How to cope with seeing your childhood home bulldozed by new owners after parents go into care?

[falstaff1980]

This thought really upsets me. My mother (81 yo, early-stage alzheimers) has expressed a preference for going to a nice care home rather than in-home care, and this would mean selling the house to pay for it.

I don't see any way I could possibly pay for my mother's care home and pay my sister for her eventual share of the house, it's worth about three times what my house is worth (which I still have a mortgage on). Even if there were no care costs, I'd never be able to cover this.

For me it's a lovely and unique house with a big garden, it's the only house I knew growing up, and it's been a refuge for me through periods of divorce and unemployment.

I'm sure that like what has happened to many houses in this street, a new buyer will turn out to be a developer (they send actors to view the house) who'll knock it down and put three houses or flats on the plot.

I guess I just need to accept that life moves on and you can't try to recreate or relive the past, but I'm sure I'll be an emotional wreck when I step out of the house for the last time, and take the keys to the estate agents, and then I'll probably find it hard to resist the urge to go and see what is being done to it.

How does your sister feel? Is there any possibility of keeping it and renting it out to cover the care costs?

It would need a lot of work doing to be rentable, and a suburban three bed detached with a massive garden isn't likely to get enough in rent. If I wanted a rental income to cover the care costs it would need to be sold to buy some higher yielding city centre flats. My sister doesn't seem concerned about losing the house, just wants to see my mother in the care home I think.

It’s bricks and mortar at the end of the day. You will however, still have the memories to hold onto.
maybe speak to a financial advisor first and explore all options?

Your sister is right. If your dm needs to go into a home her house will need to be sold to pay for it. When she eventually dies whatever is left will firm her estate,

If that did happen, a builder pulled down the house and built six flats, would the knowledge that instead of providing home and shelter to one person, that plot was now providing home and shelter to eight to 12 people, bring some comfort?

Its emotional when you have so many memories tied to it. Why not take photos and make a little album, so you have something to look back on. Could always do a video walkthrough of the house and garden too.

Even if another family moved in it still wouldn't be 'your' home any more. Sure you could walk by and look at the outside but it will still feel strange to you. Just give it time and enjoy your memories.

You can chose to sell to a family not a developer. Of course you can't control what happens then.

I can imagine it being upsetting for some people but personally it wouldn’t bother me tuppence. I don’t have happy memories attached to it, I learned many years ago not to attach feelings to possessions.

they send actors to view the house

🧐

You can control it if you like. Ask your solicitors about inserting a covenant into the sales docs. A covenant is essentially a promise from the buyers (and any subsequent owners) to you. You could have one that says “the house will be maintained as a detached single family home” for example. The downside of this is some buyers might be put off and you might achieve a lower price. But if it’s important to you then could be worth exploring.

Can you reframe it as a lovely problem to have?

You have great memories of a safe and large family home - many people aren’t so lucky! Whatever happens to the house doesn’t take that away from you.

How big it must be for you to be catastrophising already about developers employing actors to get their hands on it! Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d be light on problems if I was getting upset about this! 🫣😂

Ultimately it’s your Mum’s house and it’s her decision what happens to it. I suspect she has spent her life knowing she can sell the house should she need to for her rainy day and now her rainy day has come. I would take comfort in knowing my Mum was safe and well looked after.

As others have said, bricks and mortar. Memories are what's important.

MIL lived opposite her mum and when she passed it took a while to sell the bungalow, but it eventually sold and was immediately surrounded by hoarding. It is now a house with another bungalow on a separate plot as they sold half the garden. It was hard for the family seeing it, especially MIL living opposite and the work being done day in day out for a long time but after a while those feels fade. It's still referred to as Nana's bungalow too when talking about the current house.

It's understandable the emotions tied up in it, give it time. You still have the memories.

This is exactly what happened to my aunt's house in London, she thought she was selling it to the 'nice couple' that came to view it, but turned out to be a large company that lets property across London. The 'nice couple' were just acting as such, likely employees of this company.

That will happen to my parents' house when they no longer need it.
Most homes in the road have been pulled down and replaced over the 60+ years they have been there.
At least it will make selling it easy, no need to do any repairs / repainting / replacing kitchen. No chain either.
I think in theory I'll be OK, as longs as I get the bits and pieces I want.

I understand how you feel @falstaff1980

I still feel like this about my childhood home which was flattened 😢

It almost feels like grief in a way.

Take lots of photos regardless what happens next.

It broke my heart. My parents' home had been the family home since my great-great-grandfather built it in the 1820s. My mum had grown up in it and so had I. It had the most beautiful big mature garden with gorgeous fruit trees. We had to sell it and the buyer swore to us that it would be his family home and that I was welcome to go back and see it if I ever wanted to. Then he carved it up into flats for rent 😥 I made the mistake of looking at them on Rightmove and they're soulless tiny grey boxes. All the original features are gone. Absolutely devastating. I kept telling myself it was only bricks and mortar but I still found it really hard.

It broke my heart the day that we moved Mum out of our family home (to be with us), a few months after Dad had died. The guy who was buying told my brother he couldn't understand why I was so upset!

I had to go back to collect something several months later, and it was just not the same. Made me realise that it's the people that are important and make a home, not the bricks and mortar.

Feel for you though - sounds like an emotional time all round.

I would love to see my parent's home bulldozed. It wasn't a happy place to grow up in but they built it and were the only people to live in it, so it going once they have seems a fitting end.

If it’s a semi it is unlikely to be bulldozed op. That’s incredibly rare to knock down one half of a house. And it would have been employees, not actors.

Sorry I misread it’s detached.

We chose not to sell to a developer - it is possible to do as pp have said. The people who bought it have breathed new life into it and it’s become a family home again for a young couple and their baby, and they’ve worked on it themselves. I’ve no idea what will happen to it in the future, but I found it much easier to deal with than if a developer had gone in.

I understand. My parents bought their house as newly weds in the early 1960s, and the house has represented sanctuary and home to both DB and I all our lives. We’re going to be blubbering messes the day we hand over the keys.

however, one thing that’s helping me let go bit by bit is that the house badly needs renovation and maintenance and the resentment I feel with each job I have to organise helps me let go a little more. I’m starting to think that the house deserves to be lived in by a family again, and become part of their tradition.

it doesn’t help that my grandparents house, which they bought brand new before WW2 at great sacrifice, was bought in the 1990s by a couple who instantly split up acrimoniously and it has been effectively derelict since then. I’ve no idea what kind of legal disputes went on but it’s heartbreaking to see and I feel very sorry for the neighbours. I can’t even look at it.

I was fully expecting DPs’ house to be knocked down. It was a briezeblock rectangular bungalow with a huge garden in a village where most of the locals had already been priced out of the housing market. In the end it was expanded and looks a bit silly IMO.

That’s the way the market goes. Your mother gets the going price for it and they get to do what they want.

BTW, apart from circumstances like second marriage/ father’s will already giving you part of the house, you do not owe your sister anything before your mother’s death.