Katie Seymour never thought she’d want to leave the house where she and her husband, Thad, had lived for 31 years in Lake Mary, Fla. Katie had asked me to come by to offer staging tips to help the house sell. As she showed me around the lovely 3,000-square-foot lakefront pool home, I couldn’t help but pry.
I’m always curious to learn what motivates those long settled in a family home to roll up their rugs, empty their closets and drawers and move. It takes courage, vision and fortitude. While more retirees — Katie’s 65 and Thad’s 67 — should move once their kids are launched, many stay tethered to homes that no longer serve them.
“We knew we would eventually sell the family house and move to something more fitting for empty nesters,” Katie said, adding that Thad embraced the idea first.
“Though I loved the house,” he said, “I was ready to let go and move on to the next chapter. The amount of work involved in keeping it up felt like more every year.”
Katie hit her tipping point last fall when she learned their first grandbaby was on the way.
“The baby changed everything,” she said.
She started packing with her eye on Milwaukee, where her daughter, son-in-law and soon Grandbaby live. The Seymours’ son lives 90 minutes away in Chicago, and five of Katie’s siblings also live nearby. But while a Wisconsin home made sense, they didn’t want to abandon Florida. Their plan: buy two smaller, lower maintenance homes for the price of the one they were selling.
They bought a smaller home in Lake Nona, a planned community about 25 miles south of their current home. The house has almost no yard. The weekly fee to maintain the small strip of grass out front is $15, which sounds great after years of paying several hundred dollars a month on pool and yard maintenance. The home still has four bedrooms, so the kids and ultimately grandkids can visit.
And they’ll want to. The property has access to three pools, a ropes course, and hiking and…
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