Compass Plus

Family & Estate Transitions.

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Senior Transitions

A senior transition is rarely just a sale. It is the apartment where children were raised. The kitchen where decades of holidays were hosted. The address that has been on every form, every Christmas card, every memory for thirty or forty years.

Selling that home, or coordinating the move that follows, is one of the most consequential moments a family will ever navigate together. The Ruth Reffkin Team is built specifically for these moments.

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Estate Sales

An estate sale is rarely just a sale. There is usually a parent who has died, an executor who is managing more than they expected, multiple heirs with different priorities, an attorney coordinating with the court, and tax considerations that affect timing and structure.

The Ruth Reffkin Team handles the real estate piece in a way that reduces the burden on the family rather than adding to it — quietly, carefully, and in coordination with the professionals you already have.

“ Mission Before Commission. ”
Senior Transitions

A Practice Built for
Later-Life Moves.

Ruth Reffkin is the President and Founder of Compass Plus, the national Compass division dedicated to serving older adults and their families. She holds the Certified Senior Advisor designation. She has guided clients through senior transitions across the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Greenwich Village, TriBeCa, Lenox Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Chelsea, and Beekman Place — across decades and across markets. Susan Hirschorn brings the same patience and the same commitment to every senior client we work with.

What makes these transitions different is rarely the real estate. It is the conversations that happen around it. The adult children who live in three different time zones and have three different opinions about what mom should do. The longtime neighbor who still has questions about the building. The estate attorney who needs paperwork in a particular order. The financial advisor who wants the closing to land in a specific tax year.

Our role is to coordinate all of it — and to give the family room to focus on the parts only they can navigate.

We do not push timelines. We do not pressure decisions. We move at the pace the family needs, and we have the experience to know when that pace needs to shift. Mission Before Commission is not a tagline. It is the operating principle that has anchored Ruth's practice for more than 27 years and informs every senior transition we touch.

Estate Sales

Steady Hands in
Difficult Moments.

Most families navigating an estate sale are doing it for the first time. They are also doing it during one of the most emotionally complicated periods of their lives. The legal process is unfamiliar. The family dynamics are often delicate. The decisions about the property — when to list, at what price, with what improvements — sit on top of decisions about everything else. Our role is to take the real estate part off the family's plate and handle it with the discretion and competence the situation requires.

We work directly with estate attorneys, executors, and trustees. We have closed estate sales that took ninety days from probate filing and estate sales that took three years to navigate through complicated trust structures.

The right pace is the pace the estate requires, and we adapt to it. What does not change is the level of care we bring to the family conversations and the level of preparation we bring to the property itself.

Many of our estate sales connect to senior transitions we handled years earlier. We sell a longtime client's apartment when they downsize; we return a decade later to handle the estate. That kind of long-arc relationship is the result of how we operate in difficult moments, not what we promise in a marketing pitch.

How We Work

A Refined
Editorial Process.

Whether navigating a senior transition or managing an estate sale, our process is a structured framework refined over 40+ years—designed to provide absolute clarity and reduce family stress at every stage.

Consultation in a client home
Phase 01

The First Conversation

We meet with the family, executor, or trustee—in the home or wherever is most comfortable. We listen first. Understanding the estate's structure and what the home has meant over the decades allows us to clarify the path forward without pushing for fast decisions.

Legal and professional coordination
Phase 02

Expert Coordination

These transitions involve a trusted circle of professionals. We coordinate directly with elder-law attorneys, estate planners, and financial advisors. The real estate sale must align perfectly with probate, trust administration, and tax planning—we handle this alignment so the family does not have to.

Property preparation and assessment
Phase 03

Property Assessment & Preparation

Decades of memories require careful handling. We provide a realistic valuation and work with vetted move managers to sort and pack with respect. Where the property would benefit from pre-sale improvements, we recommend them honestly; where it would not, we say so.

Discreet strategic marketing
Phase 04

Discreet, Strategic Marketing

We position the property for the strongest outcome while protecting the family’s privacy. Sometimes this calls for a public listing, and other times for the discretion of Compass Private Exclusives—allowing us to test the market with qualified buyers before any public exposure.

Closing and distribution
Phase 05

Closing & Distribution

We coordinate with accountants, lenders, and title companies to ensure the closing happens cleanly and proceeds are distributed according to the estate plan. Our advocacy continues well beyond the closing table, ensuring the legacy of the home is honored long after the keys change hands.

Why This Team

Unmatched Expertise in
Complex Transitions.

Senior transitions and estate sales sit at the intersection of real estate, law, family dynamics, and profound life changes. The team you choose must operate competently across all of them—and most simply do not.

01

Founder of Compass Plus

Ruth is the President and Founder of Compass Plus, the national Compass division built specifically for older adults and their families. No other team in New York operates from that level of program leadership in the senior real estate space. The result is a deeper understanding of what families need, built across years of program-level work.

02

Certified Senior Advisor Designation

Ruth holds the CSA designation from the Society of Certified Senior Advisors. The training is specialized — financial planning for retirement, health considerations, family system dynamics, and the legal landscape around senior care. It changes how we listen in the first conversation and what we anticipate in the conversations that follow.

03

Coordination With Estate Counsel

We work directly with the estate attorney from the start. The real estate sale aligns with probate, trust administration, court requirements, and tax planning — none of which the family should have to coordinate alone. Our practice is built around being a true partner to the estate's legal team, not just a vendor.

04

Multi-Heir Family Dynamics

Estate sales often involve multiple heirs with different priorities and levels of emotional readiness to sell. Our role is not to take sides; it is to provide accurate market information, honest counsel, and the structured framework needed to let the family work through their decisions with absolute clarity.

05

A Vetted Network of Specialists

These transitions almost always require help beyond real estate. Over decades, we have built direct relationships with elder-law attorneys, financial advisors, geriatric care managers, senior living communities, and move managers. When the family needs an introduction, we refer people we know personally and trust.

06

Connected Transitions

Many estate sales follow or coincide with a senior transition we already handled. As leaders of Compass Plus, we have particular experience with the overlapping legal and financial situations that these connected sales involve. That long-term continuity is part of what makes the work go so smoothly.

The Inquiries

Frequently Asked Questions

Ask a Private Question

Now. The single most common regret families share is starting too late — not too early. Even if a move is two or three years out, an early conversation gives us time to plan the transition with care, identify the right professionals, prepare the home gradually rather than under pressure, and structure the timing around tax considerations or financial planning the family is already navigating. Early conversations are free, low-pressure, and frequently the most valuable hour the family will spend.

Often, no. Depending on the will, the type of probate, the court, and the specific situation, an executor can frequently list and even sell a property during the probate process. Trust assets are usually more flexible still. We work directly with your estate attorney to determine the right timing — and more often than not, families find we can move sooner than they expected.

This is one of the most common dynamics we encounter in both senior transitions and estate sales. Our role is not to take sides or force consensus. It is to provide accurate, current market information so the family makes decisions with the same data. Often, disagreements soften once everyone is looking at the same numbers. When needed, we work alongside estate counsel to keep the process moving, and we have the patience to wait when the family needs time to work through a decision.

This is one of the most consequential decisions you will make, and the answer is genuinely different for every property. Sometimes an investment in painting, refinishing, and staging adds significant value to the sale price, and we can coordinate that — often using Compass Concierge to front the cost. Other times, the right answer is to sell as-is and let the buyer take on the renovation. Ruth's hands-on renovation experience means we provide specific, candid counsel rather than generic advice.

We handle the real estate transactions directly, but we coordinate closely with trusted partners for the rest. Over the years, we have built a vetted network of move managers, estate sale professionals, contractors, and organizers. Whether you need to sequence an estate sale of contents (since you cannot show a home full of memorabilia at its best) or manage a complex senior relocation, the family does not need to assemble a team. We bring one, and we bring them in at exactly the right time.

Compass Private Exclusives is the off-market listing platform within Compass. It lets us discreetly market a property to qualified buyers across the Compass network without a public listing. For sales involving sensitive circumstances — a recent death, a high-profile family, or complex heir dynamics — Private Exclusives can test the market quietly and often find the right buyer without any public exposure at all.

Compass Plus is a national initiative within Compass — not a marketing label or an individual specialty. It is a program with leadership, structure, training, and resources dedicated specifically to serving older adults and their families. Ruth is the Founder. The distinction matters because it means we operate inside an institutional framework built for these complex transitions, not on top of a generalist practice.

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Start The Conversation

Let’s Talk About
Your Family’s Next Move.

Whether you are starting to think about a senior transition, navigating an estate sale, or simply planning for the future, we welcome a confidential conversation. There is no obligation. The first conversation often clarifies the path forward — even when the move itself is months or years away.

Click To Schedule Consultation
Phone 516-903-9097
Email ruth.reffkin@compass.com
susan.hirschorn@compass.com
Office 110 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Hours 8am to 9pm, seven days a week
Compass Real Estate · New York City