Moving Aging Parents: What Families Need to Know Before the Move

Moving an aging parent is rarely just about boxes, trucks, and logistics.

It is about memories, family roles, downsizing, difficult decisions, safety, health changes, and the emotional work of letting go.

In this episode of Real Estate Connections, Mary Foerster talks with Ryan Hegarty about what happened when a moving professional had to help move his own parents.

Ryan has spent more than 16 years in the moving industry, but he says helping his parents move twice gave him a much deeper understanding of how exhausting and emotional a transition can be for families. He shares how his parents first moved from their longtime Waltham home into a smaller apartment and later moved closer to Ryan and his family in Billerica.

Ryan explains why the physical move is often the easiest part. The harder work can be decluttering, deciding what to keep, preparing a home for sale, navigating health changes, packing, managing timelines, and helping parents feel respected throughout the process.

Mary and Ryan also discuss the role of move managers, professionals who help families coordinate downsizing, sorting, packing, organizing, moving day, unpacking, and settling into a new home. Ryan explains why this support can be especially valuable when adult children are trying to help aging parents without becoming overwhelmed themselves.

This episode is for anyone helping a parent move, considering downsizing, preparing for assisted living, moving closer to family, or trying to understand how to make a major transition feel more manageable.

WHAT YOU WILL HEAR

• Ryan’s personal experience moving his parents twice
• Why moving parents can shift family roles quickly
• The emotional side of leaving a longtime family home
• Why downsizing decisions can feel overwhelming
• How health changes can accelerate a move timeline
• Why the moving truck is often the easiest part
• How adult children can become partners instead of pushers
• What a move manager does
• How move managers support downsizing and senior moves
• Why professional movers and move managers work well together
• What can go wrong with DIY moving solutions
• When portable storage containers may or may not make sense
• Why listening is one of the most important service skills
• How moving companies build trust with clients
• Why families should plan before a move becomes urgent

Ryan Hegarty is the Director of Residential Sales at Olympia, a full-service moving and relocation company. He has been with Olympia for more than 16 years, beginning his career on moving crews before transitioning into office and leadership roles. Today, Ryan helps clients plan local, interstate, and complex residential moves with a focus on communication, problem-solving, and reducing stress during major life transitions. Olympia identifies Ryan as its Director of Residential Sales and notes that its moving consultants work directly with clients to understand needs and create detailed move plans.

In this episode, Ryan shares the personal experience of moving his own parents twice, first from their longtime family home in Waltham and later closer to family in Billerica. His perspective offers a rare combination of professional moving expertise and firsthand understanding of the emotional realities families face when parents downsize or relocate.

GUEST CONTACT 

Olympia

Website: https://olympiamoving.com/

This episode is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.

Transcript

0:00

and welcome to Real Estate Connections podcast. Today, I want to talk with you about Ryan Hegarty. Ryan is somebody I was listening to on social media, and he announced that he had just moved his parents, and that it was the hardest thing that he had done. I thought, "Oh, Ryan is a moving professional. If anybody should be able to help people in transition, especially people close to you, then it should be Ryan." So I called him and said, "So what's the story?" You're going to hear his perspective, and it's a really, really beautiful story. Not only did we talk about moving, but we talked about how we best serve our clients. His wisdom was fantastic. We best serve our clients by listening. And to me, that was just worth the whole conversation. I hope you enjoy this conversation today with Ryan Hegarty. Welcome to Real Estate Connections podcast, where relationships open doors. I'm Mary Foerster, and housing is a universal need. We are often thinking about our existing housing, our future housing, that possibly of family members. This is where you're going to hear the issues and the people who are working the issues every day. Please hit subscribe and like if you find this podcast helpful to you. Thank you. Ryan, welcome. I'm so glad to see you. Yeah, I appreciate you, Mary. Thank you so much for the opportunity to hang out. Hello, of course. Always appreciate your support on LinkedIn and Instagram and all that good stuff, and glad we could connect. I think that this topic is pretty common, and I think a lot of folks my age are going through this situation. I think me being a mover makes things a little bit easier, but it's still a lot of work. So happy to kind of talk about it and hang out with you for a little bit. This is great. Great. And so Ryan has had the opportunity and challenge to move his parents two times. So, Ryan, walk us through kind of the first move, because that was a really big thing, what you did with your parents in 2016, I think. Yeah. So basically, we're winding the clock back 11 years now, which is crazy. So basically, I've been with Olympia moving, and I've been with Olympia for 16 years. In 2016, that was year five, and I was relatively new into an office role. I started off on the trucks, hurt my back, ended up in the office, and it was one of the best things that's ever happened to me, and it's changed my life for the better of Olympia. So in 2015, Olympia was growing, and we had an opportunity to expand. And I was kind of brought into the situation and said, "Hey, look, my plan was to buy my parents' home." Right? And I was 26, 25 at the time, and my plan was to buy their home, and the condition it was in, and it would help them financially. We'd get them into a smaller place. I would have an investment property, all that fun stuff. Right? Great plan. And I was sharing this with my boss, and he said, "Hey, that's awesome, and that sounds really cool." But Olympia's growing, and we're looking to open up another location, and you're one of the people we have in mind to go get it started from the ground up. And that was very humbling. I never would have thought of myself in that situation. Right? And so we had that conversation that was May of 2015, and I just said, "I'm taking this. I can't live in Waltham my whole life as much as I love Waltham to death. I have to experience the world and go do something." So anyway, after that conversation, I started to kind of switch gears, and I said, "Whenever I get off of this, I'm going to talk about it, and I'm probably going to take it." So fast forward four months, I said,"We're going to open up in Philadelphia. You're our guy." I said, "I'm going to do it." So at that point, I kind of developed this plan to help my parents sell their home in the condition it was in. And so that was kind of a big change. And we talked about this briefly last week, where I think the biggest thing that happened in this is how quickly it goes from me being the child to me being a key decision maker in my parents' life to help them using my resources. And it was just really crazy how that happened. So it's September 2015, I said, "Look, we're going to use my friend James as the realtor. We're going to sell in the condition it's in. You're going to start looking at places here. I'm moving next April," et cetera, et cetera. And we kind of developed this plan and everything worked out. And we all worked together and made it happen. So that's kind of like the beginning story of what led up to the move, right? All of the kind of the emotional things and the logistics that happened with it. And that move was basically going from a single family, our childhood home in the Cedarwood area, Walfam, and they moved to a two bedroom. So that move was a little bit different, a lot of trash, right? Just downsizing, downsizing, donating, cleaning out. And then the move was a very local Walfam to Walfam move, very minimal things. So that was kind of more emotional because it was our childhood home, my childhood home. I stayed in the home for a day after that by myself and just kind of soaked it in and then moved them the next day. So that was kind of the first phase. And the most recent phase, Mary, was, they've been in this apartment since 2015 and they love Walfam, just get a little pricey and we're in Bill Ricker. They want to be a little bit closer to the girls. And my mother said, "Hey, look, we're gonna start looking for a place in February and we're gonna look in Bill Ricker." Great. And I really commend my mother on all this process because it's just a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And I think as a mover, the moving part, actually executing, putting stuff into the truck and bringing it to the new place, that is the easiest part of the whole thing. And I'm lucky I have great crews and great systems and a great company. That's the easy part, but just watching my mother look for apartments, go through the process, find a place, do that, start to declutter, pack, make decisions. It's exhausting. And she did it, she crushed it. And then I went in and kind of helped, I packed up her kitchen and all that type of stuff, easy stuff. But it just really put into perspective. It's very easy for a mover like me to get desensitized. We do this every day and we deal with the same questions and situations and we're really good at problem solving. But putting me into this position, watching my parents and me being the quarterback, it just made me appreciate how great our crews are and how hard moving is. And it's a lot. Yes, and you're talking about the transactional side of moving as being the easier and the emotional side is being really, really difficult. So I can imagine your mom and dad were probably in that first house in Waltham for a long time, right? Raise the kids there, right? Yeah, I think it was 20, probably 15 years, something like that. 15 years. And so what was the process in terms of kind of letting go of stuff, you know that? Yeah, so that was, and you know, my mother's like me, right? We both love to buy clothes. And you know, she's been in the home for 15 years, right? So stuff accumulates. We had a big unfinished basement. When you have space, you fill it. I see it every day, right? And so, you know, making decisions, and I definitely could have done a better job at that time. My heart was in the right place, but I was probably kind of forcing the issue a little bit too much. I think in retrospect, bringing in a move manager or a third party to kind of like work with my parents would probably be a little bit easier for her and for me. But you know, it was honestly like, this is what happened. I made a plan and we started, okay, great. We got some buy-in and my dad was, you know, my dad just like, look, if you can do this, this, and this, whatever you need. So my dad signed off on and just put his trust in me, which I really appreciate. And then with my mother, it wasn't that she was challenging. It's just, it's a home full of stuff, a home full of memories. It's a lot. And we're like, hey, it's April. We want to get the home on the market in May for the spring market and we got to do this. And it was too much, right? And so, and she just said like, look, I can't do this right now. And you know, I was a little frustrated. And then what happened was she, you know, had a medical situation which came out of nowhere. And, you know, she was in the hospital for a month or so. And that basically transformed into, okay, we need to have people come by to do the treatments and all that type of stuff. And she's like, look, the place is, you know, not how we want to present it to the public, to someone. And I'm a little embarrassed. And I said, look, mom, Olivia, I'm cleaning the house. I'm going to do that. And I'm going to make it happen. And we did it. So that event, that's how things happen for a reason, right? It's crazy where that happened. And that just kind of was the domino that kind of led to, okay, let's start to clean, let's start to declutter, start to part ways with some of this stuff. And we took our time and worked through it and sold the house in October or something like that. So that was very emotional, very emotional. Yeah, good. So when I've talked with other professional, service professionals about is the concept of being in partnership. And you are young. I mean, when you, you were 25 when the first move happened, and then in your 30s for the second move. So you've, that's a very young age to kind of assume that role, I think, as partner and professional, you were both professional. And it sounds like your dad had his head really on straight in terms of what could be done. And I love your respect for your mom and what she went through and the decision making because typically in a family, the women are the nest creators, right? Typically not always, but, and we are always looking out for the nest and what makes it comfortable. I also love the concept of my house doesn't look like the way I want it to look when the caregivers come in. And how generous of you to see that and to rectify it so that she did become comfortable getting her treatments, which are critical to your treatments as well as really as well. So they trusted you in 2016, right? 2016 and they've been living in an apartment and then recently just moved into your neighborhood, I believe, right? So for the listeners, Waltham is a suburb of Boston and lately is just growing gangbusters, growing gangbusters, lots of tech, lots of service industry, but fascinating to see these towns that were largely residential with the commercial stuff along 128, but now become such a powerful place to be, restaurants, unbelievable. And then Bill Ricker, which is the town two times over, right, two times over from Waltham? Probably, I mean, you got, so Lexington, Burlington, something like three or four. Bedford, something like that. Yeah, or so four, three or four. So it is a distance, maybe 20, 25 minutes or something like that. And how wonderful that they could, the timing of the need to move, a desire to move fits so nicely within your family planning because you have two little girls. And how wonderful to have grandparents nearby as well. So this is just really fascinating to me. And I like the concept of the partnership, the partnership with your parents. Did you feel like you were a partner to them or did you think like I'm just gonna push it through? No, I think that, I mean, there's certainly times where again, my mother, like I think a lot of people like me, can be stubborn in her ways, but what I give them credit for, and it's really all the credit is to them, they created me and I learned a lot from them directly and indirectly. And I think they know that I have their best interests in mind and they know like when we were living in Waltham, it's like, look, a great house and a great location. It's just, it needed some work and life is busy. I mean, I can only imagine when I have two little kids now, work is very busy, there's a birthday party every five minutes, it's hard to stay, to keep with it, it's a lot of work. And so, seeing the situation plus me moving away, which they were in complete support of. And I just said, look, like I can't, I don't wanna leave, cause I'm gonna go to Philly for a minimum three years. That's what I said, that's what Olympia asked me, three year commitment, I was there for five. And so I just said, look, I can't, I don't wanna leave them there when I came back a lot, I probably came back three, four times a year, Mary, but I don't want, they need to be in a better situation, they need to be ground level, they need to get rid of some stuff and they need a restart. So that was kind of the main motivation behind it. But no, we work together. I mean, especially after my mother's situation, I just said, look, Olivia, like, this is what we have to do, I'm gonna do it, you gotta trust me and that was it. And then we made it happen. But it just was a quick, funny thing though. It's my, even to this day for this recent move that happened two months ago, a month ago, my parents trust me with everything, which means a lot. But when it comes down to the move itself, it's, are you sure this is a one day thing? Do we have enough truck? Are you sure you're estimating this right? Do we have enough boxes? I'm like, mom, I've been doing this for 16 years, I've had a thousand rolls here, come on. Trust me in what I do. So that's kind of the comic relief of this whole situation, I guess. And now they need to be on your social media saying, this guy did it so well. As we've got a role for this, we've definitely a role for this. Tell me about move managers, because you and I talked a little bit about some people that are really dedicated toward the older population. And I had Mariette Fry on a podcast two weeks ago, and Mariette moved on the move and she kept reminding the audience how physical a move is. And it's very physical. So I'm curious about this move manager and some of the groups that you've connected with. So this company is all around the US, helps with military moves and international moves as well. So it's an interstate moving company with four or five major cities located too. So tell us a bit about how they work. Yeah, so based in, and so move managers, we've been working with move managers, we do a lot of work with seniors, right? And so a lot of the times when we get moves that are involving a senior, whether it's a major downsize, it's moving into life care, moving into memory care, moving into assisted living, whatever it is, the majority of those moves that we do are referred to us by a move manager. To name a large one in Massachusetts is Wendy Boulio, Renew Relocation, who is just the gold standard in this work. She's just an amazing human. There's also Annie Kilbride at Life Simplified in Philadelphia, just great humans who know how to do this work. And the one thing I think, how we connected on that post that I had, the video post I did about my parents' move, one of the things that I mentioned was it made me realize how important a move manager's role is in our society. Because I can't tell you how many times Mary has a moving consultant, my job is someone calls in, I need to move, or great, what do you have, let's make a plan, and let's do it as seamless as possible. Again, the move is easy. But there's so many times that these older folks, they don't have family to help, and they don't know what a move manager is, a lot of people still don't know what a move manager is, and they do it themselves, and we can do, we're a lot, we are involved, they get a designated coordinator that works with them, proactively reaches out, I'm with them the entire time, or salespeople with them the whole time. But leading up to the move, like packing, making decisions on how to declutter, do you need this paperwork, do you not need this paperwork, what about at the other side, when you get to the new place, you need to unpack and put everything away and organize. It is exhausting, I think you nailed it, what you just said. Even if you're not physically picking up a piece of furniture and putting it on the truck, it is mentally exhausting. So what a move manager does, Mary, is basically they get brought into a situation, and you say it's the child saying, hey, my parents are downsizing, and we don't know where to start, they've been living in the home for 30 years, I don't know, what do we do? And so the move manager will go in and meet with them and say, okay, this is what we can do, we can pack, we can declutter, we can do junk, we have a mover, you're gonna use our mover, we're gonna help you unpack and organize, right? So basically, they're the quarterback of the move. So like Olympia, the mover would interact with the move manager, we kinda work directly with them, and they handle the whole thing. And I can't tell you, it's like the folks that work with the move manager and work with an Olympia or a great mover, they really get that service they truly need, and it's so apparent when folks do it themselves, it's sad, it's sad, because we get there on move day and it's like, hey, nothing's packed, or what about this, what about that, where do you wanna put it? That costs money, that's stressful. So move managers are just godsends, you know, the great ones that do a great job. So is it just a contract between the moving party and the manager, is that how they're paid for? Move managers? They would work, it's a good question, I don't know the specifics, I know that they would work directly with the move manager, they would pay them for their time. Every time that I work with a move manager, we would build a client directly, we'd get their card and gotta do the payment there, we don't usually send like the estimate to the move manager, then they send it to the client. Some folks do that, and that's super cool, there's no issues on that. But they would basically just be like, the great relationship I have with say, Annie Kilbride and Philly would go like this, hey Ryan, you know, Joe Smith, here to here, move date, here's the list, you need to pack artwork, unpacking everything else, service the piano, I need four guys and two trucks, done, here you go. So, and then they work with the client, I communicate with Annie, and it's just so easy, and it wouldn't be like that. As great as we are, that pre-work, that pre-pack work, is stuff that we don't really do, and we'd be really expensive, so the move manager is just really a necessary service that more people need to know about. Terrific, it makes me, our last move, which was up here, up from DC, it was a military, no, no, it wasn't a military move, Carl had already had his last military move, we did it ourselves, oh Ryan, I wish I had known you, we did it ourselves, and it was difficult, it was really, really difficult, and it was one of those, you do it yourself with the containers outside, and I don't know, I was just listening to a podcast where AI was brought up in conjunction with the service, and I've come to believe that there's no substitute for the professional's experience with the service. Oh, you can move yourself, oh, you can make yourself your own Disney tour, et cetera, et cetera, and you can sell your own house, now, whatever, so I'm sure that there's a place for all of that, but I would say the average person is really gonna open some doors, some problems, and we did, we had beautiful furniture that we packed ourselves that came apart, I mean, beautiful furniture, and we just packed it wrong, and things like that, but apart from that, I wish I had known you. I was going to ask you, too, about, oh, so competition would be for you self-moving companies? You do it kind of yourself thing, and I remember we did it because we thought there was a major contrast in terms of the cost, and it was interstate move. Yeah. What do you say to people when they say, oh, I don't know if I can afford that. Yeah, so I would say the self-moving solutions, Mary, it's a good solution, right? You have pods, you have pack rat, you have ABF, and those are situations where they provide the equipment, so they provide a container, and you can load it yourself, you can get moving blankets with your pod, with your pack rat, right, and you can load it yourself, or you can hire a moving company to load it, and then to unload it, and I would say, I wouldn't necessarily call them a competitor because the service that we provide is just so different. If you want to do it yourself, again, moving is expensive, life is expensive, I get it. Every time I talk to a client, I'll say, look, anyway I can save you a couple bucks, let's talk about it. What can I do to help you through that? Let me know what you need, and we'll figure it out. But the self-moving solutions, they're certainly not for everybody. For example, I spoke to an individual, it was a local move, and new construction was delayed a little bit, and so they said, hey look, we're on a four-bedroom home, nice stuff, and Wellesley, and they said, we're gonna load everything into a pod, and then we're gonna get it delivered, and we're going to offload it from the pod. I said, okay, great, and we went through it, and it's a five-bedroom home, and they said, yeah, we just need a pod. I said, hey friend, you need three pods, A, so can they fit in the driveway? What do the logistics look like? The other big thing, Mary, with the self-moving, and again, for folks who want to do it themselves, save a couple bucks, this probably isn't that big of a deal, which I appreciate, but the liability thing. So if you load it yourself, or Olympia loads a pod, we open up, say if you go from Boston to DC, we're in both locations, right? We load it, the pod goes to DC, and we unload it. If we open up that door, and there's damage, or there's loss, there's no liability to us. We're stored in a third-party piece of equipment, and so there's no follow-through in regards to filing a claim, and pods, if the container goes into the river, or there's total loss, I believe that there's coverage with that, but they're not gonna cover you for any furniture damage. So I wouldn't call them a competitor. I would say, in Boston, there's some great moving companies, right? You have General Giant, you have Armstrong, you have Viking, you have some really good moving companies in Boston, especially in other markets as well. I would say those are the main competitors, but the self-moving situations, if folks are looking for the lowest cost option, we're never gonna be the best fit, but I always say, look, anything I do to coach you through it, and if we can help you load, we can help you offload, if you have questions on stuff, like, I'm gonna help, but we usually don't get those, if people look at the lowest cost. Yeah, but I like what you just said, because you just said that we provide other services. It's not just, we move everything or we do nothing, we can help you in the meantime. And for example, we both know somebody who hired you to empty their house so they could redo the floors in their house. And so you put the pods out there, and what a clever way to do it, because we all, many of us have wood floors, and they wear out over time, and we wanna finish them. So that was a great solution. And I thought, well, that was great. You know, one thing that is coming to mind quite a bit, and what we talked about at the end of our conversation last week was this whole concept of serving your client. And I think what you said to me was, the best thing I can do for my client is to listen. And to listen to hear what they're saying, and hear maybe what they're not saying. And I was really struck by that, because good service people, in my opinion, listen, and you just, there, you just said it. And it was really, really true. And it sounds like you've learned that a lot quite a bit in your business. Yeah, and I'm lucky. And yes, I mean, at the end of the day, especially when we're in Boston, we're in DC, we're in Philly, we're in Tampa, we're in Austin, Texas, there's a lot of really good moving companies, and there's a lot of competition. And so, when folks say like, hey, why shouldn't I use Olympia? And I'll say, well, we have new and great trucks, and our Google reviews are at 4.7 across our footprint, and our net promoter score is this, and all relevant stuff, right? But at the end of the day, it's like, you wanna use Olympia because you're gonna work with me, or you're gonna work with my teammate Dan Sheehan in DC, or Eddie McDade in Boston. Like, going back to your AI point, AI's here, and there's a lot of great things AI is doing, for sure. You're right, you're right. And one of the things I battle with is you have companies, moving companies, other service companies, where they just have AI receptionists and whatnot, which, look, there's a huge cost savings, and there's a lot of benefits. But my thought is, okay, if everybody does that, and AI's gonna get better and better, I get it. But the companies that have people who are great, and listen, and ask the questions that they don't know how to ask, or to solve the problems that they don't know that they have to solve, those are the people that are gonna differentiate themselves from everybody else. And it starts with listening, and coaching, and reiterating, so a lot of times, like, I'll walk through a home and be like, "All right, great, we did, we talked about this, "you're doing the packing here, "I'm gonna do the treadmill, "the parking permit's gonna be posted here." But I just kinda like talk to myself. And I do that for me, because it helps me remember everything, but it also just showcases to the client, like, "Oh, this dude's paying attention, "yes, that's everything we talked about." And that's how you build trust, because again, there's a lot of great movers, with a lot of great reviews, and competitive pricing, and great crews. But in order to get there, I have to win them over, and that's what I love to do. I love to compete, I love to say, "Look, you're working with me,"I'm gonna take care of you, "because at the end of the day, Mary, "all I care about is that you're a raving fan, "and you tell your friends, you tell your family, "you tell your realtor, you write a review, "and you think about us again." And in order to do that, it starts when we pick up the phone, until there's, at the end of the move, if there's an issue, or whatever, it's like we just take care of it. And we're just very grateful that that's how we operate at Olympia. Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. I appreciate so much of your time, and the personal experience that you've gone through, because you're feeling it at both ends, really. More transactional, very much the inside work. Thank you, Ryan. I know you're just gonna continue to be as successful as possible, and enjoy the next move. Hey, I appreciate you, Mary. Thank you so much for your time and the opportunity. Love the content you're putting out, and I'll see you soon, my friend. Okay, great, thanks, Ryan.(Upbeat Music) Thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope you found this conversation useful to you and your real estate goals. You'll find the contact information for our guests, and any links they recommend you have in the show notes. And should we be able to help you identify some strong real estate professionals in your area, drop us a note at info at realestakeconnectionspodcast.com. Thanks again, and bye for now.(Upbeat Music)