Margaret raised three children in that house. She and Harold bought it in 1986 for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars — a stretch then, a bargain now. Today the same house is worth two-point-four million.
The stairs are too much. The yard is too big. Her grandchildren live two states away.
Margaret found a beautiful single-story two blocks from her daughter. She had the down payment ready. She'd already started boxing up the attic.
The tax bill on the sale, he told her, would be more than six hundred thousand dollars — even after the homeowner's exclusion for married couples. Federal capital gains. California state tax. The Medicare surcharge. Numbers she'd never thought about for a house she'd just lived in.
So Margaret stayed. She climbs the stairs. She watches her grandkids grow up on a phone screen.
She doesn't have to.
— A composite of real situations we hear every week.