The walkthrough follows the CAPS framework. The specialist looks at the home through three lenses, in order: life safety, fall prevention, and daily function. Every essential area gets covered. Bathroom. Kitchen. Stairs. Doors. Lighting. Flooring transitions. Reach and grip. Emergency exits. The path from bed to bathroom at 3am. Inside and out.

See what a walkthrough finds

About 90 minutes. We don't rush a home. The written plan comes back inside a week.

CAPS is the Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist designation from the National Association of Home Builders. It's the credential that says someone has been formally trained in how to make a home work for aging in place. The broader industry term is Universal Design. Making homes work for everyone, regardless of age or ability. Most "home assessments" online are run by people who haven't done the formal training. Ours have.

Only when you ask. We'll share what's worked for other families. Whoever does the work is your call.

Common, and fine. The specialist can run the visit with your parent alone and brief you separately. We've found that often goes better.

We tell you. The plan says "aging-in-place ready" with the reasons, and the $399 is refunded. The point of the visit is the truth about the home, not finding things to bill for.

Ours is run by a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist, the designation from the National Association of Home Builders, and a licensed contractor walks the house. You get room-by-room findings, a written plan ranked in the order the work should happen, and a cost against each item, so you can stage it over months instead of guessing.

Ask any assessment three questions and the difference shows up fast. Who is doing it and what are they certified in? Do I get it in writing? Does it tell me what each fix costs and which one comes first?

Usually nothing, for a while. The risk is not the ordinary day, it is the one afternoon that goes wrong: a fall on a threshold, a bad step on a stair, a night trip to the bathroom in the dark. That is the sequence that turns into a hospital stay, and a hospital stay is where the decision to move stops being yours and starts being made under a discharge deadline.

An assessment is how you keep that decision in the family's hands.

No, and before is the cheaper time. After a fall you are choosing under pressure, often from a hospital corridor, and the options have narrowed to whatever can be arranged this week. Before one, you have the full list, in priority order, and the choice of what to do first.

It varies by home, which is why the plan prices each item rather than quoting a package. Some of what we find costs nothing at all: moving furniture, changing a bulb for a brighter one, taking up a rug. Some of it is a contractor's morning. The plan tells you which is which, so you can do the urgent items now and schedule the rest.

Naomi. She started Palmelle after going through this herself. The aging-in-place visits are run by CAPS-certified specialists who do this for a living.