What is the right forum for this question?

[plnelson53]

I'm 70 and my GF is 69.  Both of our spouses died several years ago.  We each live in our own houses about 2 miles apart in Massachusetts. My house is mortgage-free and my GF's house has only a nominal mortgage. We're both busy on various projects so we end up spending all day at our own houses and we'd like to be under the same roof. We both had successful corporate careers so we're financially comfortable.

We'd like to sell our existing houses and buy one house with the proceeds.   We've been told by two lawyers that marriage would not be a good idea for two seniors with the amount of assets we have so we'll be "living in sin"  8-)  

I'm looking sources of advice about how to sell two houses and buy a new one, especially for senior couples. What are the tax considerations? What if we sell one house to raise a down-payment and cash to buy the new house and fix it up to our specs while we live in the other house? What if one of us dies or becomes incompetent in the middle of the transaction, i.e., when only one house has been sold?  Etc, etc ... there are million ways this can get complicated, but I'm sure we're not the first senior couple to do it, so I assume there must be articles and books out there but I haven't found any.

Thanks in advance.

[nctarheel]

Do you have any acquaintances that have had a lengthy career as realtors. They may have had situations in their careers that duplicate your situation. They may have even had to deal with some of the "what ifs" you have posed.

[plnelson53]

No, I don't have any family members or friends in the real-estate business.

But this is the AARP site so lots of seniors here.  And our situation is not unusual. 

1.  Older people often own their own homes already.

2. Older people often start new relationships as a result of death or divorce

3.. Older couples often move into new houses due to the need to downsize or to move into a house that can better accommodate age or mobility issues.

... so our circumstance must be very common among seniors and I'm surprised I've seen so little discussion about it.   Is there a good forum either on AARP or elsewhere to discuss this?

[nctarheel]

I am sorry that there has been such a poor response to your inquiry. I mainly come to this site to play a few games because your analysis of these discussion boards is correct. Most boards are almost devoid of discussion. There were a few boards that generated lively discussion but the subjects covered on those boards are no longer allowed due to the guidelines of this site.

[plnelson53]

Are there any active online discussion forums for seniors to discuss serious topics elsewhere on the interwebs?   I'm amazed that AARP can't seem to get one going. 

[Tempest332]

There is a housing area here somewhere.

I take it each of you have family to pass assets down.  Cool you can find a woman that has equity in a home though. 

[WebWiseWoman]

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@Tempest332 wrote:

"...Cool you can find a woman that has equity in a home though. "

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Wait, what did you type? WHAT? What do you mean?

[BobH2719]

AARP would be great if they had a category called "Everyday Life Issues" where people can talk about things that have happened in or pertain to the issues of every day life and get feedback from others.

[nctarheel]

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@BobH2719 wrote:

AARP would be great if they had a category called "Everyday Life Issues" where people can talk about things that have happened in or pertain to the issues of every day life and get feedback from others.

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Sorry, @BobH2719, but these discussion boards are so heavily controlled by AARP so as to not offend any of their contributors, the discussions are relegated to a 'HALLMARK CHANNEL" type of subject matter. No religion, no politics, and many other issues of "everyday life" are also verboten per the guidelines. That is why they say they have 38,000,000 members and maybe only .000005% use these discussion boards at all. In fact, some use them just to repeat the same inputs over and over again (ie. no true discussion.)

[nctarheel]

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@plnelson53 wrote:

I'm amazed that AARP can't seem to get one going. 

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What is amazing is that they have supposedly 38,000,000 members and yet, almost every discussion board on their web site is devoid of any serious discussion. If you look closely, some of the discussion boards are made up of posts input by the very same person throughout the thread. I don't know what to tell you.