Honoring your Parents

This summer, in addition to moving myself and hubby, having a baby, figuring out said baby's wacky Jewish ritual status, and moving our work offices to a different location, I'm helping my parents find a place to live when they retire and move across country to be near us and the little one. Needless to say, I'm a little stressed.

To help mom and dad, I've been driving around, looking at rentals inside and out, and sending them feedback. Unfortunately, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms they want for their price range means I'm looking at a lot of real dives. Today I got flea bites on both legs looking at an apartment with carpets that hadn't been cleaned yet, since the former tenants (and their smelly dogs) moved out.

I've been trying really hard to be patient with my mother's obsessive/compulsive long-distance house-hunting. After all, if it were me, I'd be wanting feedback on every single property, too... But I can't seem to get across to them what kind of quality difference they'll be facing from where they live now if they really want this much space at this price. I wouldn't live in most of these places - how can I recommend them to my parents?!

I find myself getting upset at them for not being well-off enough to maintain their current lifestyle after retirement. After all, my FIL is doing well enough to even help us out while hubby's in school - so what's wrong with MY parents, that they didn't save enough?

The truth is we're dealing with really different real estate markets, where they're coming from and where we live now, so they are selling a great house there for less than the cost of a starter house/fixer-upper here. Very frustrating. And not much I can do about it, except to remember to carry around bug spray in the car to keep away the fleas.