For Sarah and Dick Clark, this past year was an ideal time to sell their Houston-area home and move into the Deupree House retirement community in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park neighborhood, even with interest rates at or near 7 percent.
“The timing was absolutely perfect,” Sarah said. The couple had lived in Kingwood, Texas, about 50 years, but they pulled up roots because they knew they were approaching a new season of their lives, and wanted to be closer to their son and his family in Cincinnati.
When their younger son was transferred to Australia, they decided to move near their older one, who works at Procter & Gamble, and his family. As it turned out, Cincinnati and the Clarks’ home have become a family-gathering place for everyone, including their son in Australia, and his adult kids when they are on breaks.
“Our older son, who is a longtime resident of Cincinnati, suggested that maybe it was time for us to start thinking about the next chapter of our life,” Sarah said.
A new season for Midwestern natives
Dick and both their sons are engineers (although one of the sons with an engineering degree works in finance at P&G), so planning is in their DNA.
In mid-2022, one son said, “Mom and Dad, I think you need to make some kind of a decision by 2025.”
Sarah replied, “How about let's do it in 2023?”
Their son and daughter-in-law in Cincinnati visited several retirement communities, and narrowed those to three.
Around Thanksgiving of 2022, Sarah visited the three places, and once inside their future apartment at Deupree House, “I knew that was the place that we needed to be,” she said.
That’s because in Texas, they lived in a patio home within a golf-course community known as “The Livable Forest.”
Inside the apartment, “We saw deer, and right away, I just had a sense. You know how sometimes God just sends you a message? And he said, ‘This is where you need to be,’’’ said the woman who now attends St. Mary Catholic Church nearby in Hyde Park.
‘Excellent time to sell’ a home
Anne Uchtman, who through December was president of the Realtor Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, says despite interest rates that are higher than recent years, “It's an excellent time to sell” a home.
“Depending on where the house is located and the price point and the demand for it, you're still going to get a good price on your home,” she said. “You might not get $40,000 over asking price like you would have a year ago, but it's still an excellent time to sell.”
With the normal seasonal fluctuations, median sales prices have continued to increase year over year since at least 2015, according to data released by the Realtors Alliance.
In the four-county Greater Cincinnati area, for example, the median single-home sale price was 8.1 percent higher in November than the same month of 2022. Prices in the region resemble upward stair steps since 2015.
The average time a home was on the market was 26 days in November. The number of new listings was down 4.3 percent, helping increase demand among buyers.
“The supply is low, and demand is still high – it's just not as high as it has been the past few years,” Anne said.
An easy sale
The market worked out well for the Clarks.
“We sold our house in April of 2023,” Sarah said. “It was only on the market about 10 days before it sold.”
The timing was perfect for the couple – especially considering their son’s advice to Sarah as they started preparing for their search: “Mom, it's better to do it two years too soon than two hours too late.”
Many who have moved into Deupree House and Marjorie P. Lee, ERS’ other premier retirement community in Hyde Park, have advised friends that it’s better to move in early, when they still are in good health, so they can enjoy all the benefits of retirement living. That way, they can get out and make friends with their neighbors.
Also, when older adults and their loved ones plan ahead and move into a retirement community while their health remains good, it avoids the need to make quick decisions about where to move after a hospital stay or other health crisis. After such emergency situations, some families come to regret the choices they made in a rush.
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Location, Location, Location!
“We enjoy our life here,” Sarah said. “For one thing, the location in Cincinnati is perfect. I can get to just about anyplace I want to go in 15 minutes. We're only two miles from our son. He can get over here if we if we need him.”
And, they get to see their grandchildren, including the three daughters of the couple living in Australia.
“Those girls come to us because their parents live so far away. So that's a real perk,” she said. The Clarks chose a two-bedroom apartment with that in mind. And they get to see their grandchildren who live in Cincinnati, “so it's almost too perfect.”
“Sometimes,” Sarah said, “I'm just overwhelmed by the incredible goodness of God in putting us here at this time in our life.”
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“We love it here at Deupree House. There's always something going on. We say we need the weekend to rest up.”
— Sarah Clark, Deupree House resident.
Surrounded by friends
The Clarks have found a new religious home at St. Mary Catholic Church nearby in Hyde Park, and are pleased that while ERS communities are welcoming to people of all faiths, there’s also a community of Catholics at Deupree House.
St Mary “fits us,” Sarah said, “and we like all three of the priests.”
What does she like best about Deupree House?
“I think the camaraderie between the residents,” she said. “Also, the friendliness and efficiency of the staff. I like the planned events. I like the option that if I do not want to attend, I don't have to.”
“We have autonomy over our lives,” she said. “And we’ve made some, some really good friends here. Certainly, we all need people in our lives.”
In their golfing community near Houston, where residents didn’t have the proximity to neighbors – just as close as nearby apartments – “our world was growing smaller, and it’s expanded again now. It's more like it was when we first married.”
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The Clarks no longer need to worry about their yard guy, or many tasks that accompany home-ownership. Plus, someone comes to clean their apartment.
She calls the food “great – to the tune of my husband having gained five pounds, but we’re just going to have to cut out the desserts.”
While she enjoys cooking, now she can do so when she chooses.
“I like to cook, and when we first moved here, I said, ‘We're not going to be on the meal plan. We'll just come down every once in a while.’”
“Well, after I tasted the food, I thought, ‘Why am I still cooking when I can go down there, and I don't have to clean it, or plan it, or go buy it?’ And we have tablecloths, and nice conversation. We've been participating in in the food plan ever since.”
Dick agrees.
Enjoying nature, plus the weather — Their new neighbors include owls, foxes, deer and songbirds
Their apartment’s balcony and windows look out on a wooded hillside where in the fall, golden leaves look like a spectacular, vibrant work of modern art.
“We also have a resident owl,” Sarah said. “We have fox. We have all sorts of birds. We have an owl all of that routinely wakes me up at 3 a.m. I love to hear him call.”
Their hillside was gorgeous in the spring, beautiful in the summer. “And now there's snow on the leaves,” she said.
Some late-December snow flurries added to her joy, as an Illinois native who never saw snow in Texas.
“We were out and about this morning when it first started,” Sarah said. “And, of course, I met somebody going into the bank who says, ‘I hate winter.’ And here I am, standing out with my mouth open, so the snow would hit my tongue.”
She saw that as another sign from above that this was the right move.
“I'm the happiest person I know,” Sarah said. “Really.”
Sarah calls the couple’s new community a beautiful experience.
Things are so beautiful, she said, “It changes the whole your lookout on an aging.”
To schedule a tour of Deupree House, contact Karen Immell at (513) 561-4200.
