As part of my Senior Real Estate Specialist (SRES) designation, I do a lot of research on a multitude of topics that might impact these type of clients. In particular, aging in place is an issue that comes up often, and it has become even more acutely interesting to me now that my father is disabled and may or may not live out the rest of his years in a nursing home. I’d love it if he could go back into a home environment, but the house he shared with my mother for several decades is not completely wheelchair compatible so some major alterations would need to be completed before that could happen. These types of modifications are frequently called Universal Design (UD) features because they work well for many types of home dwellers. An example of a UD feature would be the wonderful new lever style door handles – easier to use for people with arthritis, for children, and generally handy for everyone – including a person holding a bag of groceries trying to open the door without using her hands. My last house had these style door handles and I miss them in my place I bought a year ago. Changing these out is on my list of updates/upgrades that I’ll be doing over the next year here.
One resource I just found this week is a website called Age In Place. Articles cover a number of topics from real estate, home modifications, gadgets & gizmos, and finance/money topics. I read this article today about kitchen remodels for AIP features and really liked it. It’s not necessarily a catch-all of everything, but there are some good bits as part of overall information gathering.
