38:48.625
Thanks again and bye for now.