“My experience has been that there is almost like a secret underground society when it comes to” finding and selling such houses, Davis says.
Sometimes the prices put such homes out of reach. Or, he says, “when people find something they tend to stay there, in their little nest.”
Barrierfreehome.com has listed 60 homes in the past two years, and about half of them have sold, Davis says. A three-month listing costs $40.25; to list a house until its sells, with 20 photos, is $58.75. Four houses in Virginia and two in Maryland are on the site.
Louis Tenenbaum, a Montgomery County consultant on accessible housing and universal design, suggests that sellers of accessible houses contact “affinity groups,” such as the local chapters of the MS Society, United Cerebral Palsy and the National Parkinson Foundation. “They might help put the word out.”
Former clients of Tenenbaum’s, Susan Catlette and her husband, bought a Chevy Chase rambler in 1998 because he had Huntington’s disease and anticipated having to use a wheelchair. Tenenbaum’s renovation was meant to allow them to age in place without the home looking institutional, Catlette says.
After her husband died, Catlette decided to sell the house, which she was able to do almost immediately in 2009. But it was “serendipity,” she says.
She sold to a family that was in the market for such a house. The family wanted the house “because of the features . . . but not because they would be needed immediately,” she says. The family had a special-needs son, and the mother, a lawyer who practices disability rights law, “was interested in the features,” Catlette says.
“I think it’s great that someone is listing these kinds of properties now,” says Catlette, 60, who has remarried. “I just moved for the second time, and I specifically bought this property because it has a step-free entrance. I’m getting older, and I want to be able to stay in my house as I age.”
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