After 20 years in the fast-paced business of marketing communications, Mary Anne Pick was ready for a new career that gave her “a bit more meaning to life.”
She found that mission in downsizing after helping some friends’ elderly parents make the shift from rambling single-family house to retirement home and helping others to de-clutter their lives and stage their home for sale.
“I just kept doing it as a friend, and then one day somebody said, ‘You’re really good at this; you should be doing this as a business,’” said Pick.
Three years later, her Tsawwassen-based firm Wings of Change is doing a steady trade guiding seniors through their journey to smaller, more manageable homes.
Pick is not the only one to join what resembles a sunrise industry in North America, Europe and Australia. In Canada, the industry group Professional Organizers in Canada (POC) has grown from a 2003 founding membership of 100 to over 500 today, about 80 of them in the Lower Mainland. More than 90% of members serve the residential market and small-business entrepreneurs.
At first, Pick explored buying into a national franchise after talking to a local outlet but decided that after managing a creative house for 20 years, “it seemed like a no-brainer to do this on my own.”
While a downsizing firm is not capital-intensive, there is much work assembling suppliers and others she can call on to help make the move.
“I had to do a lot of research to put my team together and to form relationships with retirement residences.”
Pick has a crew of up to five women on contract who come in and sort and pack what goes and discard, sell and give away the rest. Costs for preparing seniors for a move start at approximately $2,500. Movers and tradespeople are available as needed to transport belongings or prepare the home for sale.
North Shore realtor Shelley Williams came into the business with a passion to treat seniors “with patience and understanding” that she saw was missing in the relationships between seniors and other realtors she worked with.
Williams, who took courses on specializing in seniors real estate 10 years ago, said she often visits her clients a couple of times a day and has tea with them. “Sometimes you invest several years with them before you get their business.”
Unlike younger people used to making decisions quickly in real estate, seniors in their 70s and 80s take a lot longer to decide and want to have “their ducks in a row” before they do it.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people come into this business and all they see is big money,” said Williams. “It isn’t; it’s a service.”
Bill and Helen Kelly, a couple in their early 80s whom Williams recently helped scale down to a townhouse from their Lynn Valley detached home, said Williams was there – by phone, by text and by email – to help with everything.
“And she likes her tea,” Helen noted with a smile. •
