A house that keeps working.
We don’t begin by asking whether you want to sell. We begin by asking how you want to live.
Most houses here
were not built for this.
New England housing stock is old, and old New England houses are vertical. Bedrooms upstairs, laundry in the basement, a step or three at every door, and a bathroom laid out when nobody thought about turning around in it.
None of that is a reason to leave. It is a reason to find out early what the house can become, while the work can still be planned properly.
Roula Bakis is trained in environmental design and licensed to sell the house, so the design and construction view and the market view arrive together.
Single-floor living is scarce in New England.
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 24 percent of older households in New England live on one floor, against 58 percent in the Mountain West and Pacific states (Housing America’s Older Adults, 2023). The stairs are not an accident of your house. They are the regional building style.
What an assessment looks like
Artemis calls it MAX or MOVE™, the cost of staying and the cost of leaving, set side by side. A walk through the house, then a conversation about what it would take.
Does this house still work as it is?
Entrances, stairs, doorway widths, bathrooms, light, and the route between the front door, the kitchen and a bed.
What is easy to change, and what is structural?
Some of it is hardware, lighting and a weekend. Some of it moves walls. They belong in different budgets and different years.
What would each option cost?
What each change would involve, and what each one does to the value of the house if it is ever sold.
Which way does the house point?
Some houses are worth adapting and some are not. You get whichever answer the house gives, including the inconvenient one, with the alternative priced next to it.
This is a design and real estate consultation, not a medical or occupational therapy evaluation. When a question belongs to a clinician, we say so and help you find one.
What we look at
- The path from the car to the door, and whether one entrance can be made level
- Where a bedroom and a full bathroom could sit on the entry floor
- Bathroom door width, turning space, and whether the shower can lose its curb
- Thirty-two inches of clear width at the doors that matter
- Lever handles and switches that do not need a grip
- Light on stairs, at thresholds and in hallways, where edges get missed
- Laundry, and whether it has to live in the basement
Three versions of the same question
Planning early
The house works today. You want to know what it would take to keep it working, while the work can be scheduled instead of rushed.
Something changed
The house is suddenly in the way. The question is what can be done in weeks, what has to wait, and what is not worth doing at all.
Deciding for a parent
You live somewhere else. You need an assessment of the building that you can read, discuss and act on from a distance.
The comparison nobody runs
Adapting a house costs money. So does selling it and buying another, and that side is usually underestimated: commission, transfer costs, the move itself, and the premium on a single-floor house in a region where single-floor houses are scarce. Both columns can be filled in with real numbers.
“Not only did we get a fair price for the property but Roula proved to be a real friend in my efforts to get everything out of the house and into storage.”
Paul Quain, Newton, Google review, August 2024
Questions people ask
I am doing this for a parent, not for myself. Can you work with me?
Yes. Often the house is three towns away, the decision involves siblings, and nobody wants to be the one who raises it. We can walk the house and set the options side by side, so the conversation has something factual to sit on.
Do you hold a certification for this?
The relevant background here is design and construction rather than a real estate designation. Artemis works in both, which is why an assessment talks about door widths, floor levels and what a change would cost.
Is there something written about this we can read first?
Roula Bakis wrote about this exact question in Westwood Living in August 2026, under the title Should You Renovate to Age in Place, or Is It Time to Move. It is the short version of what an assessment covers. Read it here.
Book an assessment
A walk through the house and a conversation about what it would take. If the honest answer is that the house cannot do it, you will hear that too.
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