Homeowners Be Aware

Navigating Family Relocation and Home Renovation with Maria Maldonado Smith

• George Siegal • Season 2 • Episode 138

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June 4, 2024

138.  Navigating Family Relocation and Home Renovation with Maria Maldonado Smith

If you are like millions of people who will have to relocate where you live today we have some great advice from a working mom with extensive experience in corporate moves.

Maria Maldonado Smith shares her expertise in transitioning to new communities, from real estate transactions to the emotional aspects of settling in. Learn strategic tips for acclimating quickly and understanding neighborhood dynamics, especially through her own move to South Florida.

We also dive into home renovation tales, like her unexpected electrical issues turned full-blown rewiring project, highlighting the importance of thorough inspections and maintenance. Plus, Maria imparts wisdom on goal setting and vision imagery, showing how to transform both our living spaces and lives. Join us for practical tips and inspiring insights on turning any house into a dream home.

Here’s how you can follow or reach Maria:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariamaldonadosmith/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-maldonado-smith/

Website: https://mmsconsultingfirm.com/

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

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Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/


If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Thanks for listening!

George Siegal:

Today we are diving into a topic that hits close to home for many of us relocating. Whether you're moving for a new job, better schools or simply a change of scenery, the process is fraught with challenges From finding a new place that truly fits your needs to selling your old home and ensuring your kids adjust smoothly. The list of tasks can feel endless. And amidst all this chaos, how can you be certain about what you're really buying? Well, my guest today is Maria Maldonado-Smith, the Chief Empowerment Officer of the MMS Consulting Firm and creator of the Executive Vision Imagery Program. She's also a married mom who has been through the moving process a bunch of times and has great advice to help you make a smoother transition. I'm George Siegal, and this is Homeowners Be Aware the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Maria, thank you so much for joining me today.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

I'm so excited to be here.

George Siegal:

Thanks for having me Now we met recently as I was trying to become a guest on your podcast to talk about the stuff that I do, and you brought up something that's really interesting and with my podcast and we talk about homeowners and things to be aware of. You've moved a lot and as a mom and as a working mom, it's not just you moving and setting up. You have a whole family to worry about. Talk about the challenges you have faced in those situations, because you had some good stories in those situations because you had some good stories.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes, so we have moved. Well, let's see, I think the staff that our kids have said they moved four times in about eight years, eight, nine years, yeah, so my 14-year-old went to three different elementary schools. We have since settled. I don't really know necessarily what that means, I think for the time being, because we have two now in high school and then we have a younger one in elementary school. Probably when the older two go off to college we will seek to uproot ourselves and go somewhere else without a without, without the um, a corporate location kind of looming over us.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

But yes, we, we have moved a lot, primarily for corporate relocations. It was something that both my husband and I, when we got married and we're we're growing out our careers, we're building them out we both said let's go where we can have the most opportunity. And so we knew I was born and raised in a small town, lexington, kentucky so not a ton of opportunity for upward mobility, especially with large corporations. So we knew that, with both of us in more of that Fortune 500 corporation mentality, we were going to have to move. We just figured that was going to be a part of it. So we started, when our kids were young, making some of those relocations, and each time we learned something new. So we learned how to sell our house better, how to buy a house better, and we learned how to acclimate more quickly to our environment.

George Siegal:

Where did you end up? Where are you right now?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

So we ended up in sunny South Florida, so we are a little bit outside, a little bit north of Fort Lauderdale.

George Siegal:

You have movers, so sometimes you don't have to deal with some of the baloney that a lot of people do, but you still have to find a place and get your family set up. What are the challenges like when you're looking for a house and then making that transition?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

There are a lot of challenges, especially when children are involved. If it were just my husband and I, I mean I think we could have made almost every move incredibly seamless and most likely would have moved into more metropolitan urban areas. I mean, we're looking at, you know, in suburban areas because of we have to think of schools, we have to think of commute to. If there's an office that we're commuting to, where is the center of the market, where you know, where are we going to be most utilized and needed, and then that community feel as well. I think you have to mesh with the community and that's tough when you've never lived in that area before. And then you're taking maybe one to two I think the most relocation like house hunting trips we ever took was two and that was probably when we were moving.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Actually, no, that was when we were moving to Nashville Because we could drive up there. We could make a couple of more trips. We were living in Atlanta at the time and so we could get there within three hours, so we would take the kids up there, we would drive around. We got a better feel for kind of where we might potentially live. We also took the advice of people who were working in the market already, so folks who were already, you know, with the company or with the organization and could say, hey, where are some good spots for us to live if we want to raise children? Yeah, that's, those are some of the, but those are, I mean, I would say the kids are the biggest, you know, the biggest cog in that wheel when you're moving.

George Siegal:

Sure, no, that's a huge part of it. And an area where a lot of people get in trouble is if you don't spend a lot of time in a neighborhood and you're looking at a house, you don't know who your neighbors are, you don't know what you're moving in next door to, what kind of drama, what kind of problems. And then there's the kind of disasters that can befall an area. How much thought did you put in going OK, let's look at environmentally what disasters could happen here and how safe is our house?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes. So we put a lot of thought into that, especially moving down here to South Florida, because it was an entirely different approach In the, you know, in the south I mean I know we live in South Florida, but I mean like the true South Atlanta, nashville, kentucky when you're looking at homes there it's I would I would say that we probably got caught up more in the aesthetics than we did when we moved here. Here it was more about like utility and futility, Like what are we going to absolutely be able, like what's going to be able to withstand a hurricane? Because we knew moving into this area, and especially moving down to the East coast, I think Michael had come through potential for Ian. Thank goodness, since we've lived here, everything's bypassed us.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

But that was something that I was fearful of. I grew up in Kentucky where we had tornadoes, so there was always the potential for those Thankfully never experienced one that came close. When we lived in Nashville there was one that actually did go through our neighborhood. So we were well, or I guess yeah, like clipped, clipped to the back of our neighborhood and destroyed.

George Siegal:

Did you have a storm cellar? Did you have any kind of emergency shelter?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

No, we didn't, because the irony is that in Tennessee, the limestone, or there we have limestone in Kentucky, I think they said that the mountain is so it's so hard to cut through, it is a ridiculously expensive to build basements, so most people just live on mountains or live where.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yeah, so you don't. We had a nook that we kept all of our luggage in, we kept the things that we would need for travel and so, hurriedly, actually, my son my youngest was I was nursing him that morning and my husband's like get in here, like literally grabs me and as we're closing the door, you just see debris flying everywhere. It was the craziest, wildest experience because it was early in the morning when it happened and it was one of those things that you couldn't. I mean we were, we were just starting to get up for our day, it was five, 36 o'clock in the morning when it happened. Um, so, so those those types of things when we moved down here were in the back of my mind, just because we had had that one experience and, thankfully, nothing but debris was in our yard. But we, you drove around the corner in our neighborhood and we had people who had, you know, blown out windows and roofs missing, and it was pretty intense.

George Siegal:

Ironically, your son is the only one that would have gotten fed if you had been stranded for a while.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

I know Exactly yes, yeah.

George Siegal:

But you know and that shows a lot of people in those areas you could still have an interior safe room in those houses, and I'm always amazed. We did a lot of coverage in Moore, oklahoma, for my last film and they got hit by eight tornadoes, big tornadoes that caused significant damage, but most people there still did not have any kind of storm cellar or safe room. And I don't understand that. I don't understand the human nature of taking an incredible risk and not really worrying about it. So when you move into these homes now you're in South Florida, it's not if it's when another hurricane is going to strike. This is going to be a very active year. Do you guys have a concrete block house? Do you have a plan? What kind of thought hurricane-wise?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

We do. We have a concrete block structure and so that was one of the things when our real estate agent was working with us, that was one thing she did. Advise was you want to find and I think that there were some laws, I think, put in place if your home was built after a certain period, they had to be CBS. But I know in our conversations I think some of that is I don't I, some of that is I don't know that that's being adhered to. But our home is, our structure is concrete block.

George Siegal:

Well, south Florida has the toughest standards in the state. It gets more lax as you go north and people are rolling the dice more. As far as other problems that homeowners have, I've talked to people that bought houses that were being flipped poor quality, bad workmanship. How much were you able to investigate the quality of the things in your house so you understood what you were getting? Because when you have to move quickly, that's quite often where you have to sacrifice.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes, we learned from our Nashville home, which was a beautiful home, and honestly it just was something that our home inspector he probably did the most thorough job that we had ever had done on a home.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

We were fortunate that when we lived in Atlanta we had a new build. It was actually a couple who had built the home hoping that their kids and grandkids would come, hoping that their kids and grandkids would come, and they built this five bedroom home and then, within six months of it being about to be finished, two of their kids relocated to the West Coast to join another one of their children. So they didn't feel the need for it anymore because travel back East was probably not going to be happening as much as they thought. So we lucked out in that situation and didn't have too many issues with that home. It was more cosmetic and more just us adding paint and little things here and there. But there was still quality issues. Even with a brand new home. There were shelves that weren't properly affixed and you think this is a brand new closet and the shelves are falling apart.

George Siegal:

You told me a story that I actually repeated because I was talking to my son about grades in school and he goes oh, just flip the switch and turn it on when I need to. And you told a story about a light switch that went to nowhere. Tell me about that, Went to nowhere, gosh.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

That was in our South Florida home when we moved in, and so, to your point, we don't have a lot of time, and so that's why we've kind of looked for either relatively new builds or something that we feel is like got really good bones, and I love older homes, but I also could live in a remodeling or reconstruction zone pretty consistently my husband not so much and so when we moved in, actually the home we moved into a little bit older home built in you know that well older to South Florida. Parkland is not that old to begin with, and so our home is about 1993 was when it was built, and when we moved in. So a contractor had come in, gutted a big portion of the home, laid really beautiful tile, so, like cosmetically, it looked good, right, and so one thing they did, though, was cap off a lot of the light fixtures, and so when we moved in, we were in the dark, literally. I mean, it was by the time the sun would set. You know this is like summer, so we had a little bit more time, but around 8 o'clock, 830 at night, we were literally starting to become in the dark. So I had to quickly order light fixtures. So I ordered five for the main areas of the home that I knew okay, dining room we need light. My daughter's room, we need light, she needs to be able to flip a switch.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

So we ordered these and have an electrician come over and as he is going through the day and both my husband and I are at work, I receive a call and he's like ma'am, are you close to the home, to where you could get back potentially? And I was like I'm not too far. I was like give me like 25, 30 minutes. I arrive home and he says well, we have a problem. He said your daughter's room is a complete fire hazard. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm shocked. He's like I've been up in the attic. He's like the the wiring is so old.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

And he said and she's got a, she had a three switch light fixture or light, you know, in light block in her room. And he said two of these go to nowhere. There are no wires attached to them, but the one that your daughter would need to use. There are eight wires connected to this one outlet. And he says so if I install this fixture, we're going to turn this on. And he's like and who knows what could happen.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

So he said I need your permission to rewire everything in here. And he said because I have a feeling that it probably goes to your, we have like a Jack, and it goes to her bathroom, possibly to the boys, like Jack and Jill, you know bathroom or Jack and Jack bathroom, however you want to put it and then, and then probably into their bedrooms as well, because those were the other two rooms. So basically all the rooms up top did not have light fixtures installed, they were just capped off. Well, I knew that there had been previous owners that had lived here, because we were not the first people, we were the second owners and I guess, technically the third if you count the contractor that had put it in their name. So I was like, well, I mean, of course we have to have light, so fix them. But what we thought was going to be probably $500, you know, a hundred bucks a light to install ended up to thousands of dollars worth of fixing.

George Siegal:

Yeah, and you wouldn't expect that in a house I mean normally that would sound like a house from the 40s and the 50s. There's a lot of houses over in St Pete, around here and here in Tampa that are really old and people gut them and you have to replace all the wiring. There's a couple of home inspectors that I follow on Instagram and they show things on couple of home inspectors that I follow on Instagram and they show things on construction of houses and how sloppy the work can be and it really is shocking because we assume somebody's building a house. He's like you're probably really good at what you do. You assume other people are too, but you can't do that, especially in construction.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Right, right. I mean, these are people's homes, this is where they're, this is where you're supposed to feel the safest, is in your home, and and I know we had talked to you about our kitchen I mean, our kitchen looks beautiful, but within two months, we were losing pieces off the bottom, and, and so, and at this point, it's like there's not enough gorilla glue to keep it on.

George Siegal:

Yeah, and that's frustrating. It's like if you had just done it right. I think every builder or somebody in construction should have to live for a little bit in the house that they build to experience the quality or lack thereof of their work, and maybe that would change some things, but I don't know.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yeah, yeah, and I understand. I mean, we ended up meeting a contractor who was great and he worked independently and we ended up hiring him to do several projects around the home. And one of the things he did mention to us was um, you know he, he came out and said hey, your baseboards are beautiful, but just FYI, they are manufactured. They are going to be cheaper in quality. They will most likely any ding, dent. You know they're going to chip easy, and they have. And he said but you know they can be replaced.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

And he said because you have young children, you, you have. You guys have a busy life. Um, you have a dog, you have pets that are going to scratch at it, and our dogs have Uh and so. So we were okay with that, but we found that out after the fact. So one thing he suggested was if your crown moldings is something you really want to preserve and take care of, then I just suggest that you do wood on on the top. And he said because they'll last a lot longer and it'll be more expensive, but it'll be more worth it in the end. And so that's what we ultimately we chose to do was to install wood for our crown moldings and keep the baseboards as the I think he called it MDF.

George Siegal:

So yeah, absolutely. So, looking back on what you've experienced, especially in this most recent house, what advice would you have for people so they could maybe avoid the mistakes you have, and sometimes it's unavoidable. Sometimes you would you have for people so they could maybe avoid the mistakes you have, and sometimes it's unavoidable. Sometimes you don't have time, sometimes you just have to rush into something. Are there things you could have done that maybe you could have caught some of this on the front side?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

So possibly, possibly we found the pictures of what our home looked like before they remodeled it after the fact, and so we had to do a little digging for that and I will say that they, they, they, looking like reflecting. Now they did a lot with what this home used to look like. There were a lot of mirrors on walls, there was carpet everywhere and the bathrooms weren't nearly as nice. So they did replace and they did update and upgrade quite a bit. I would say one thing that I a few things that I now know to look for if we go to move again, and just that I've learned is the foundation. I mean, really think about and look at the foundation, the wiring, have a home inspection done, but have them pay more to have them do a more thorough home inspection, because you can catch things on the home inspection. If you say, I want like the bells and whistles and it's going to cost you more money, but like walk the note, not just walk the roof, but really walk the roof, like checking tiles, making sure that things are sturdy, because those are the things that you don't think about and that you don't want to have to spend your money replacing, but you'd rather know upfront if you, if you have to, or if that's going to be a path. I would say that's probably was the biggest benefit that we had when in in finding a home inspector. That was really good, because he taught us that home inspections actually are something that you should do regularly, not just when you're going to buy or sell a home, and that by doing so you're going to prevent so many more additional costs when you do go to sell. And so that's why, when we were in Nashville and we felt very comfortable, very pleased when we listed our home we needed to move quickly. We moved during the summertime and we had a timeline. We had to sell within a finite amount of time because we had to get kids into a new school system. Three different kids in three different schools in a new community.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

I mean, there's just a lot you have to think about. Look at floods, look at the floodplain. You know what level, what zone are you in. Because, for insurance, that's something that we we also learned, and so we're a little bit further inland, we're more West and so not as close to the beach, but making sure that you can obtain the right insurance that you need, that's going to be full coverage that's going to provide you if, in a catastrophic event, you would be covered because homes are expensive to replace. So I would say that you know, make sure that the bones, you know the foundation, the bones, the structure, and then you know, looking at things, especially in South Florida, looking at, you know, has the home ever flooded before? Have you ever had any major issues?

Maria Maldonado Smith:

And then, to your point earlier, go drive around.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

We drove around a few times, you know, more kind of morning, noon, afternoon, night, just to see, and what we noticed was there was a good amount of kids.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

The pandemic brought an onslaught of more, which has been great because there's more kids throughout the community. And so you know that if there's families in your community, then they most likely have the same types of thoughts, feelings and objectives as you, which is to get up every day, go to work, support their family, have a good, safe place to live and they want to take care of it. The other piece that I will add in and I don't know how to mitigate this or prepare people for it, but maybe check out your HOA, because you can have some that are wonderful to work with and then you can have some that want to nitpick and just fine you out the yin yang for every little thing, and I want to live in a community where I get it. I don't want hot pink houses either, but I also understand that there are little projects here and there that I would like to do in my home, and to go through a three-month process is really frustrating when you want to make a move on something.

George Siegal:

Yeah, I agree with you, but I'll tell you the other side of it. There's no HOA where I live and it's the wild, wild west. You can leave a boat on the street in front of your house. You can leave your trash cans out, you could let your lawn go and nobody's going to say anything. So when you live in a clean, well-groomed neighborhood, those are the things that may be a pain to do your little projects but you gain a lot more control over the look of everything, and that's frustrating when it looks bad.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes, yes, I think it's, oh, and absolutely. I like I said yeah, I mean, I love that we have and they, they, they take care of the, you know the, and they take care of the entrance area. We live in a gated community, which I didn't realize that most everywhere in South Florida is gated. That was something that was new to us, Because in Nashville you just have a lot of wide open neighborhoods that you just drive through because you have a lot of land in between each home.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

But that was something new down here that we learned is most every home we would go to see, and that's actually what made when we were moving to Nashville a little bit easier because we could just drive by homes that we wanted In South Florida. You have to have a gate code or you have to be able to be let in, and so it made it harder for us to just like shop around. So we had to more look at the, the neighborhoods and the surroundings. We couldn't really go in and see them unless we had appointments through a real estate agent.

George Siegal:

It's also a good test. I like the neighborhoods that don't let me in to drive around because that means they're stopping people. I want them checking people. Now you have an interesting background. You're a beauty contestant, pageant winner. You're a working mom. I was reading about what you do and it goes way over my head. Just tell us briefly what it is that you do in your day job that takes up all your time.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes, I transform corporate teams through neuroscience the neuroscience of goal setting, habit formation and then the power of vision imagery. So I essentially take the science behind the way our brain works and operates in order to help us achieve what we want, and I couple that, combine it with the power of visualization and visual imagery. And, interestingly enough, I was thinking about this before we had our conversation and I'm incredibly visual, and so whenever I've walked into a home that's why I say I could live in a construction zone I couldn't do it consistently, but I don't mind projects, because I love seeing it come to life, I love seeing the start to the finish of it. So we remodeled our laundry room. I'm one of the weirdos that enjoys doing laundry, and so I love having a clean, nice, beautiful space to do that in, and so when we were remodeling it, I realized, okay, there were certain things that I wanted in certain places, based on laundry rooms that I had been in, and they're not very functional. So I was like I want mine to be very functional, I want to know exactly where things are. So I created the visual for it. I created a little mood board, so to speak, that you would call it. You know, pinterest, whatever you know. But I just put some things on Canva, printed it out, gave it to our our contractor at the time and just said listen, this is the aesthetic that I'm going for you. You now use your expertise, you tell me the best materials, the best qualities, all of that.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

80% of us are visual learners. I mean we. We are. We prefer visuals because it gives our brain something to go on. It gives us a path like oh, I see it, now I can process it. It's hard. Sometimes my husband walks into a home and I talk about tearing down a wall or doing this and he's like I can't see it. I just I don't, I doesn't. He's not wired that way. And so it's really cool because when I work with people like him in corporations, I say sometimes this is the disconnect between our brain being able to accomplish the goal and actually and it coming to fruition. The missing link is you don't have the visual, you're not seeing. You understand that there is a goal or you understand there's an end result, but how we get there could be expedited by accompanying it with visuals.

George Siegal:

Now you also have a podcast.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

I do. It's called creating the vision.

George Siegal:

Okay, and it talks about the kind of things you visually making things happen.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

Yes, and I think that there's the dual concept. There is that, yes, I talk about the transformation that I have with teams and corporations that I've been honored to work with, but I also, internally, we have a vision for the life that we want to live. So we all have, and are guided by some form or vision of where it is we want to go, and so I love sharing stories. I'm excited to share your story about you know, about your documentary and how that all came together and also how you have, you know, you pivoted in your life and kind of created a new vision for the future direction of where you're headed. So it's it's cool to be able to to discuss it in both aspects, both entrepreneurially, corporately, and then just how are we getting up every day and living our life and creating that vision?

George Siegal:

Wow. Well, you certainly have enough energy, so I bet you're great at what you do. I appreciate you coming on. All your contact information, how people can get ahold of you, will be in the show notes so people can easily find you. And good luck during hurricane season. Let's hope it's easy for all of us.

Maria Maldonado Smith:

I know you and me both right, we'll be hunkered down. Yes, I'm nervous about this one. It's the first year I've ever been nervous.

George Siegal:

Yeah, knowledge is dangerous. I'm nervous about all of them. Thanks, maria. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you, I know a lot of you listening have experienced all kinds of things, either as a homeowner or a renter. Well, there's a contact form in the show notes. Fill it out and send it my way. You could be a guest to share your story on an upcoming podcast. Thanks again for taking the time to listen today. I'll see you next time.

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