From The Washington Post:
Howard Bluth was standing outside his five-bedroom house in McLean, Va., when a man stopped in a pickup truck and asked him whether he’d like to sell it. That was three years ago, and Bluth and his wife, Paige, haven’t looked back. “I sold it very quickly,” said Howard Bluth, an engineer.
While selling was easy, buying required research and more time. Like many empty nesters, the Bluths found that the tough part was preparing to transition from a large home to a much smaller one — identifying their many needs and wading through a range of options to meet them.
Among the considerations: Do you want a one-level condo or a single-family house? Do you want a multilevel single-family house with the master bedroom on the first floor? Do you want a newly constructed home or an existing one? Do you want a townhouse with an elevator? Can you find a place we can afford near your family?
“We want to be near our grandchildren and our children,” Howard Bluth said. All three of their grown children expect to be living in the D.C. area, and two already do.
The Bluths looked at high-rises in downtown Bethesda, Md., not far from Northwest Washington, and at condominium apartments and townhouses throughout the area. “We didn’t want the steps,” Paige Bluth said. Much of what they saw was too pricey, including one-bedroom condominiums for $600,000 to $800,000 — more than they wanted to spend for less space than they needed.
Finally, driving around the area with daughter Liza Aronie, they became interested in the Sumner Village condominium community, not far from where Aronie and her husband and children live in Bethesda. They called Aronie’s real estate agent, Caryn Krooth Gardiner of Long & Foster Real Estate, affiliated with Christie’s International in Bethesda, to find out what might be available there.
Read more here.