SureHands Transfer Equipment to Move Independently and Safely in Your Home

Getting up out of your chair and moving to another place in your home is something that most of us don’t think twice about, yet that little task is one of the ones that can make the difference between someone being able to live at home or having to move to a nursing home.

Moving from one seat to another is called a transfer in the medical world. Fortunately most of us don’t think about it at all, but just think about how many times you get up and down in your home in a normal day. What if you couldn’t stand on your feet? What would you do?

There are many, many techniques and pieces of equipment that people with mobility limitations can use to transfer. Today I want to discuss transfer equipment that can help people who can hardly move on their own at all transfer independently or transfer without putting their caregivers at risk.

Motorized lift systems can be floor based, wall based, or ceiling based. The motor provides the lifting power. A ceiling based motor can be independently propelled or moved by a caregiver. Ceiling based systems don’t take up floor space and the caregiver doesn’t have to move the weight of the person and the lift.

Home Access Solutions is the exclusive dealer for SureHands Lift and Care Systems in Nebraska and Iowa. SureHands is the US distributor for Handimove International, so this is a system of products used around the world to help people stay in their homes. I chose to represent this product when I was looking for solutions for my clients, because of 3 things: flexibility, reliability, and the philosophy of the SureHands and Handimove company.

As an Occupational Therapist, I worked for years running a seating and positioning clinic for wheelchairs. One of the reasons I chose Surehands is that there are so many ways of supporting the motor, so many motors, and so many slings and body supports that I am able to prescribe the precise solution for my clients just as a good seating and positioning specialist prescribes a precise combination of parts to create a wheelchair.

The body support is one of the best ways I know for people to use equipment and independently transfer themselves. Even if a caregiver is needed to help, the body support is often our primary choice because it is fast, great for people with high muscle tone, and makes dressing and toileting easier. You need to feel this to believe it and that is why my staff and I will be glad to meet you here in this showroom or go to your home so you can try it. In situations in which the the body support isn’t appropriate there is a wide range of sling styles and sizes that we can select from.

The second reason I love this system is that it is very reliable. People who buy this unit need it to work, every single time, every single day. Very rarely are there any kind of problems and when they do occur my technician and I have the support of the great technical support department at SureHands.

The third reason I love my association with Surehands is that this is one of the few companies I’ve run across that shares my idea that technology and medical equipment needs to be properly selected, not just sold. Before I could become a dealer, even though I had years of experience as an OT, I had to go to Pine Island New York the home of Surehands in the US and go through training. I send my techs to for training. I recently went back for an update on some exciting new product updates. My classmates and I sat in class and learned from Handimove’s corporate trainer and also shared our experiences and learned from each other. We took products apart and put them together again to make sure that we really know the equipment inside and out. We tried out some of the new equipment and brainstormed about the optimum ways to use it. What this means to you and my clients is that Surehands and Home Access Solutions are always looking for the best way to make an individual’s transfers at home as easy and safe as possible.

Problems with transfers drives too many people out of their homes and hurts too many caregivers! Don’t let that happen to you or someone you love! You can visit the Surehands web site at www.surehands.com, give us a call at 402-291-9514 and talk to us about an evaluation to determine the right system for you, and forward this video to people you know who need to learn about really safe ways to transfer.

What Exactly Does It Take to Sell Your Home in The Cold Winter Months? (Part 2 of 2)

If you are thinking about putting your home on the market, you may be wondering just what is it going to take to get your house sold during winter weather here in the Mid-West? The short answer is patience and perseverance, along with very close attention to the same three things that we realtors always coach clients about- Price that is right for the location and condition, condition and staging the home so buyers will want it, and consistent, effective marketing.

What is Effective Marketing?

In our last video newsletter, we started the conversation about how to successfully sell a home no matter what the season with an in-depth look at Pricing and Condition. If you missed it, contact us, or look in the archives of our Blog. This time we will discuss Marketing. Marketing is that part that sets Realtors apart from each other. Marketing is what helps put qualified buyers even find out about your home.

Shellie Nelson and I call ourselves the Home Access Team, but not all of our sellers have an accessible home to sell. We’ve developed some intensive creative ways to market unusual homes and offer that intense approach to all of our clients. 

The key is targeted marketing combined with broad market advertising. We look at where the marketing for each home is most effective and concentrate on that. There is no one size fits all plan. We identify the probable market for the home and orient our advertising so that we hit that target, but we also advertise in a broad and general way too. Target marketing lends itself not only to marketing of accessible homes, but also to other aspects of a home, such as attractiveness to first time homebuyers, investors or others.

We recently listed a home that had a larger number of garages than the norm for the area and the garages were heated/cooled and very comfy. We sent specific flyers about the home featuring the home to contractors because we thought that contractor and other small business owners might be attracted to the garage space itself.

The Internet

The best avenue for advertising is the internet. Our brokers are always providing us statistics showing that in all age groups, most people start looking at homes on the internet before they contact a Realtor. As a realtor we use the internet not only to advertise our homes but also while searching for homes for our buyers. I can’t stress enough how important a good internet presence is.

One advantage our clients have working with Prudential Ambassador Real Estate is the expertise of the office staff to get our listings and any changes into the Multiple Listing Service really fast and a search tool people can use themselves to look at every listing in the greater Omaha area –www.paomaha.com. Being on the Prudential web site and in the Omaha area Multiple listing service also gives us access to listing on other important web sites like www.Realtor.com because the more internet exposure the better.

Prudential also has an exclusive arrangement with Yahoo! Homes are given a Yahoo! identifying number and preferential treatment in the Yahoo! real estate listings. Almost as valuable, is the search data that is generated with the Yahoo! relationship. We are able to send home sellers data that shows how many people view their home on the internet and then take the next step of getting more info. The graphs are a good way of double checking the attractiveness of our price and marketing and helps the home owner and us identify the time we need to freshen our approach.

Print Advertising

Though the internet is valuable, we don’t ignore print advertising. Research shows it isn’t as effective as the internet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. We make sure listings are put into the real estate section of the local paper and into at least one of the local real estate papers. We also have access to a real estate listing show on TV for some clients.

One important step of our active market program is reaching out directly to other agents. Even though most people start on the internet, smart buyers realize that there is valuable information and resources they can have access to if they work with a Realtor. Realtors are also more likely to have coached their clients to prepare financially so our home sellers are better protected from un-qualified buyers if we expose them to buyers working with Realtors. We value our seller’s privacy and time. I want to make sure that they don’t waste their time with buyers who are more wishful thinkers than people really able to buy. So we reverse prospect looking for agents who are looking for homes similar to the one we are selling and we make our information about the home directly available for agents in a variety of ways.

Open Houses

Many people interviewing us prior to listing their homes, ask us about our open houses. They are influenced by TV shows that lead them to believe that open houses are effective sales tools. In reality, except for a few homes on well traveled streets and in a few rare cases where the features of the home itself will attract buyers, open houses are not that effective in our current market and actually present some risks for the home owners. Shellie and I recommend an open houses only in very rare circumstances when the benefit outweighs the risk.

A Team Approach

There are some other interesting marketing tools that Shellie and I use for clients. We will cover them with you when you chat with us about selling your home. One other thing I want to mention is that we stress a team approach with the home seller. Part of that is communication. We stay on top of results from the marketing and communicate with the home owner, keeping them posted on what is working and what we are changing to get their home in front of the buyers who will be most interested in it and able to buy it.

We hope you’ve found this segment and the previous segment helpful. Selling a home in any season is not a magic trick. A successful sale is based on the 3 basics of Price that is right for the location and condition, Condition and staging the home so buyers will want it, and consistent, effective marketing. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us. Shellie and I are looking forward to helping you sell your home.