Letting Go of the Family Home

Parting with a family home, handed down through the generations, can make emotions run high, and cause difficulties for sellers, buyers, and the real estate agents handling the sale.

In Washington, Georgia, broker Deborah Rainey is handling the listing of an 1818 Greek Revival mansion that has been in the same family since it was built. Rainey tells The New York Times, “Selling here is an art — the families are on no timeline, and they’re all emotional sales. And it seems that no sooner do I sell one than I have family members come back and say, ‘I would have kept that.'"

Rose Giuliano and her husband lived in her grandparents’ old apartment for a little over three years. While the building itself was as she remembered it from childhood visits ... nothing else was. The buildings all around them were being torn down and gutted ... and the other apartments were filled with tenants, not family members. “It isn’t what it was. It can’t be what it was,” said Ms. Giuliano, whose family finally sold the building this winter. “I felt super-conflicted. Is my grandmother’s ghost still walking the halls? I’m sad letting it go, but I don’t know how to hold on and preserve it anymore.”

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