I Told This Family to Go Set Up a Trust a Year Before There Was Any Listing

The details Artondale, Gig Harbor (Pierce County) | Single family, single story, 3 bed, 2.5 bath, about 1,890 square feet on roughly four tenths of an acre | Built in 1973 | I represented the seller, which was the trust | Listed at $610,000, sold just over that | One day on market | Closed summer 2023

The takeaway: By the time this house sold, it was held in a trust, so the son and his wife signed as trustees. Not under power of attorney. That distinction is the difference between a sale that works and a sale that stalls, and the trust existed because somebody told this family to go handle it a year before there was a listing, a commission, or any certainty the sale would happen at all.

A woman raised her family in this house

By 2023 she had moved into an adult family home. Her health was declining, and the family needed access to the equity in the house to pay for her care.

So they sold while she was still living. Not after. That matters, and I'll come back to it.

I'd known this family a long time. I'd already sold the son and his wife their own home years before. This is the kind of file where you are the agent and the friend at the same time, and I'd be lying if I said that's simple.

The thing I did that made all of this possible happened a year earlier

About a year before there was any listing, I told them to go get the trust done.

In my words from the interview: they took care of the trust shortly before the sale on my instruction, about a year, if I remember correctly.

I want to be very precise about what that means, because this is a place where real estate agents overstep constantly and I'm not going to.

I am not an attorney. I did not set up the trust. I did not give them legal advice. What I did was recognize the situation early, understand where it was heading, and tell them to go sit down with an estate professional before it became urgent. Then they went and did it with someone qualified.

That's the whole move. It took one conversation and it was worth more than everything else I did on this file combined.

Why it mattered so much

Here's the gap most families fall into.

They have a power of attorney, because somebody told them to get one, and they think that's the estate plan. A power of attorney lets you act for a living person. It does not avoid probate, it does not survive death, and depending on how it's written and who's reading it, title companies and lenders can be slow to accept it on a real estate sale.

A trust is different. The property is owned by the trust, and the trustees sign for the trust. When this house sold, the son and his wife signed as trustees, not under power of attorney. The POA wasn't needed for the transaction at all.

What that bought the family: the house stayed out of probate, the sale could happen on a normal timeline, and nobody was arguing with a title company about the scope of a signature authority while a buyer waited.

Most families discover this gap at the worst possible moment, which is after a parent can no longer sign and the house needs to sell right now. By then your options are expensive and slow.

Go talk to an estate attorney before you need one. That's the only advice in this article I'd put in bold twice.

One day on market, on a 1973 house I didn't renovate

The home was built in 1973. It was dated. It was also structurally solid, and there's a real difference.

I did not push a renovation. Senior sellers and their adult children get told constantly that they need to update a kitchen before anybody will look at the place, and it is usually wrong. A renovation on somebody else's dime, timeline, and taste, right when a family is already stretched thin, is a bad trade.

What I did instead:

• Cleaned it thoroughly.
• Made targeted repairs. A floor repair, and a plumbing job that ended up taking two different plumbers because the first one was, in my words, a bit too big to shimmy in where he needed to.
• Staged it.

That's it. It sold in one day, over the $610,000 ask.

So if you're sitting on a 1970s house wondering whether you have to gut it first: no. Clean and staged beat renovated here, and it beat it in 24 hours.

What I did that another agent wouldn't have

1. I told them to go handle the estate structure a year before I stood to make a dollar. No listing agreement, no guarantee the sale would ever happen, no commission in sight. That is not a normal agent conversation, and it mattered more than everything else anybody did on this file.
2. I stayed in my lane while doing it. I sent them to a qualified professional instead of trying to explain a trust myself. The value was in recognizing the problem, not in pretending to solve it.
3. I talked them out of renovating. The easy path is to agree that a dated house needs $40,000 of work and then collect a commission on a higher price. I priced and prepared it honestly instead.
4. I coordinated the vendors so the family didn't have to. Cleaning, floor repair, two plumbers, staging. For adult children managing a parent's care from a distance, the coordination is the service.
5. I was still useful eight months later. The following spring, one of them came back needing the settlement statement for a tax preparer. I sent it and looped in escrow to get the full closing package over.

Questions I get from families selling a parent's home

What's the difference between a trust and a power of attorney? A power of attorney authorizes someone to act on behalf of a living person. A trust actually owns the property, and the trustees act for the trust. For a real estate sale, a trust is generally cleaner, and it keeps the property out of probate. Both have a place. Most families have one and assume it covers the other.

Can we sell my parent's home while they're still living? Yes, families do this regularly, often to fund care. How it's structured matters a great deal, so this is a conversation for an estate attorney, ideally before it's urgent.

Do we have to renovate before we sell? Usually not. Clean, repair what's actually broken, and stage. This 1973 house sold in one day over asking with exactly that approach.

When should we start talking to someone? Earlier than feels necessary. A year early is a gift. A month late is expensive.

What does SRES mean? It's the Seniors Real Estate Specialist designation. In practice it means somebody who has been trained on the specific financial, legal, and family dynamics of a later-life move, rather than somebody treating it like any other listing.

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Helping a parent sell, or thinking a few years ahead about your own house? Let's have a conversation. No listing presentation, and you don't have to be selling anything soon.

Becca Pitts | eXp Realty LLC | SRES | Licensed in Washington since 2010