Your Next Chapter in Idaho: Right-Sizing Without Sacrificing

Downsizing isn't about giving something up—it's about finding a home that better fits your lifestyle. Explore patio homes, townhomes, active adult communities, and how to make the most of your home's equity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Idaho Life Show. Shelby Matson here with Garrett Phil. Before the break, we set up the four paths people in the Treasure Valley take when the family home stops fitting the next chapter. Right sizing, aging in place, moving into a community designed for the stage of life, or coordinating something with family. This segment, we are zooming all the way in on the right sizing because it's the option most people consider first, and it's also the option people understand the least.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Yeah. And you know, Shelby, a point that always surprises folks the first time that they sit down with us that right sizing is not the same thing as downsizing in the way that the word usually gets used. So we'll we'll talk about that. So the word downsize makes it sound like it's a sacrifice. It's a loss of square footage, a loss of status. You know, for most of the families that we work with, the right next home is not actually smaller in the ways that matter. It's smaller in the ways that don't matter. And what I mean by that is fewer unused bedrooms, you know, less yard to maintain, like we spoke about in the last segment, fewer stairs, if not no stairs. Right. And the same or better in the way that that does matter. So you've got a better single-level layout, better kitchen, better location and relative to the grandkids, or healthcare, or both. So you're not just downsizing and losing things, right? You're we want to make it better.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

That's right. We want to make it better. Let me walk through what your real options look like in the in this valley in 2026. The first one a lot of people land on is a single-level patio home. These are typically detached or duplex style homes. One floor, two bedrooms, plus an office or three bedrooms, attached garage, smaller lot, often in an HOA that handles a chunk of the exterior maintenance. Great. That's huge, right? That's a huge benefit. We have a lot of these throughout Meridian, Eagle, Star, and West Boise. New construction price points right now generally start in the upper fours and run up from there depending on finishes, location, and lot size. Resale inventory comes up regularly.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

And the second option that a lot of people land on is the townhome route. And the townhouses in this valley, they've improved tremendously in the last decade. You know, if you look back at 30-year-old townhouses, just not a lot of great options. But in the last decade, my gosh, they made huge improvements. Really nice. And a lot of these projects, they do have an HOA that's set up to cover most, or if not all, the exterior. Things like the siding, the roof, uh, the front landscaping, we see that. Most of them are very minimalistic front landscaping. So again, it's it's really nice, not a lot to deal with. They also help with the snow removal as well in those common areas. So your weekends are going to look a lot different coming from that quarter acre or half acre that you're on into that townhouse. And price points are generally actually a little bit lower than that detached patio home that you just spoke about.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Which means that you're going to have more equity that's going to stay in the bank once that dust settles from everything on all the transacting that you've done. And the trade-off is that the shared wall is something that you're going to have to have, right? And smaller or no private yard in some cases. And some people love that trade-off and some people don't. So there just really isn't any wrong answer on it.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

That's right. And a third option that people don't think about as often, but that's worth naming, a smaller traditional home in an established neighborhood you already love, right? You don't have to move out to the edge of the valley to get a single-level home. There are pockets of the Boise Bench, the North End, parts of Meridian, parts of Nampa, where smaller mid-century single-level homes come up for sale often. They're often on quiet streets, walking distance to the grocery store, sometimes with mature trees that you can't put a price on. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

100%.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Right. For somebody who values being in the community they've already been in for 40 years, this is sometimes the right path and nobody talks about it enough.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

You're absolutely right. They they don't. So, anyways, we're going to go into the fourth option here in this category. And it's one that we're increasingly seeing. It's the 55 plus active adult communities. You'll notice that I just didn't say 55 plus, but they're active adult communities. And these are subdivisions that they're specifically designed for adults 55 and older. And they typically include like a clubhouse, fitness facilities. We're seeing a lot with pickleball courts, which is extremely popular right now. They'll have an organized social calendar. Um, you know, it's basically a community of people, kind of roughly in the same chapter of life, but they want to stay active. They don't want to get bored. And the Treasure Valley has more of these than it's in the last five years, more and more, and that inventory keeps growing. Uh, there's several in Meridian, uh, Eagle, Star, um, down in Cuna, um, over there by that the golf course there that we've seen. Um, the old golf course, Falcon Crest, right? And and some of these are detached single family homes. There's some of them are patio homes, some are even townhouses. And again, no right or wrong. It's what's what you know people like. But the common thread is that the community amenities and the age restriction with this 55 adult active community.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

I agree. And what I have also seen too, Garrett, is that even the older subdivisions that offer these types of homes, they are putting in those pickleball courts for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

They are, you're right. It's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yep. So here's the fifth path that often gets overlooked entirely: renting for a season. Yeah, it's something to think about. Selling the family home, taking the equity off the table, and renting a single-level apartment, condo, or rental home for a year or two while you figure out what you actually want in this next chapter of life. There's no rule that says that you have to immediately buy the next thing. For somebody who is unsure or who is recently widowed, or who knows they want to move but doesn't know where, the rental bridge is sometimes the kindest move you can make for yourself. Nobody puts pressure on you. The equity is sitting in the bank, earning interest while you breathe and think on it.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

That's such a smart idea because we have people that immediately need to make that big jump. Right. And maybe they're not quite ready for that 55 plus active community and and they just need to figure life out for a moment. So no one's pressuring you. Just take a moment, breathe, figure it out for six months or a year, and then figure out what you really want. So let's go ahead and spend a minute on the equity math because this is where that right-sizing conversation can get really interesting. And most of the homeowners that we sit down with, Shelby, in her office with her agents, it's within this category that they bought their home 20 to 40 years ago. And they have somewhere, I don't know, the average person that that we see, probably between $300,000 and $700,000 worth of equity in the house. And a lot of folks haven't fully internalized how big that number has gotten, especially over since since the pandemic. And when they sell the house and they move into a patio home or a townhouse or a smaller traditional home, there's often a meaningful gap between what they sold it for and what they bought next. And that gap goes right to the bank account and it goes back into the bank tax-free up to certain limits.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Agreed. But I do need to clarify and say that we are not CPAs. Please always confirm specifics with your tax professional. But for the overwhelming majority of homeowners selling a primary residence, the federal capital gains exclusion is a very generous number. It really is. A single homeowner can generally exclude up to $250,000 of gain on the sale of a primary residence. A married couple filing jointly can generally exclude, are you ready? Up to $500,000. It's pretty generous. Those numbers cover the vast majority of the Treasure Valley primary residence sales we see in this specific category. The equity that comes back to you in most cases comes back to you without a federal capital gains tax bill attached.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Which is fantastic. And then once that equity is back, what people do with it, it's up to them. It varies. Some people they keep it liquid as a kind of a retirement buffer. And that alone is a powerful reason to move because that kind of cushion, it really can change how the rest of your retirement feels. You know, some folks can use a chunk of that to help an adult child into a first home, like we spoke about about a month ago on this show. And then that conversation is a real one in a lot of Treasure Valley families right now, in fact, in fact, nationwide as well. Some folks they just decide to invest it. Some folks travel. Awesome. Good for you, right? Spend it. You you earned it. That's right. The flexibility on that equity creates an enormous uh amount, and it tends to genuinely land on people the first time they actually see that number on paper. They go, wow, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

I had no idea, right? One thing we want to make sure people know about for Idaho homeowners who qualify, there are a couple of state-level property tax programs specifically designated to support seniors and folks on fixed incomes. The Idaho Property Tax Reduction Program, sometimes called the Circuit Breaker, provides property tax relief to qualifying seniors aged 65 and older, as well as widows, widowers, and certain disabled individuals. It's all based on income. There is also a separate property tax deferral program in some cases. Again, we are not tax advisors, but if your property tax bill has gotten uncomfortable on your current home and you've never looked into these, they are absolutely worth a phone call to your county assessor's office to ask whether you qualify or not.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

That's all you can do is just call the county assessor, depending on what county you're in, if you're in Ada, Canyon, Gem, whatever it is, just give them a call. And you know, the homeowner's exemption on your primary residence is something that every Idaho homeowner should be looking at to just to make sure it's on file with the county. And this is not specific to seniors, but it's important to verify, especially if you've been in your home for a long time. Sometimes paperwork, as you know, it can get stale and an exemption falls off, and nobody actually even notices it until they start looking into it. So again, easy phone call or kind of study that property tax bill, it's it's a call worth making.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

I agree. Coming up, we are flipping all the way to the other side of this conversation. What if you don't want to move? Hmm, there's a thought. What if the house you raised your family in is the house you want to stay in for the rest of your life? We're going to walk through the aging in place path, what the modification actually looks like, what they cost, and the honest trade offs nobody else is going to lay out for you. Don't go anywhere.