If you need to relocate to a new area or are now starting to help an aging parent in a different area from where you live, the local newspaper can be a big help to you!

Many newspapers provide newspaper subscriptions via mail so that you can stay abreast on what is happening in the area. From crime alerts to the classifieds for ads to help with house hunting or apartment hunting to fun activities for aging parents, you will find plenty of useful information for your needs. Unfortunately, the cost can be somewhat steep due to postage, but often it’s well worth it.

Another thing to check on is whether they offer an annual supplemental magazine about their area. All three of my last cities have published one of these and they are worth their weight in gold!

These little supplements have all sorts of interesting information about the various cities in the immediate area. They often provide population numbers and breakdowns, the names of the schools in the area, give descriptions of the various businesses, churches, and health systems. They provide details on the different art activities, fun attractions, and health systems as well.

When I moved from one coast to the other, I called the local newspaper in the new area. I talked to a very sweet gentleman who confirmed they did publish that and he was able to find me one of the last ones available and mailed it to me. What a blessing that was to us as we were trying to learn everything we could about the new city we would soon relocate to.

Two of the newspapers I’ve subscribed to published their supplements in January. Our new paper just published theirs in October. I would call the local newspaper first, and if they don’t have any more, call the local library. The library probably won’t be able to mail it to you, but perhaps you could pop in and make some photocopies when you are out house hunting or visiting your aging parents.

To find the name and phone number of the local newspaper, you can check SandwichINK’s article, 16 Newspaper, Radio and TV Sites for the Sandwich Generation. Another option is to go to Google and type in the name of the city and state, the word AND in capital letters, then type the name of the newspaper. For instance – for Louisville Kentucky, type: Louisville, KY AND newspaper. Sure enough, the first thing that popped up was the Louisville Courier Journal. If you need more help finding a newspaper, you can also go to RefDesk. They have a wonderful page with links to newspapers for the whole world! Refdesk is such a great resource.

These little supplements provide a wealth of information that is very useful for all and particularly for those of us in the Sandwich Generation who are also looking to relocate and interested in renting or buying property.

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As always, Twitter has some great resources for those of us in the Sandwich Generation who are involved in property investing:

Here’s a handy site – a mailbox finder. It can help you find a mailbox to drop the mail off in an area you are unfamiliar with – where an aging relative lives, where you are planning to relocate to, etc.

This looks like a good site for apartment hunting if you are relocating to be closer to aging parents.

Speaking of apartment hunting as well as house hunting, here are some great hi-tech tips from LifeHacker.

Oh my – if your aging parent’s home is standing vacant, keep a close watch on it!

Here’s some good real estate news! The 10 strongest U.S. housing markets – Handy to know if you are looking for a good place to relocate to.

US new home sales up sharply. That’s good news, too, though I’m not sure all are seeing it in their locales. My family isn’t, on either coast. How about you?  Per @HousingReporter

If you or your aging parent is trying to sell a home fast by owner, please be sure to take extra precautions and be alert at all times. This article relates the sad tale of a fake real estate agent who got into a house under false pretenses. So far, it doesn’t look like he did anything, but then again…

Helpful pointers on how to grandchild-proof your home from one of my favorite real estate Twitter resources -  @blogboy.

This verse is PERFECT for those dealing with real estate – in any manner!  Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Some great reminders and tips for our aging parents, college-bound older kids, and even ourselves about rental property insurance! Thanks to @MonroeOnABudget

One last bit of housekeeping. I am adding this site to Technorati, who would like me to add this intriguing bit of code to my site. So just for you, Technorati, because we do appreciate you VERY much. 3b9ynd8esv

That’s it for now, y’all. Have a great week!

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What if one of your loved ones has to head for the hospital unexpectedly? Or an aging parent not-so-unexpectedly needs to move in? While none of us knows what the future will bring, it is important for us to look at the “signs” of the season and factor those into our plans as many of these changes can lead to a necessary move.  Here’s a helpful checklist to help winnow out the inappropriate properties as we go out apartment or house hunting in the area we are preparing to relocate to.

Some of the things to think about and plan around include:

1. Easily accessible bathrooms – downstairs and near an aging parent’s bedroom. Even if they are not yet living with you, if the possibility exists, this is definitely something to look for.
2. Safe Stairs – even if your aging parent can currently navigate them, down the road it may become more of an issue. Even if you live in an area where single story homes are hard to come by, you still need to think about depth and width of stairs. A good friend of mine bought the most adorable older house. Well kept up and selling for a great price, they were thrilled to get it. They still love it, but have since realized the stairs are older and much more narrow than today’s stairs making it much easier to trip on them. Young and agile, they’ve still taken a couple of tumbles. Their older parents have not fallen, but avoid them as much as possible. Also, make sure the stairs have hand railings that go all the way up. I’ve found several houses recently where the railings only go part way making them a bit more dangerous.
3. Wheelchair-friendly halls, doorways, and bathrooms. Check the measurements needed for the biggest wheelchairs and walkers you can find. I would even look at the sizes of a motorized wheelchair along with the motorized scooters like the Rascal Scooter. Even if your aging parents aren’t using them now, someday that could easily change!
4. Grandkid-friendly yards complete with fences. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to buy an existing fence than to have to install one, that’s for sure! And you know you want those little darlins over often and safely!
5. Air conditioning / heating – The Baby Boomer Generation women may be headed for menopause, while aging parents might be at the season of life where they are freezing when the thermostat says 80! There are many houses out there with NO air conditioning! (Can you tell I visited one such house this summer ). On the positive side, there are also properties with two sets of thermostats, enabling you to keep one part of the house warmer than the other – a definite boon to the Sandwich Generation.
6. Yards that require a lot of maintenance – more than upcoming caregiving duties might allow. I used to love my 40+ rose bushes. Fortunately, I lived in an area that made growing roses a piece of cake. When my dad’s Parkinson’s Disease started to worsen, my roses looked fine even when I quit having fun “babying” them. Now that I’m on the East Coast, I’ve learned that not all localities are as rose-friendly! I would definitely think twice about buying property with so many rose bushes if I thought my caregiving duties were going to be increasing anytime soon. Large lawns needing lots of mowing, weeding, etc. would fall into that same category for me. How about for you?
7. Houses that need more fixing than your caregiving schedule will allow. When we were younger, a fixer-upper seemed do-able. Now that I’m older, wiser, slower, and achy-er, I know that’s probably not the wisest option for me right now. And that doesn’t even take into account extra caregiving chores!

Well, that’s my checklist for house and apartment hunting. (It’s not bad for basement remodeling and room additions too!   ) How about you? Have you had to relocate while planning for senior parents? Do you have some ideas to add to this? I’d love to do a follow-up article with more items.

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Some interesting, fun, and encouraging real estate info for the Sandwich Generation from Twitter this week!

1. @HousingReporter reports good news about our ability to sell a home fast: July home sales improve in Pinellas County (Tampa Bay, Florida); Ottawa home sales have jumped 11.5%, and Baltimore-area home sales have risen in July as well! Hooray! Now if we can just spur on California and other sluggish areas!
2. Are you or an aging parent once again house buyers? Or perhaps looking at investment properties? Here’s a good article on mortgage rate locks and how to avoid problems with them -
3. @Nerdnews found an intriguing article at LifeHacker. The Trap Door Desk would be a great way to help conserve space if quarters are getting tight after aging parents and/or grandkids have moved in to your house, and room additions are not a viable option.
4. For all you Sandwich Generation business owners, Paul Chaney has another book, The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media, coming out and you can download the 8th chapter on Social Media for free. It deals with social networks and is titled Social Networks Strengthen Your Social Graph. It looks like this book, coming out soon, is as interesting and useful as his book, Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition, which I have underlined like you wouldn’t believe!
5. This is a duplicate tweet from SandwichINK because I felt it was vital to both sites. Alzheimer’s Caregiving: Home Safety Per @mike_gamble
6. Last, but definitely not least, How to Grow Your Own Living House. This is TOO COOL!!! Not sure my adult kids would want to do this, but wouldn’t the grandkids love it!

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Some interesting real estate tweets this week for the Sandwich Generation:

US News and World Reports Contributing Editor Philip Moeller writes: A Dozen Retirement Community Bargains. For consumers thinking of moving in, the article also offers good questions to ask to uncover the best deals.

Do your seniors want to stay in their own home? Check out this article. In-home care safety net for seniors!    per @steveeldercare

Talk about interesting architecture! The Most Unusual Churches in the World. My senior mom loves to “travel” through articles like these.    RT @travelitup

If you, or your senior parent, live in the country, or just want to, you might enjoy this Country Living site. Per @Moomette

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Twitter is an excellent resource for the Sandwich Generation, with plenty of useful tweeple (twitter people), links, and info about a wide range of caregiving topics. At SandwichINK, I do a weekly article with the best caregiving and grandparenting links for the week from Twitter. It’s also a great resource for the Sandwich Generation when it comes to real estate info and, starting today, I’ll be doing an article periodically about all things Twitter, real estate, and Sandwich Generation. The topics can range from buyers to sellers to renters and even to real estate agents and investors.

And YES, I’d love to have you join the conversation with us at Twitter by following me @SandwichINK. See you soon!

Baby Boomer Generation: Best Boomer Towns – 2009 Best Places to Thrive. That’s presuming, of course, that we aren’t tied to a specific town due to senior home care needs or grandparenting loves. Then again, there’s always the option of a multi-generation house purchase.

A Trying Time in Housing for Elderly  – Housing Slump Tests a New High-End Concept for Elderly Housing. Per @Carebuzz

What five skills will a real estate agent need to master to survive into the future?

Cyberhomes.com looks at online tools for previewing window coverings in a room. What a great help if helping computer-savvy aging parents with their home designs.

Does size really matter in real estate sales? Per @HousingReporter

Isn’t this the perfect verse for waiting on a real estate transaction!     Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

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Home warranties can be a Sandwich Generation, tool-challenged, property owner’s friend! It doesn’t matter if your investment properties are your home, your aging parents’ property, or used as rentals. It’s important to stay on top of repairs and routine maintenance. For many of us in the Baby Boomer Generation, that can be easier to say than to do. That’s where home warranties can help.

We bought our first house as a fixer upper over thirty years ago. My husband was young, lithe and very good at repairs. Even so, with his busy work schedule and our tight budget, home and appliance repairs were sometimes tough to deal with.

When we moved a few hundred miles away 15 years later, we were thrilled to buy a house that offered an Old Republic home warranty. Because my husband and I were no longer as lithe as we used to be, and his overtime requirements were even higher, we gladly paid to renew it each year. It wasn’t cheap but it more than paid for itself over the years when the dishwasher broke on Thanksgiving, the garbage disposal broke on Christmas, and the air conditioner broke in the middle of a heat wave in the summer!

When I, as a widow, bought a new property on my own, there was no question about it. I definitely made sure I bought a home warranty, in spite of the house being brand new. Once again, my policy about home warranties paid for itself in the second year, when the new air conditioner broke down just AFTER the manufacturer’s warranty ended!

That whole incident also led me to discover one of my easier ways to save money. It always pays to shop around AND to read the small print. Because I did just that, I was able to take advantage of a major savings by getting a five year warranty plan under their new house option for a fraction of the normal cost. My real estate agent hadn’t even known about that. It was a great deal that I almost missed out on!

If you or your spouse are very talented at home repairs and have plenty of time. you could probably skip buying home warranties. On the other hand, I personally think the headaches they save make them worthwhile for me, even if I wasn’t tool-challenged.

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Many of us tend to think all home insurance policies are pretty much the same. That’s not true though. There can be distinct differences as I recently discovered when I decided to sell my house.

My mom and I chose to move into an apartment during the selling process. This allowed me to be closer to help with the caregiving needs of my grandkids and freed her from having to deal with drop-in real estate agents and prospective home buyers. This made for a much less stressful environment for both of us.

I let my homeowner’s insurance agent know about the change and added rental property insurance to the new apartment. While we did move most of the furniture out, we left a few pieces to help with the home staging. The great staff at my insurance agency touched base with me a few times over the 4 1/2 months the house was on the market, but we had no problems.

I was quite surprised when I read an interesting article recently suggesting hiring house sitters for a vacant house on the market. She made the suggestion in order to save a large surcharge her insurance company charged her when her elderly parent’s house sat vacant and for sale for a few months.

When I called my insurance agent to happily inform him that my house had finally closed escrow, I asked him about the article. He explained that yes, there are definitely differences between insurance companies. In addition, various state and county laws can have different requirements as well. He also explained that his company does require at least one piece of furniture in the house. Apparently if it is entirely empty, it is considered more susceptible to vandalism. Because of that, they do recommend a vacancy endorsement for vacant houses, which I believe could cost extra. Since I am a big believer in home staging, believing it is a core component to being able to sell your house fast (or in this market, faster than others), that’s never been an issue for me.

In California, I used a different insurance company for each property investment there with equally good results. I always worked closely with my agent there as well, staged the home and never had an extra fee tacked on then either.

When you call around to select your homeowner’s insurance I would encourage you to ask about your options if you ever need to leave your house sitting vacant while selling it. You never know when caregiving needs may require you to do that, for your own property investment or that of your aging parents.

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Did you know that Twitter is an excellent resource for those involved in or interested in property investments. I have been active on Twitter for several months. As you may guess, based on SandwichINK, I have several interesting “Tweeple” I regularly read who write about all things caregiving. But I also have many who write about real estate.

From real estate agents to real estate investors to real estate blog-geeks, there are plenty on Twitter with great ideas and info. When I searched Twellow, the Yellow Pages for Twitter, the key words “real estate” show over 25,000 listings! Most of the ones I follow are in the real estate business and I find plenty of useful items of interest, even for those of us who aren’t real estate agents. I’ve learned great marketing tips, encouraging real estate info, and home staging ideas from different tweeps. Here are just a few of the ones I’m following and enjoying:

@BlogBoy2 – The infotech for Sugar Pine Realty in Sonora frequently has fascinating bits of info.

@PChaney – A social media expert who writes on a wide variety of issues, including real estate. I’ve enjoyed his real estate book, Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition, as well.

@nik_nik - Her site is an excellent real estate technology knowledge base and her tweets show that.

@realtors – As you can imagine, the National Association for Realtors (NAR) tweets plenty of interesting links on real estate, including a great article on the 2009 first time home buyer tax credit. That’s a great article to pass on to our adult kids and grandkids!

@TerriMurphy – Author of the real estate agent’s book, Terri Murphy’s E-Listing and E-Selling Secrets: For the Technologically “Clueless,” which I have and enjoyed, she posts about marketing in a wide variety of areas

@RemaxFoothills – a real estate company from South Carolina with some real estate tweets of interest.

@StagingFlorida - A home stager with  interesting links and info primarily centered around staging your home for sale. I’m a big beliver that home staging can help sell a home fast, so I’m always on the lookout for new tips in that area.

@Aging_In_Place – And last, but not least, one of my caregiving Tweeple who shares my real estate interests. His site is an excellent resource for helping you help your aging parents stay in their own home, or be more comfortable and safe in your home.

This is just a handful of all the great real estate tweeters out there. I’ll keep my eyes open and add to this list down the road. In the meantime, enjoy their tweets, and do follow me as well.       @SandwichINK.  I write about real estate, caregiving, and other items of interest from the multi-generational perspective as a member of the Sandwich Generation of caregivers, grandparents, and more.

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Having been involved with rental properties for over five years and helping my own kids when each of them has rented for a season, I’ve had lots of opportunity to recommend rental property insurance and I always do. In fact, I require it in all my rental leases.

There are plenty of advantages to making sure you have rental property insurance when you or your aging parents are renting.

• Protecting your lease. (Many leases require you to have rental insurance. If you don’t get it, your landlord may be able to legally evict you.)
• Your landlord’s insurance company does NOT cover any of your personal property. It only covers the building. And sometimes it doesn’t even cover that – see the next point.
• Your property is protected in the event your rental is burglarized or involved in a fire. (Did you know that if you accidentally cause a fire, your landlord’s insurance company may sue you for the damage caused!)
• Things like laptops and bicycles are protected, even if they are away from your rental.
• It can help protect you in case someone brings a liability lawsuit against you. (For instance, if someone slips in your bathroom, and injures themself, they might sue you!)
• It can save you money for premiums.

You’re probably thinking, “I agree with 1 and 2 but how does 3 come into it? It costs more money for more insurance, right?” Not always!

I had a tenant once who wanted to get a pet. I agreed as long as they  added a pet rider to their insurance policy and gave me a copy. Cheerfully, they complied. When I stopped by their house a few days later to pick up the rent check, they were so excited. They told me that by adding the rental property insurance to their car insurance policy, they qualified for a special discount and it actually wound up saving them money while having more insurance coverage. Now that’s one of those great ways to save money that Sandwich Generation landlords and their tenants can both appreciate.

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