Downsizing and relocating can be overwhelming to anyone, but especially senior citizens.

Poinsett Auction & Realty in Travelers Rest hopes to ease some that burden by offering a new downsize and relocation service especially for elderly adults.

As part of the package the company will clean and sell the home, pack personal belongings, assist in finding and moving the client to a new home or assisted living facility, and auction the personal items no longer wanted.

"We’re kind of going in and doing everything. We pack and clean everything down to the refrigerator," said Carol Lynn Vrana, Poinsett’s senior services specialist. "We sell, do the real estate and hand them their check within 30 days so they can move on."

Retiree Ken Martin of Simpsonville hired Poinsett to sell the personal belongings he no longer wants. He described the service as "no hassle. They have all these younger guys lifting all the stuff that I couldn’t lift."

Vrana spent 15 years working with senior adults in a variety of capacities, including funding, overseeing, marketing, and real estate.

During that time, she said, she witnessed first-hand the difficulty seniors and their families faced as they relocated to smaller homes with relatives, or to an assisted living or nursing facility. "They wanted to go somewhere where they had social activity with other seniors, but they couldn’t get to that point," she said. "They let their house and everything in it deteriorate because they didn’t know what to do."

Because of health issues, some seniors did not have the ability to sort through years of items they’ve collected, pack up their things to move, clean and unpack their attics, basement, closets and then get their home ready to sell, Vrana said.

So, Vrana partnered with Poinsett to begin offering those services and more.

Poinsett opened its residential real estate division last year, said Stacy Crowder, the company’s director of marketing and auction coordinator. Seniors wanting to downsize now make up a lot of that portion of the business, she said.

After losing his wife to cancer in 2005, Martin, a retired senior vice president for Kemet and an entrepreneur, found he didn’t want to share his 4,500-square-foot home with "stuff" he didn’t need.

"I want to stay active. I’m not ready to sit down and become a Bingo player yet, but I looked at the house," he said. "I’ve got five bedrooms, formal living and dining room (furniture) that I never used. I finally just came to the realization that if I haven’t used it for, essentially, a year why is it in the house?"

"I look at so many people who have reached my stage of life and they leave it for someone else to straighten out the mess. I decided to heck with it."

The first sale was "reasonably successful. I was surprised that an auction house could do that well," he said.

Martin said if he does decide to sell his home, he has not yet determined if he’ll do so the traditional way or via auction.

"I think it depends more on the economic times than anything else," he said. " If you’ve got houses in the neighborhood selling quickly, there’s probably no reason not to list it here. But if it’s in an economic time and it’s a little slow and I’m rushing to get out, then the auction make a lot of sense."

For more information about Poinsett’s senior services, visit http://www.poinsettauctions.com/

Published: Monday, February 18, 2008 - 11:24 am
Updated: Monday, February 18, 2008 - 11:26 am

By Angelia Davis
BUSINESS WRITER
adavis@greenvillenews.com

Courtesy of GreenvilleOnline.com