Jim Morgan with Caring Transitions

Rick Ripma: 0:00

Welcome to Indy's Real Estate Gurus. I'm Rick Ripma, your hard working mortgage guy and I've been in real estate and mortgages for over 34 years I've helped over5200 folks finance their homes,my team and I believe in custom tailored loans, not a one size fits all approach. We believe there is the right mortgage for you, and we believe we are the team to deliver it.

Ian Arnold: 0:19

And I'm Ian Arnold part of Rick's hard working mortgage team. I've been in the financial industry for 15 years helping customers rebuild their credit to get the best possible interest rate, I have a passion to helping you secure your overall real estate dreams, and also hopefully help pay off your home even faster.

Rick Ripma: 0:34

And we want to remind you, if you have any questions on India's real estate market, or the mortgage and information, just go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com. Or you can call 317-672-1938.That's 317-672-1938. And today,we have a little special show.We have Jim Morgan. Jim, thanks for joining us, we appreciate it.

Jim Morgan: 0:55

Well, thanks for having me.

Rick Ripma: 0:57

And you're with caring transitions

Jim Morgan: 0:58

I am with caring transitions in the north are the elevator speech is caring transitions is the largest senior downsizing and relocation and liquidation company in the United States with 300 Plus franchises across the country.

Rick Ripma: 1:16

I know when when I talked to you about it, it was like, wow, I want to I want that on the show. Because I think I think getting that word out is incredibly valuable. Because I think the service that you do is incredibly valuable for people.It just I've actually talked to agents, and they're like, Yeah,we I think one that used you guys, maybe a couple of them.And they were like, wow, it's unbelievably easy. It went perfect. And so I thought, you know, this is a great service for somebody who is in the position that they need that service.

Jim Morgan: 1:45

Yeah, I'll tell you what's, you know, what's interesting is my background is in real estate. And so not doing it now. But for basically, since the earth was cooling, that's what I've been doing. My dad was a broker before me, I've been in business since 1983, was in the new home business for 27 years ran a bunch of builders. And then in real estate, and so I've I've sold about 1500 homes myself, and I don't have any idea how many I've managed, I was the VP of Sales for REMAX ability plus for 11 years and our 14 offices and like, just under 300 agents. So I've seen a lot of stuff. So I understand the needs of the agent, which is part of what comes down to the real caring transitions was originally brought in to that family or that company, to help agents get houses decluttered,get them ready to list, get them, you know, get them cleaned out so they can be sold and closed. So So we brought it in,because we saw the need for real tours. But I've as I've been doing it also now that's all I do. So yeah, it is very fulfilling to do. So we and we're very much a solutions based company, it's kind of hard to say what we do, there are a lot of companies that are in our space. But I don't know of another one that does all that we do, okay, this one will do this, and this one will do that,but they don't do everything. I never know what we're going to get involved in until I get into a free appointment with the client to walk them through and see what their needs are, what their wants are, you know what,what they can afford what we can do. So we can do decluttering where you know, maybe you're trying to list a house and the garage is a mess in the basements of mass and maybe they have a the junk drawer became a junk room, we can go in there and get that taken care of. So you get on the market, we can come in and you know, we can pack them, we can move them, we can unpack them. And then Reese set up their apartment on the other side, which is critical when you're moving into like assisted living. I know from a personal experience how traumatic it is for that senior that's been in their home for 40years, that's moving out of it normally not by desire. Normally something's forcing the issue.And it causes great deal of depression, it causes you know all kinds of different things with them in that move. So we do what we can to replicate their house and we take pictures of their old place and replicate it to the new place as close as possible. And if you have a memory care issue where people wake up every day to a new day,we make sure if the nightstands on the left hand side of the bed, it'll be on the left hand side if they clock to the right corner of it is in that spot the pictures in the same configuration on the wall as much as geographically possible to help drive down that stress level because otherwise they're they're getting jolted every morning, you know when they wake up. So and when we try to when we set that up, they get a chance to go to dinner that night. They get to start you know rather than having the excuse of staying back in the room trying to do boxes. They do that. So I had a family Remember that we moved? This was before our caring transitions. And I didn't know any of this stuff. I thought I did. Okay.

Rick Ripma: 5:07

We spent a lot of years in there. Yeah, right.Yeah, well,

Jim Morgan: 5:09

on top of that, I've been the only sibling, the state in the state. So I had to downsize my in laws, my parents,my uncle, you know. And so, and I've, I'm still POA Guardian,and Trustee have two of them. So it's kind of one of those deals.So I thought I knew I've been dealing with for like, 20 years.But I moved this family member,I didn't think it was a move, I moved them from an upstairs apartment to a downstairs apartment on the same end of the building, they got to park in the same parking space, they had the same neighbors, you know, I didn't see it as a move. So I didn't button everything up. It was very livable, but there were still things in boxes, or what have you caused this person to go into a massive depression,they tried to commit suicide did two stents in the senior psych ward, you know, and then was told that by the psychiatrists that if they got to a senior living, where there'd be more social more structure that they would sign off. So we moved there at that time, we had everything buttoned up, you know, there's beds were made,the pictures were hung,everything was done. And it's been a, this individual has been a rockstar, he is the president of the garden club. On on the board, he's an ambassador, he makes the flower does the flower arrangements for the Sunday more service. So we set him up for failure the first time not knowing we did, right, and then the second time, we set him up for success. And that's what we do here. We also do estate sales, we do online auctions, we do cleanouts. And we do, I'm on my way from here, to a house that I'm told is a hoarder house, we'll find a house, you know, we've done those who have so it can do a little bit one to some pretty intense stuff

Rick Ripma: 6:52

and a hoarder,right? I mean, it's, it's already difficult to move a hoarder, from what I understand,they don't want to give up any of their stuff,

Jim Morgan: 6:59

right? It's now this particular one, from what I understand it's an estate. So,you know, a lot of the hoarders that we've done, it's been the Guardian attorney or whatever,or the caseworker that we're dealing with. We have done one actual for the hoarder herself.That was a, that was an interesting, you know, an interesting time, you know, so

Rick Ripma: 7:20

what's really important to me, because my mom ended up with memory issues, she had Alzheimer's. And as you talk, I realized, the first thing we did is she went to different houses, right? So she'd go and she'd stay for three or four months, and then she'd moved to the next kid, and then she'd moved to the next kid. And you could tell that was really hard on her. Because we I mean, I don't think we ever thought you got to put everything in the same place and all that, but even then I think it's hard. Ultimately, she ended up in a in a facility. And that was really hard. And I think I think having somebody who's done it multiple times makes a makes a huge difference, it would really help that her it would have helped her out,

Jim Morgan: 8:07

it helps you it helps the family helps the the individuals, it it's we don't mean to make these mistakes, but we don't know any better.That's, I mean, trust me, I've been there a lot. And when I got into caring transitions, and I started going around and meeting the senior service providers that cover all kinds of different bases. Actually,actually, I got angry, because I'm going, where have you been?And why didn't somebody tell me that all these different services exist? Or what they what they are, you know, I was,and most of us are so misinformed, we have such bad information about what these things are. It's we don't lack resources, we don't lack services and programs, what we lack is the knowledge of them and how to access them. Okay. So that's a lot of what we do at caring transitions is I'm always steering people towards other services that can help them through the process. In fact, it was so much so that it became a passion project, and we just got caring transitions to let us do this. We're running it separately as a separate entity,but now we're able to kind of merge it into our caring transition in the north franchise where we can use it.It's really just a gift to our clients and their families. We developed a website called Life's copilot, and lies copilot is all it is is a portal of real information from real experts for free for the consumer. And it's all about anything senior anything that goes along with the different programs. You can go on there and there's a resource page or resource thing to drop down there's a glossary of terms. You know, when you go to any any part of the senior living, they're gonna start talking about ADLs just like Realtors talk about we have all our acronyms and we talked in in A way that we assume people know what our acronyms mean, which they don't. But you know, we have a glossary of terms so that people understand that we have a video library, we do two expert panels a month, we'll pick a topic. And then we have experts in that topic, come in and do it. So anyway, that's just another resource that we provide. And then, when I'm in with a house, I'm constantly going, here's this video, here's this resource, here's the stuff that you can go to. And here's this expert that can actually solve your problems beyond our scope,

Rick Ripma: 10:30

right? So what was that website?

Jim Morgan: 10:33

It's called Life's copilot.com. Okay.

Rick Ripma: 10:36

And then if somebody wants to get a hold of you about any of the services that you provide, what's the best way?Well, you

Jim Morgan: 10:43

can call me317-610-7458. Or you can get me at Jay Morgan at caring transitions.com. Or if you go on life's copilot, there's a link where you can go to ask for a co pilot, which is a help. And right now, I am that. And I know enough to be dangerous on a lot of subjects. But I do know who to point you to. So you know,some. So

Ian Arnold: 11:10

I think that's wonderful. Especially because I dealt with my grandparents, old timers and all that and we had a transition. I wish we had we knew companies like this existed to be fair one would helped our family out a lot. But so do you also help so my grandparents and my other grandparents just moved out? They had a three story home and they didn't they were struggling walk upstairs? Do you help transition? Like them into like a ranch style home? And stuff? Like? Well, we

Jim Morgan: 11:38

can is you know,we'll bring in other help. Okay,we'll need a realtor involved?Probably okay, we'll need to have very likely there would be a situation where we would have well, you know, we could help them by doing a state sale, do online auction to get rid of a lot of the excess stuff, we can pack them and move them we can unpack them with the other place. So yeah, we can do that.It doesn't really matter. In fact, you know, we, you know,our bread and butter. Our main stay is dealing with seniors and downsizing, but we can do anyone we just one of the Colts that left the Colts we just moved he and his wife to Alabama, so he wasn't that old. So in fact, he just got another job with another team. So but anyway, so yeah, so we can do about anybody. You just focus on.We've done divorces where we've had two people that didn't want to be in the same house together deal with things and we ended up they gave us lists of stuff. And we packed one list with like blue tape and one list with like red tape or whatever, and move them to where they wanted to be.So we can do whatever someone needs. Again, we're solutions based. Yeah.

Ian Arnold: 12:49

And so do you have to have a psychology license?Because I understand dealing with certain people, especially talent, talent, a guy 40 years old, and you're having to move them out is probably not the best thing. And

Jim Morgan: 13:01

we'll have I think I've been in real estate for a long time. So it's the same. I don't really know there's a lot of different, maybe different subjects. But it's Yes, pretty much the same. minefield. But

Ian Arnold: 13:14

yeah, it is very interesting. Because when you have to deal with so many different people and somebody in different situations have a maybe a husband passed or wife passed and then you got to deal with that. And All right, now we got to move on. I mean, that's Well, well,

Jim Morgan: 13:28

let's put it this way we have we give we do we say we have a one hour free consultation. Depending on the circumstances, those can very easily become three, you know,or whatever it is, because I'm not going to walk out on a widow this recently but this crying and we just need to help her.Really I think a lot of it is is just help them find. Find the there's it's going to be okay,you know, we can get you through this. You know, we you know,you're not it's not all on you.And you know, I think that there was some I would have really loved that there's somebody like this around when I was selling.There's a neighborhood called Lake Charlevoix, and I sold that neighborhood app. I went in there and it was a disaster. And I was able to play in there for a while had fun. But most of my buyer profile, we're moving out of the five and 6000 square foot home on maybe an acre, they'd come down to the 3000 square foot home on a 50 foot wide lot.And they first have sticker shock, okay, because the found out the new ones, so more expensive. Second of all,they're going I'm moving from all this stuff. And then additionally they go back home.And they knew they needed to move. They knew they wanted to move. They were empty nesters,what have you didn't need that much stuff to maintain. But they would come back home and they'd see all that stuff. And it's so overwhelming the idea of oh my god, what are we going to do with this? How are we going to handle this? Surely the kids want all this furniture and all this stuff that they had as kids are? Probably they're not but they still think that and that would be good that buyer cycle would have ended up being five or six years. To follow up,follow up, follow up before they would finally pull that trigger and do it. I think if you use somebody like us to go in and say, Look, we can help you with this. It's not going to be overwhelming. We'll do all these things for you. I think you can cut that buyer cycle way down.

Rick Ripma: 15:16

Yeah, I think it's vital. Important. I spent 11years with a new homebuilder,the Asterix companies, and the hardest person to to help buy a home is the person who walks in and they say, I want to downsize. Just like you said,I've got 5200 square feet, we went 3000 square feet, okay,fantastic. They walked through the house, well, this room is too small, and that room is too small, and that room is too small. And that rooms too tall.And it doesn't have this and it doesn't have that. Well, you.You want to downsize, but you don't want any less space. I don't know how you do that. And it's tough. And now I realize why because I'm in that position where I've been in my house 30something years. And it's bigger, and we don't need all that space. We're not ready to move yet. But it's I understand why people do that. And to have somebody and it is intimidating to look at all your stuff and go what am I going to do with this?Well, you

Jim Morgan: 16:11

know, the whole your whole life is as you're growing up in in your house, you you start small house, you eat a bigger house, get a bigger house, you take all your stuff with you and get more Yes, okay,well, all of a sudden, the first time you started going to the downsize, now you have to start doing a call, what things don't make the cut, what things don't get to go with me. And so that becomes more of a of a challenge. It's an emotional challenge. And then all the memories and all the kids memories that are tied into these things, okay, which can be, they can be kept digitally,okay, as far as that goes. But that's a lot of what we're doing is coaching and trying to help them do that. And I will tell you like like the online auctions, for instance, I always tell every single pop every single client that I'm talking to, if you want to maximize the return on your things, if you want to make the most money on,you know, grandma's china cabinet, put it out, do it yourself, cut the middleman out,do it on next door, do it on Facebook marketplace, do it on eBay, and then you get to deal with all the strangers coming to your door and trying to deal with that. And you're probably going to be it might take you weeks, months or years to get that accomplished I get what we bring to the table is we're in and out and about 10 days, okay,we may get really good prices for some things. We may not get some great presses the other things but the idea is what is your priority? Do you want the stuff out of your house, we can be done in 10 days. The other group that really is a niche for us is people who have a very strong emotional connection. So maybe every time they think a mom or dad they think of this particular hobby or this particular you know, things these items, but there's no room in their lives for them in their house, right. But the idea of giving them to Goodwill feels like it's dishonouring the relative Well, we have a really broad reach, you know, so we personally send out over 16,000emails for every one of our sales, caring transitions. Our our online auction website is called CT bids. By the way, it's very addictive if you get on there so and I will never ever buy anything retail new ever again because you can get really good deals. Oh yeah. I I didn't buy it from ours. But I did the bid just to give you an idea what's out there you know and why you might want to pay attention to these. I I've been looking for a sectional couch.Okay, leather sectional couch.And they're quite pricey. Okay.And I was doing a bid for an auction. I didn't get the auctions. So they went a different direction. But I knew where it was and I watched it.And I bought this one year old$10,000 custom made leather couch in it from a lady who was who had passed in a 10,000square foot home in Geist that she had no pets and it was just her so that couch probably never was sat on. Okay. And I got it for $700 Okay. Oh my You know,so it's in my living room now.So my point is, you're crazy to go to the store and buy retail look at ct bids.com and see what's out there. Okay, that's incredible. Yeah, it's it's fun.Anyway, so but we did we but we had like friends we had we have one two families in one week in both in Carmel. One of them mom moved to an assisted living. The family had been in there digging through drawers and closets and getting rid of stuff for a long time. And they were done put a fork in and they were toast they were just did not want to deal with anymore. And they've kept the things that mom thought were valuable. Okay, and by the way,that's just if you're gonna have me do it, please let me come out and look at it before you take stuff to Goodwill. Because in this case, like for instance, I took the Fiestaware and the Corningware to Goodwill. And they kept the dining room table in the china cabinet that nobody wants. The Fiestaware would have gone for several $100 You know,so it's like, you know, you know, let me tell you before you go to Goodwill, but in any case you So we came in their whole goal was to get it cleaned out,which we did. And we ended up doing like 33 Lots and all they took out at the end was the family was like a bag of towels while everything else was gone,so they got what they wanted out of the deal. We had another one that same week, this lady was moving to Texas to be near and nice. That was only relative she had. She had no children to get things but she was the she was the curator of all family antiques at her place was amazing. She had a three bedroom two story with a basement condo in Carmel. And she had a bedroom set that a subsequent great grandmother had bought when she lived in Paris in the 1800s. She had shares that another great grandmother bought from her old boss, the governor Nixa of New York during the Civil War. So they were for like 18 or, and you know, so these places, they this new one bedroom condo she was moved to, there's a lot of stuff couldn't go. So we found people who had the same kind of passion for these things. She got to meet them when they were driving and people drove from Cleveland to get some of this stuff. And she was able to, you know, tell the story, she felt so good about honoring her grandparents, but we're sending out to 16,000 emails we're doing on social media, caring transitions, CT bids, has 500registered 500,000 registered visitors. So that's all exposed and then we put it on estate sales.com and say sales on net and state sales that org. So we're getting a pretty big eyeballs on there. So and we're looking, you know, if it's something that's that's an emotional attachment, we're gonna find somebody that cares about it. You know, that type of thing. So

Ian Arnold: 21:39

Yep. All right, Jim.Let's take a sidestep. Okay,let's get to know you a little bit better. Alright, so I heard you have a very interesting hobby you've recently picked up.You talk about this. Oh, the bee bee. Yes.

Jim Morgan: 21:53

Well, my wife basically makes fun of me because I'm an old farm boy.Okay, I grew up on a farm we used to. We farm 2000 acres between those in Carmel and we did we had about 2000 hogs. And we did I had cattle and sheep and we had a 5000 bird chicken house. So you know, I knew how to work. You know, I started working full time at six. So my wife makes fun of me that my garden and my bees and whatever are my farm today, so that's probably true.

Rick Ripma: 22:19

Probably yes, she

Jim Morgan: 22:20

figured it out before I did. But, but I've been I'm a new beekeeper. I've got five, five weeks into it. Now it's been it's been interesting.I've learned a lot. A lot of those lessons have been forced upon me, but I've been I've had some pretty good fun with it.So.

Ian Arnold: 22:35

So how is it taking?Is it really hard to take care of bees? I see a lot of people.

Jim Morgan: 22:41

It's really not there are you know, like, for instance, what we were talking about when I got in here is I had an interesting evening last night because I have a young colony of bees. So very small colony, you know, very small,maybe 30,000 Bees, okay, a big colony might have 60,000 bees,and a big colony down the street has decided that they want all the food sources that might be stored so they want to kill my bees and take take it. So we're in the middle of a war. So right now, so I had to go in last night and close. You know the old story of Thermopylae where you just have a very small battlefield. That's what I'm trying to do is give them a very small opening to defend. So we'll see how it comes out. I will I may or may not have these by

Rick Ripma: 23:25

you can't fight the battle for him.

Jim Morgan: 23:27

No, they're on their own. I just gave him a better you know, a better spot to go do it. But other than that, it's really been fun. I've been having a blast. I I've got a lot of people that would want to do it now and watching me. I make one real strong suggestion is read about it for about a year study it before it because it's been very helpful to have had that, you know, pre done, rather than seeing all this stuff for the first time not knowing what I'm seeing, you know, so yeah,that would be something Yeah,it's been fun. But I've had critters forever. We raised Dobermans for 30 years. So, you know, we've got a lot of champions.

Rick Ripma: 24:02

He's a farm boy.Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody wanted to get get a hold of you talk to you about caring transitions, some of the things that you guys offer? What's the best way

Jim Morgan: 24:12

call me 31761074 Or five, eight, you can get me on at J. Morgan at caring transitions.com. So either one is fine. And just, you know, get a hold of me before you need it.You know, that's the thing if I could if I could give any advice, do some research beforehand. We can then keep you from getting away your $500 for Yes, where you know, that type of thing. And then for that matter, if you have you know,this, you know, if you have a question about anything along the aging process, if it's like how do I afford Senior Living?How do I you know, what do I do?You know, Mom's got Parkinson's,how do I deal with with the off periods or the dyskinesia? You know, I've got Dad's got Alzheimer's or dementia. What do I do now? I am not an expert on any of those. But I have enough information I do know the expert to call. So call me, I'll be glad to hook you up or go to last copilot. And you know,there's a lot of information,there's too

Rick Ripma: 25:10

awesome. And to get a hold of Ian or I go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com.That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com. Or you can call 31767 to 1938.That's 31767 to 1938.

Ian Arnold: 25:23

All right, now, I will tell you this, you're much better option than when I'm telling my parents. So after going through our grandparents fiasco of all that, I tell them look, before you get to a certain age, I'm gonna put a big old dumpster and you just get rid of stuff, you got way too much stuff.

Jim Morgan: 25:36

There is that. Yeah,good luck with that.

Rick Ripma: 25:42

I think one of the big pieces is at least for me,as I look at it, and like sometimes you watch some of the shows, like American Pickers,things like that, we don't actually know what's valuable and what isn't valuable. Know,and it changes, you know,constantly. And an auction to me is the best way to get your use heads. You know, sometimes we get good price, sometimes we get bad price, but the reality isn't an auction. If you if you generate enough interest and you generate enough people to come to the auction, you're getting the top dollar for whatever it is.

Jim Morgan: 26:13

And we'll do a lot of groupings of things. Well,you know, because, you know, you can't be an expert on every single thing. So like, for instance, we just did one, and this family had, oh my gosh,just tons and tons and tons of glassware and silver plate and whatever. And a lot of that doesn't really bring a lot,okay, but so what we would do is we would bundle it together to hopefully that the bundle would bring enough to make it make sense, or that there'd be some piece in there that a collector would say, and they would go out of their mind to get it and they don't care if they have to get the rest of it to get it. We went and we had like four different groupings of the silver plate stuff. Through three of them, I think went for50 to 70 bucks. One of them went for $870 because there was something in there that some collector saw. Okay, and that's,you know, that's what you're trying to find is that collector

Rick Ripma: 27:04

and not only that,it probably wasn't one collector who saw it. Oh, yeah, there's it has to has to have to

Jim Morgan: 27:10

you have to have a minimum of two it's an auction and so that's absolutely critical is you have to have and we're trying to get those eyeballs yeah to get to find those two that will fight that's all you need. Yeah. Yep. Yeah,one that wants it they're gonna get it cheap.

Rick Ripma: 27:23

You got dude also do auctions, like on property or in? No, we haven't

Jim Morgan: 27:27

done that we've done online. I really liked to be honest. But we could do estate sales, but I really liked the online and the reason being is I think it's safer. Okay. Any kind of an estate sale or garage sale? You're inviting anyone off the street to your into your house? Okay. And today? I don't know. Okay. And again, this is another personal thing. You know, my mom got robbed because the neighbor was having garage sales. And these they saw this little old lady with her little King Charles Cavalier walking out in the yard. And so the next thing you know, she got robbed.Okay, so I just don't like to do that. So with the with the online auction, no one knows where it is. They know it's Carmel they know it's fishers,they know Zions, but whatever it is, but they don't know the address until they have purchased. And when they purchase we send them the invoice with the directions to come pick up. But then we have their name their phone number,their email address, their house address and their credit card.Yeah, not likely then they Yeah,now we don't. We can't see their credit card but running habit.You're probably there. And we're there. Our team is there to deal with it. Yeah. So and you're not worried about it. And you when you get that much information you pretty much screen out all the Yes. The Yeah, the riffraff Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ian Arnold: 28:45

Yeah. It's always funny is especially growing up.My dad always say that guy's dumb. I'm like, What are you talking about? He goes, Oh, the box. He just bought a big screen TV in the box just sitting there next to the trash can. You're gonna cut that up?

Jim Morgan: 28:58

Yeah, of course. Now you do. Because TV. So cost.

Ian Arnold: 29:03

Plus, they're screwed onto the wall. So

Jim Morgan: 29:05

I ended up I just bought one because I just couldn't resist. You know, I walked through Walmart and they had they had a 55 inch for two and $40. All right. Oh, god.Okay.

Rick Ripma: 29:16

65 inch monitor.Yeah. Okay. It's a TV monitor in my office, because it was so cheap. How do you not do it? And I can't see that. Well,

Jim Morgan: 29:26

yeah. So I always tell people I go don't expect to get a whole lot for your TV when we sell it because you can go to Walmart and buy them for nothing. You know, right. Yeah.

Ian Arnold: 29:32

Yeah. All right. So what do you think was one of your most interesting or memorable stories?

Jim Morgan: 29:39

Well, we've had several, you know, some of them I mean, some of the you find some really cool stuff. I mean,it's fun to you know, just see the things you see. But one that we that I would say was a was a really cool one. As far as it was. It was a heartbreaking one but it was one that you really felt good about yourself when you were done. Okay. We got it.I got a phone call from a Geriatric Care Manager. Okay.Which by the way, if you don't know what those are, those are they're like a general contractor for all seniors stuff, right. And they're wonderful to have. And they're usually pretty hard nosed.That's who you want to be your advocate. Right. So, so I got a call from her, she'd gotten a call from a assisted living locating company that was trying to help this client. This woman had no family, no friends,nothing. She was on her own. She had had a medical emergency back in August, and literally had been in rehab since you know,August to like March. And so now she was qualified, she was strong enough to go to assisted living. So we had to go to her apartment that was left, as it was that she walked out that night before the medical emergency hit, and had to dig through it. Find the documents that she needed to keep the ones we needed to shred, find, you know, money, find jewelry, find whatever was in there, pack everything, move it to her new assisted living, unpack it, get it all set up to where she walked in, it was, you know, all ready to live in. And then we went back and had an online auction to get rid of the excess stuff. And then we did a clean out at the end. But you know,how would she have ever gotten this accomplished if she didn't have somebody that to do this for her? So that is one of those feelings is good. We had another one that was it was unfortunately the house got torn down. Because it was I thought it could have possibly a historical you know, but it was the VanCamp like the VanCamp pork and beans, families summer vacation house in Westfield back when Westfield was out in the middle of nowhere. And it was like going into a time capsule was a subsequent relative that was still living there when she passed. But it was like literally going into time capsule, it was so cool. But the family were all from out west.And when they you know, they told us they got everything out.There's nothing there that they want, just sell it get cleaned out what have you, but it was we're going through it. We kept finding things. Okay, we found a needlepoint that one of their great, great great grandmother's did on the boat coming to America. Oh, wow. We found you know, all kinds of different documents, all kinds of different things. And you know,we kept taking pictures going,Are you sure you want these, you know, and then we ended up we haven't found like 80,000 hours of stock that that they didn't know they had. So you know, they wanted that believe? Yeah. I know, it's really weird. But,but we did all these things. And in fact, it ended up being we just kept piling into a closet.And then at the end when he came to pick all this stuff up, he was so overwhelmed with all these fines that he took the things that he absolutely wanted, but they we ended up hooking them up with the historical society from Westfield, and he donated those.We had another one we did that this lady was a I would love to have met her was an estate. So I only met her son but she was a she was an attorney. She was a judge. She was a historian. She was a Victorian collector, she was a she did recreations of reenactments, you know, she had like all these dresses and dress forms and all that stuff that during the Victorian and we sold most of stuff and I was really worried what are we gonna do like this Victorian bed that there's they don't make mattresses for anymore. And this, you know, some of these things are taken into goodwill seems like a sacrilege, you know, right. So there, they didn't sell I was not surprised,because, you know, it's it's very specialty market, because she had more or less a museum in our house. And we found a little museum in Sheridan that took all that stuff. So you know, it felt good to get these things, keep them keep them preserved, you know?

Ian Arnold: 33:52

So I do have a question. So I'm kind of curious. So with the document,stuff like that, I know, it's hard to one to keep track of all that sometimes. But is there words of wisdom you would have as somebody started to age what should they should they try to put it in like a safety deposit box or they tried to put a fireproof box or what what words of wisdom,

Jim Morgan: 34:10

something that you'll be able to find, you know, there's, you know, you want to be able to have it to where you have one place to go to to find all these things.We've, you know, one thing is if you if they're a veteran, you want to make sure they keep their VA forms, because if they need to have VA aid and attendance to help pay for their assisted living, which is a lot of money, okay? You need that form. Okay, so I mean, you can get it again, but it's difficult, okay. And there are certain years I can't remember what the years off top of my head. But there are certain years that the VA had a fire in their record system. And so if you don't have yours, they don't exist. Okay. So and that we're talking about 2500 hours a month that you know, towards either care in assisted living or towards bringing home care or,or home health or what have you.So it's something you definitely want to find that piece of paper. Okay, it's usually black with white print. Okay. But that's, in fact, we had we did a hoarder, this gentleman had been kicked out of his apartment because of his hoarding situation. And I never met him by debt with his caseworker. And so we go into this apartment.And just to give you an idea, I knew there was furniture in there, but I couldn't see any Oh, wow. Okay, I did see the top shelf of a bookcase that was exposed, but everything below it was covered was paper and plywood and stuff piled in, in that, we brought his brothers and to help, sort through that we had them sitting there ready to go, you know, these kinds of things. You know, what do you think of this? What do they find the things that might be family related, or what have you. And we found that, that VA document,which was absolutely amazing that we found out, I still don't know how we did that. And it's black paper, still. And then we had a, we found in a box under all this stuff in a box in a bag, about a hot water of hundreds about the size of your fist. So that was that more than paid for us being there. But yeah, but so you never know what you're getting into, you know.So some of it's really fun. Some of it's not so. And I always tell families I go. If we find family portraits and family fixtures, we'll always make sure you get them. And we're also if we find certain paint pictures will make sure you never know that existed.

Rick Ripma: 36:36

So when should somebody when should somebody and who who should be contacting you? And when when's the best time? Well, if

Jim Morgan: 36:45

you're a realtor,and you got a house that you're trying to get listed, and maybe they're stalling because they're overwhelmed, call me, okay, let me see if I can help that process. Or that you've got a house that you need to get listed. And they want to help if the house needs to get closed,and they need to get that stuff out or need to get them moved.That's a good time to call me.If you are when a lot of calls take place is Thanksgiving,Christmas, right in that timeframe. Okay? Because people go home, see, Mom and Dad haven't seen him for a while.I've talked to him on the phone or whatever, but they haven't seen him. And then all sudden,when they're there for a few days, they see how much they've slept and how much they are, you know, maybe they need help. So that's a lot of times when these things start happening. My suggestion is is tread. I don't have any problem coming out and looking at you and not knowing you're not going to do anything for a while. I can give you some advice, I can give you some direction to start going. Most people are kind of like my family, my family, we have this path down, Pat, man, we're good at it. We wait until there's a crisis. And they've tried to deal with it at that point. You know, this, all this pre planning stuff is did you get that from my family? But we do it over and over and over again.So we're really good at it. So yeah,

Rick Ripma: 38:03

we do all tend to do our habit whenever I do the same thing with vacations. I know people who will plan a vacation a year, year and a half, two years in advance. Yeah. And they get like the best hotels, and they're in the National Park hotels and all that we are always on the outside because we plan it because I can't wait a year year and a half to go do it. Yeah. I don't have that patience.

Jim Morgan: 38:27

Well, that's kind of way we've always handled all the senior health care stuff. So yeah, we've just wait till the last second.

Rick Ripma: 38:33

And I know there's tremendous amount of services.So this is a pretty big question. But What all do you help people with?

Jim Morgan: 38:40

Well, we we sort organize, we like to do document shredding, we do? Well, here's an example. Here's, here's the one that we did. And it was a realtor. She's She and I've worked together for years. And she had a client who her mom had passed. And she had I think she'd sold him his house and she sold mom her house, they've had a long term relationship. And he was emotionally frozen from losing mom. Okay, and so really,nothing had happened. There hadn't been a bill move from the tabletop for months in the house. And from what I understand the mortgages weren't even being paid. And so now that's when the realtor got kind of got serious and go, you know,you're gonna lose this thing if you don't let me get it sold and get this done. So she brought me in to help him and we ended up going in and that his mom was a paper hoarder. She had documents going back into the 70s. And you know, so we spent with my team spent a full day in there just going through clauses of papers,you know, and shredding things and whatever we had to do. And when I first went in, I said,Look, I got the papers we're going to have to do there's we can't just put those in a dumpster. You know, the we're gonna have to deal with us, no matter what we do. Okay, and then we go, we can do a full on clean out, just take everything out, take it to Goodwill, or wherever you want to go. And I go, it's gonna be about 8500bucks with the papers and all that kind of stuff. Or we can do the the paper stuff, which still has to be done on can't change that. And then we could do an online auction to try to sell most of the stuff in here and then a clean out at the end because one garage Bay was floor to ceiling just junk and then there was a attic was kind of like that. So it wouldn't be worth our while for them. Or you'd be paying us too much to dig through it to ever see anything out of that. So let's just dump that at the end. So.So we had the 8500. Or we could do this other we did that we did the other way we did the clean out or the paperwork, then we did the online auction that we did to clean out. I think he gave me $15 deposit in which is about what the paper was. And then then about I think at the end 1053. So for $2,600 We got that $8,600 job done. Okay, so because the rest of it was in the sale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and that's really what we're trying to do is we're trying to help their asset in most cases is that house, we're trying to get it ready for them to capitalize on that asset.

Ian Arnold: 41:16

Yeah. And so if a realtor would like to talk to you, or even somebody that they know, as their parents are getting there, how would they get the best reach out reach him?

Jim Morgan: 41:25

317-610-7458 or J.Morgan at caring transitions.com.

Ian Arnold: 41:33

So what Rick doesn't know, though, is the reason why we brought you on here is because his wife was like, look,it's time for Rick to downgrade we can.

Rick Ripma: 41:44

Actually, I know that's not true. Of the it's me.Okay, moving to a smaller place,not

Ian Arnold: 41:55

hurt. Oh, so he's doing this for her. There

Jim Morgan: 41:58

you go. That's fair enough. And we also it's fun to do, we can do it. It is a very stressful time for people we can help. I think sometimes we can make it fun. You know, it just depends on the circumstances.But it is always and I will say the other thing that I think we're really good at a lot of things, but the thing that I absolutely feel like we you know, my favorite is when we do that, that repositioning for people and resettling people,you just walk out of there feeling like you know, Walker three foot above the ground cuz you know, what you've done for these people.

Rick Ripma: 42:31

You know, we had a an agent on a real estate agent on the other day. And one of the things they were talking about is we asked him just like we do,you know, what's, what's one of the the most memorable deals that you ever had. And this one was when the people wouldn't move out of the house. They just never got they had to fight them to get them to get out of the house after they closed because they just never got their stuff.You know, you can solve that problem by really easy. Yep, we can do that. Yeah, yeah. It's so it's I it's very intimidating to look at all the all the stuff that has to be done my my sister in law and brother in law, his his parents had to move into to a assisted living, and they had to sell the house. They did it all themselves. It consumed probably six months a weekends.Yeah. Oh, yeah. And we and evenings.

Jim Morgan: 43:28

Do you know what the average is for failing to deal with mom and dad's house? Nine months? Really? Yeah, that's the average. What it was for my grandparents roughly about that.Yeah, I know that myself when we, we made it fall in that same category. My parents it took 60days, we got harder money invested about the farm. And we had to get out in 60 days. And my son and I, I will tell you what happened. This again,before caring transitions. I'm the only sibling the state in the state. So guess what, right.So we ended up my son and I would go up there every night after work. And we're you know,we got 60 days to get this 2500square foot home plus the shets.The cellar, which was not a basement. It's a cellar plus the52 by 75. pole barn cleaned out,okay. And in the corner of the coal block pole barn. Dad had a U haul box truck he bought never did run. But he had it there to put the good stuff. Right. Okay,so yeah, good stuff. Good stuff.Was there? Yeah. So in any case,my son and I would go through and we would walk through every room, we'd pick things up and we would, you know, fool with it and look at it, and we're both history nerds. So we'd get lost in things periodically, okay.And then we would monitor we'd go through the entire house, the barn, the truck, you know, the whole bit, not do a single solitary thing and we'd end up on the back porch drinking a bourbon and smoking a cigar and watching the sunset. And we did that for three days in a row and the fourth day we finally go okay, we have to start right here. You know And but that's what happens to people, you know my in laws. When we had to do them, we let that house sit for18 months because they were absolutely convinced that they were moving home when they got to feeling better. Okay, we knew they were never moving home. We I had to be the mean son in law that said, we're going to take,you know, my mother off to assisted living, because she kept falling. And my father and I had COPD and arthritis so bad,he couldn't pick her up. So three times a week, they were having an ambulance is coming to us pick her up and put in a chair, we're going, you can't do this. And they were in Wabash.So the Wabash hospital is just a triage center. So they would take them to Fort Wayne or Huntington. And when you can't be an hour away from real doctors, this is not going to work. So, but that has just sat because easier than arguing with them, we just let it set. Well,so far, it's been sitting for 18months, so I go to start cleaning it out. The very first thing right beside the couch,every house in that timeframe had a basket or whatever, full of newspapers and magazines,right. So I pick it up and I'm gonna throw the whole thing away. Cuz, you know, it's 18months, it's been sitting there.And for some weird reason, it was kind of like a God thing,because I had now you know why I would do it, then I had no idea why I would do it. I went through it. And I found the deed to the house on it. Oh, my gosh.Yeah. So that meant we had to go through every pocket, every little nook and cranny, every little door. It took us. Well,we had 18 months plus, you know,about 60 days to get that done.So

Rick Ripma: 46:33

yeah. So that that also tells me that when you we all know where we put the stuff,right. But we need to do a better job of putting it and letting other people know what we did with it. Yes. Right. Yes.Yeah. So if somebody has any need for your services, which is I'm guessing many, many people,what is the best way to get a hold of you?

Jim Morgan: 46:53

31761074 or five,eight.

Rick Ripma: 46:57

Perfect and to get a hold of Ian or I go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com. And please follow us. For more indies real estate gurus and reminder

Ian Arnold: 47:07

if you know any friends, family, coworkers looking to buy, sell or refinance, let us know we're more than happy to help. Thank you for joining.

Jim Morgan: 47:14

Thanks for having me. It

Ian Arnold: 47:15

was fun. This is a very interesting subject and something you don't think about and like you said until the very last minute, so I think people need to hear this

Jim Morgan: 47:24

but it ties in very close with your with your clientele or with the realtors.Because you know, that's been my world. And every every house needs to have something done to it and getting out of it.

Rick Ripma: 47:34

I think your service is phenomenal. And I can see it would have made our lives a lot easier. If we didn't know about it, and I'm in the business.Yeah, right. I didn't.

Jim Morgan: 47:47

I didn't either until it became part of our you know, across the hallway from me.

Ian Arnold: 47:51

All I got to keep in mind is you need to stay in business for about another 2030years. As soon as my parents I'm calling you right away.

Jim Morgan: 47:59

You might be I might be using it with 30 years.

Rick Ripma: 48:03

I might need it sooner. Yes, exactly.

Unknown: 48:06

Thanks so much. All right.

Jim Morgan: 48:07

Thank you very much.