Candy Evans: Why I Am Most Grateful for Real Estate This Thanksgiving

If there was ever a year that deserved a letter from your’s truly to hallmark Thanksgiving, 2025 is it. This was the year of our very own Real Estate Hell.

It started in January as I had an empty condo to remodel and lease. Remodeling went smoothly, though it cost more than expected and alerted me to inflation. Then it took six months to lease, which finally happened due to the diligence of the Allie Beth Allman Urban team. In the interim, I played general contractor and had my purse stolen, setting a Debbie Downer tone for 2025.

Next, we contracted to buy a home before we sold our homestead. Risky, I know.

Twenty-six years ago, with two children in private high schools and a pack of four dogs, I would never have had the guts to do this. Back then I sold a home of 4500 square feet, packed it all up except for clothes, and moved us into a rent house with a “box room”. For one year we lived with paper plates as I watched property values skyrocket around us. Had I bought a home just for the year to flip, we likely would have profited. The home we leased was a tear down that we were almost evicted from by a devious home builder named Jim Odom. Awful man. Not going there again.

So in my old age, I opted to own two luxury homes until one sold. I believe in the real estate community I write of every day enough to put my money on the table — I knew our home would sell, and I had the help of an entire real estate commmunity behind me. Thank you, I’m grateful!

Which brings us to where we are now.

On November 15, we had the final move-out from our beloved Ricks Circle property. I hugged her until the very end, even slept on the floor one night when I realized the movers had moved all the beds.

On November 16, we woke up in our new downsized castle in Lake Forest, the gated community at the corner of Hillcrest and Lake Forest surrounded by boxes.

And I am grateful.

I thought I had downsized BEFORE we moved…

Apparently I did not. After 25 years in the house, things slipped through — lots of things like a carton of plastic wine glasses I must have had since my college Mateuse days. They were crazed, they were clouded, and I could feel the BPAs, phthalates, bisphenols, and flame retardants invading my skin. Yet these, like hundreds of other tiny, ridiculous items tucked into 6800 square feet, were out of sight, out of mind even as I lived among them.

And WTF were those two silly bowling pins?

(Darn it, I think we moved my mother’s cowboy boots!)

And so it went, from about June till now. Six serious months of going through my terrifically generous closets. When we built our home, any space that looked big enough to fit a closet became a closet. Hence, 25 years later I found items I forgot I had — like a 1960s Trouvailles removable tray top coffee table I bought from Russell O’Neals In Good Taste because I thought it was cool. I found my mother’s mahogany cedar chest circa 1940’s, filled with fabrics and my old dolls.

(I am grateful I remembered their names!)

I found toys for children and grandchildren, my mother’s (and grandmother’s) linens, flatware, and china, plus boxes of children’s school work and art magnum opuses from elementary school. I even found elementary school papers of mine that my mother had dutifully saved and passed down.

Somehow, I had become the designated keeper of the family heirlooms, a job I no longer want. And I didn’t want to pay to pack and move anything we were NOT keeping.

But of course, we did. And for this I am grateful because it means we have had an abundant life. My dear friend Dave Perry-Miller put it in perspective:

“Your life on Ricks Circle was a chapter of your life you should be grateful for,” he wrote me as I cried over leaving my homestead. “There is a reason you loved being on Ricks Circle so very much because it represents, and probably is, the best chapter of your life! And that is not something to be sad about!”

It’s something to be grateful for, despite the 50 wardrobe cartons and piles of cardboard boxes I am now unpacking. I am grateful I have things and memories to unpack!

Now that the sale and move are behind us, I will organize and write up the process for all to benefit. I’m approaching this as a job that everyone should tackle at some point — getting your possessions in order. Not that I intend to go anywhere, I want to be prepared, just like buying insurance and having a will in place.

It is time to get MY house in order.

It’s all too much to pack into one story, so we have a series called “Downsizing Diaries” that we will take on the road in 2026. Our Karen Eubank and others on the team have already started.

Here are some of the highlights and tips we will cover in our quest to shed things:

Digitalizing photographs — apparently I have 14,000 photos jammed into albums, some of which were organized, most stuffed into envelopes, some missing when I grabbed a photo for a school project or some urgent need.

Beautiful countertops: This may sound silly, but if you are moving to a new home, no matter where it is, get beautiful stone countertops in every room. You have less space, and counter space becomes more than necessary. Beautiful counters in a smaller space are like putting on beautiful jewelry to detract from your sagging jawline.

Hire a Great Mover: moving is one of the most chaotic, stressful events you can experience. Sheer brutality. The lure of low cost means your beloved furniture will not be treated well, and items will be dumped in unmarked boxes if they are not dumped in the trash first. I would consider no one but Curtis Specialized Moving & Storage. They were not perfect, but dang well close.

Test the plumbing: Call Green Scene Home Inspections.

Send out pieces you will keep prior to your move: For reupholstery or repairs.

Get rid of any furniture you do not plan on keeping before you move. My children didn’t want much, and no one wants armoires anymore.

Time yourself looking through old boxes of papers: Very tempting to want to read my parents’ divorce papers, but they are both gone now, so who cares?

Be prepared to pollute: This move made me realize our generation lives in a unique electronics culture mess that started with 80-track tapes and ended with DVDs. We had all that plus everything in between. One reason why our economy has been so strong is that we bought all that stuff — TVs, speakers, cassette players, DVD players, video cameras, all of it. We have 4 video cameras. I stuffed them in the back of my car to purge, refusing to let a mover touch them. I dumped bags of videotapes into dumpsters. I pulled a few family cassettes that I will consider digitizing like my photos, maybe.

It’s hard to part with books: This is where I failed supremely. We have a lot of books, really a library. People are not reading books as much, but it was hard for me to part with them. I kept my Virginia Woolf paperbacks thinking, if I ever end up having five months to live, I might want to re-read Mrs. Dalloway. Or Sylvia Plath. I gathered a few books my grandchildren absolutely must read, even though they live on their tablets. My husband let me sell most of his medical books (heavy and outdated), and I sold off my daughter’s law books (ditto).

It’s easy to part with diet books: Wish I had a quarter for every one of the diet books I bought over the years, when we now know Tirzepatide is the way to lose weight.

Take a match to the garage: Not really, but this was our main area of contention. My husband gathered way too much stuff he never touched but wouldn’t let me get rid of it… but I did anyways. Someday he will thank me.

The roofing scam has to end: Our real estate deal almost blew up over a 9-year-old,40-year roof, which an inspector said needed to be replaced. Guess what the inspector does for a living? INSTALLS ROOFS! Agents tell me this story is not uncommon. Had a nice chat with my insurance company on this one, stay tuned!