The VNTG Single Solution
WHEN Bradley’s 91-year-old mother fell and could no longer live in her home for decades, he was at a loss as to what to do.
“It was clear she couldn’t go back as she had multiple fractures. The house was amazing but had not had any maintenance for years and needed serious work,” he said.
Bradley’s dilemma was compounded by living in Ann Arbor, where he also cares for his wife who has health issues – he simply could not be in two places at once try as he might.
“In order to keep my mother in a nursing community we needed to sell the house but there simply was not enough of me to go around,” said Bradley, despite making the long round trip regularly to care for both his wife and mother. “I physically could not upgrade my mother’s house as it needed to be sold.”
He said: “I was the far side of desperate when my broker introduced me to Megan at VNTG. She and VNTG took the unachievable task that was set before me and made it not only very possible, but trackable and manageable.”
The home – was in dire need of maintenance and improvements to make it ready for a buyer in 2021, and as Bradley said, was also rather full of his mother’s ‘collected remembrances since 1974’.
“The house was beautiful for a 1970s house, but you can’t sell a ‘70s house in a 21 st century market, so the whole interior needed to be done. And all this in the age of Covid.”
“If there was anything that could go wrong, it happened, and we were trying to do this expediently. The normal timeframe for a family to liquidate a house is 12 to 15 months and I just did not have that kind of time,” said Bradley.
“The other option would have been to sell the house as-is. We did the comparable estimates, and they were going for a third less than we finally sold mom’s house for and they were also on the market considerably longer.”
This is where VNTG came in and helped Bradley – and his mom – move on to the stage where they needed to be.
Bradley said: “The end result is Megan and her team came in and in just about six months they had emptied out the house, stripped it down of the shag carpeting and the results of my mother’s if-it-doesn’t-move-wallpaper-it phase, repaired the plaster, and restored the plumbing.”
“Within six months it was on the market and 32 hours later it had sold at full asking price to one of the first viewers on the one and only open house.”
“We had the cash to keep my mother going, the value of the house was comfortably 50 percent more than the cost of the upgrades, and that is money to keep my mom going.”
Bradley credits VNTG for helping him fully. “They were my project managers. I couldn’t be there to do it in person, and they did it for me. They held my hand and took the lead. They took on cleaning and repairing the house, even leading on subcontractors and managing their foibles. VNTG did all the things that are usually the homeowner’s responsibility.”
As well as the physical, Bradley said VNTG helped him with the emotional too. “They took a lot of the pain out of the experience. Thinning out personal possessions means you have all these wonderful memories which make clearing out very difficult. They saved me thousands of hours. My mom had collection after collection, but the items were not dear to me, so they helped handle the china figurines and Hungarian porcelain, but they did it with respect.”
Bradley’s final words on VNTG and its service: “They took a lot of pain out of the process, and most of the time and they paid me money back for doing it. They have compassion, a clear vision of the goal, and speed.”
