24/7 Emergency Line · Answered by Roger
If this can't wait, call or text 24/7.
Foreclosure, layoff, family emergency — Roger answers his own line. After hours your message is texted to him in under 60 seconds.
Business-hours calls forward directly to Roger. After-hours calls reach a compassionate voicemail that's transcribed and texted to Roger in under 60 seconds. Texts to the same number are answered by AI instantly — Roger gets a copy of every conversation.
For families in transition
When the family home
becomes the hardest
decision of the year.
Most realtors will help you sell your parents' house. Roger Grubb will help you with everything else — at no extra charge. This is the full guide to how it works.
By the time most of our clients reach out, they have already spent weeks in conversation with doctors, family members, social workers, financial planners, and at least one assisted-living tour guide. They are exhausted before they ever call a real estate agent. They are also, almost without exception, dreading that call.
There is a reason for the dread. The conventional real-estate transaction was designed for a different kind of family — one where the seller is alive, present, and able to walk the house with the agent themselves. The conventional transaction assumes a clean home ready to show, a seller who can sign at any time, and a single decision-maker who knows what they want.
Family transitions are rarely any of those things. The home is full of fifty years of belongings. The parents may be in a hospital, a rehab facility, or already in care. The decisions are being made by adult children — sometimes from out of state, sometimes from out of the country, often with siblings who disagree on the path forward. The transaction is one of the smallest things on a very long list, and yet it carries enormous emotional weight.
What Roger does that other agents don't.
Most real estate agents are trained to do four things: price the home, list the home, market the home, close the home. Roger does those four things at the highest level of any agent in the West Contra Costa region — but they are not what makes this practice different.
What makes this practice different is the work that happens before and around the listing. The cleanout coordination. The vendor management. The contractor scheduling. The estate-sale company referrals. The family meetings. The hard conversations about heirlooms and donations. The patience to wait until the family is ready to list. The willingness to drive to Pinole or Hercules or Richmond on a Saturday morning to meet with a hauler, an electrician, or a sibling who flew in from Chicago for the weekend.
None of this work is billed separately. It is included in the standard listing commission. Roger's view, after eighteen years of this practice, is that the families who feel taken care of during the transition become clients for life — and bring their friends, their siblings, and eventually their children. That is the business model.
The first conversation.
Reach out — by phone, text, or email. Most of our family-transition clients send a short message describing where their parents are, where the house is, and what the rough timeline looks like. Roger replies the same day, often within an hour, and offers two or three specific times to meet at the home.
That first walkthrough takes about an hour. Roger comes alone — no team, no marketing kit, no closing folder. The goal is just to listen and look. By the end, you will have an honest read on three things:
One, what the house is worth right now, as-is.
Two, what reasonable preparation might add to the eventual sale price.
Three, what the realistic timeline looks like on your family's schedule.
There is no follow-up pressure. Some families decide to list within two weeks; others come back six months later. Both are fine. The relationship begins the day you call, not the day you sign a listing agreement.
The cleanout.
A typical East Bay family home has between twenty and forty years' worth of accumulated belongings. The cleanout is usually the most emotionally exhausting part of the entire transition, and it is also the part most realtors will tell you is someone else's problem.
It is Roger's problem. The process generally runs in three phases:
Phase one: family items. Roger walks the home with the family (or schedules a video call for out-of-state siblings) and helps identify items of family significance — photographs, documents, jewelry, specific furniture, heirlooms. These are set aside, shipped where needed, and stored until the family decides what to do with them.
Phase two: estate sale. Where there is meaningful value in the contents, Roger refers a trusted East Bay estate-sale company. The sale typically takes 1–2 weekends and recovers a portion of the home's value independently of the eventual real-estate sale. The family is not present during the sale; the company handles security, pricing, and transactions.
Phase three: donations and hauling. What remains is donated (Goodwill, Habitat ReStore, local charities) or hauled. Roger coordinates the trucks, the schedules, and the receipts (which can be tax-deductible). The home is broom-clean before the next step begins.
Bringing the home to listing condition.
Most family homes need a list of small repairs and improvements before they can be listed. The list is rarely large — and is specifically scoped to what returns the investment at sale time. Common items:
Interior paint (almost always; returns 2-5×). Exterior paint or powerwash where needed. Carpet cleaning or selective replacement. Roof patches if inspection reveals issues. Electrical panel updates for older homes. Termite repair where the report requires it. Landscape cleanup and entry-tree trimming. Window washing. Door hardware, light fixtures, and bath caulking refreshes.
Roger schedules every vendor, supervises the work, and pays them from a single pool of funds — typically from eventual sale proceeds — so your family doesn't front cash. You receive an itemized statement at close.
Firearms in the estate.
One specific piece of estate cleanout that almost no realtor will touch: firearms. California has some of the country's most unforgiving firearm-transfer laws, and most families handling an estate have never bought a gun and have no idea any of this exists.
Roger handles it. He holds a current California Firearm Safety Certificate (FSC) issued by the CA DOJ, so where the law requires a certified party in the transfer chain, he qualifies. Intra-family transfers between siblings and children (CA Penal Code §27875). Out-of-state transfers through licensed dealers in both states. Sales to East Bay FFLs Roger has worked with for years. Secure interim storage when a parent moves to assisted living and the home needs to be cleared this week. The paperwork — DROS, FSC verification, Intra-Familial Firearm Transaction reports to the CA DOJ — is all coordinated as part of the standard family-transition engagement, no separate fee.
If your situation involves firearms, the full guide is here.
Listing, marketing, and sale.
Once the home is ready, the listing process looks much like a conventional sale — but executed at a higher level than the regional median. Professional photography (architectural, drone, twilight where appropriate). Staging where it returns the investment. Active marketing through the Security Pacific network, the regional MLS (BAREIS), buyer agents Roger knows personally, and the Roger Grubb buyer database built over eighteen years.
The data backs the approach. Recent results: a Berkeley condo sold at 12% above list in 12 days; a Concord property sold at 13% above list in 4 days; a Pinole single-family closed at $475/sqft in 16 days. These are the outcomes a full-service approach produces.
Frequently asked questions.
My parents are moving into assisted living. Where do I even start?
Start with a no-pressure conversation. Roger comes to the house, walks it with you, listens, and gives you an honest read on three things: what the house is worth as-is, what it could be worth with reasonable preparation, and what the process realistically looks like on your family's timeline. No commitment, no pitch — just clarity on where you stand.
Do I have to clean out the house myself?
No. Roger coordinates the entire cleanout — estate sale companies, donation pickups, hauling, document recovery (papers, photographs, items of family significance set aside before anything else moves). You can be as involved or as hands-off as your family needs. Many adult children live out of state; the work continues without them.
The house needs repairs. Who pays for them?
The most common arrangement is that essential repairs are paid from the eventual sale proceeds — meaning your family doesn't front cash. Roger schedules and supervises vendors (painters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, roofers) and gets paid only when the home sells. This is part of the full-service work, included in the listing commission.
My siblings disagree about whether to sell. Can Roger help?
Often, yes. The first walkthrough usually surfaces what each sibling actually wants — sometimes for the first time. Roger has been part of dozens of these conversations and has learned to step back, listen, and help families surface the questions they need to answer with each other. The sale only happens when the family is ready.
My parents have passed and the house is part of the estate. Is the process different?
Yes — probate, trust administration, and tax-basis questions are involved. Roger has working relationships with several East Bay estate attorneys and CPAs and routinely coordinates the real-estate piece alongside the legal piece. He doesn't practice law or accounting, but he runs the house side so your attorney can focus on theirs.
The estate includes firearms. What happens?
Roger handles it. California firearm-transfer law is strict — intra-family transfers, FFL coordination, DROS paperwork, ammunition rules — and most realtors won't touch it. Roger coordinates legal disposition end-to-end: intra-family transfers (CA Penal Code §27875), out-of-state transfers through licensed dealers, sales to FFLs for items the family doesn't want, or surrender. Cost is included in the standard engagement. See the full guide at /estate-firearms.
How long does the full process take?
For a typical full-service transition (cleanout, repairs, listing, close), expect 6–12 weeks from first call to keys handed over. Families that need to move faster can compress; families that need to move more slowly are welcome to do so. The process is on your timeline, not the market's.
What does this cost?
The full-service transition work is included in the standard listing commission. There is no separate fee for coordinating cleanout, repairs, vendors, or family meetings. Vendor costs are at-cost and typically paid from sale proceeds. Roger's commission is negotiable and discussed honestly at the first meeting.
The next step
One call.
No pressure.
No timeline but yours.
Whether you are weeks away from listing or still figuring out where your parents will be living next month, the right next move is just to start the conversation. Roger reads every message personally.