All old people should sell up family homes for families.

"their " . Christ can't spell must be my age 🤪

I blame property porn.

Well said 👍. It's gone a bit quiet now the over 50s are putting there foot down ! 🤔🤣

The most useful thing my Council could do right now is produce a booklet for homeowners about how best to go about dividing up their family terraced homes (which are in the majority where I live) to provide two different accommodations for the old farts like me (ground floor) and the younger generation (upstairs), that can then be most easily reconstituted as a family house after old fart has shuffled.

Such a booklet could cover: practicalities like red tape (planning regs); finances; examples of successful 'conversions'; examples of successful 're-conversions'; and any other useful info, e.g. on the potential for loft rooms, garden rooms, and splitting bills like Council Tax.

Communism is not a good way of life.

Don't give Govt more power to take from individuals. Soon they will take from you.

Well said @PurpleButterflyWings .

I've spent the last 12 years renovating my house. No-one else wanted it, it had been on the market for 18 months, and was barely habitable.

But now that I've rewired, replumbed, redecorated it. Had it reroofed, insulated, repointed, new kitchen and bathroom fitted, all windows and exterior doors replaced. Spent hours negotiating with the local planning office, finding good contractors, sourcing compliant materials, doing a lot of the work myself and worked for 10 years in the garden.

Now it is a warm, comfortable, clean, decent home, suddenly it is desirable and somehow I'm not entitled to it any more!

Err...no! Sod off. Anyone expecting me to surrender it before I choose to, will get the door shut smartly in their face.

Totally. After getting a roasting earlier up thread just for saying I worked hard getting my house . I'm going to extend the kitchen onto my conservatory now just for the fucking hell of it ! .

😂

I think it depends on the house.

Our 3 bed is much larger than my dad's 5 bed. We have a large kitchen/dinner/living area, separate lounge, separate dining room, utility, downstairs shower room and 3 large double bedrooms, 1large ensuite bathroom and a large family bathroom.

My dad has a kitchen diner, lounge, a bathroom, double master room and 3 small singles and a box room.

I'm agog that anyone thinks of a three bed house as large and expects people to downsize from them.

My plan was to sell my large 3 bed end terraced when my children are much older and settled with their own families, I wanted to move to a smaller cottage with 2 bedrooms and smaller rooms (mainly because I don't fancy cleaning the house I have now until I'm in my dotage)
Some of the comments on here have honestly changed my mind, I think I will hang onto my large family home until I die and just get a cleaner!!
Me and my husband have worked damn hard to buy our property, we received no help from parents, no inheritance, nothing! The only reason I will move out of it is because I want to, most certainly not because there is a fictional queue of families desperate to buy it.

Me too, @OMG12 . Me and DH are knocking the door of 60 and have a lovely three bedroom cottage . Hell will freeze over before we'll ever give it up. We've got a downstairs shower room, with a loo, and one downstairs bedroom, and a nice big garden and a driveway... Like fucking hell will we ever move for any 'big family.' Fuck that for a game of soldiers. You chose to have loads of kids. Not my problem.

😆 Oh yeah that braggy man from The Fast Show sprung to mind for me too when @escapingthecity was waffling on about her and her family and their massive homes and their hundreds of guests, at all their parties al over the years...........blah blah blah blah blah............. 😬

Why would people throw away perfectly good fixtures and fittings just because they aren't the latest style

I’m finding the agism and stupidity on this thread gobsmacking!!!

MIL lives in the house that time forgot. Red velvet curtains with pelmets, apple green dining room (the teak 60s furniture is very in again!), black and white tiles in the hall, textured paper with a square and flower pattern embossed (now painted over). It's in fairly good nick but just very dated. And that's exactly how she wants it and exactly what DH will support her to keep and will ensure she stays there.

The fact is she and late FIL bought it in 1959. They moved in as newly weds, their three dc were born there, their church is round the corner and although she and two neighbours (one is 92) are the last standing, she will never leave. She probably should have when FIL died but stayed due to neighbours who have either died or moved on.

She has been on her own since the mid noughties. It's a bog standard 30's three bed semi. Its biggest draw back is that there's no downstairs bog.

MIL lives quite "poor" and nobody would guess she has a bean but if she were house proud and/or wanted to she could have the entire house renovated. It's just not what people fancy in their late 80s. DH makes sure it's watertight, warm and its fabric is maintained.

I only hopped back on this thread to see what @SauronsArsehole said because I thought your name was awesome, scrolling through.

The previous owners of my house were looking at it outside last weekend so I let them come in to have a look (one had lived here 25 years ago) - there were about 15 - 20 of them so it was a very fun showing of the house to so many people but they were lovely. Anyway my point is that I very happily still have the 1990 kitchen, bathrooms and carpet and curtains, not because I am poor or silly but because they still work and I am perhaps eco or wise enough not to replace things because a trend says a kitchen should now look like XYZ. I think they were surprised it was the same but in some ways pleased that choices they made over 30 years ago were still going strong.

However, I get the point people are making - some older people ma have the older fittings BUT also cannot afford or do not choose to make repairs and the fabric of the house might be affected such as by a leak in the roof. Mind you plenty of younger home owners cannot afford to fix things I am not sure this issue is confined to the old.

For those saying older people in a 3 or 4 bed house move to a 2 bed place some areas only have bog standard 3 bed semis or terraced houses and in some areas places with 1 bed room are flats and most of them are not accessible for the old so a house where you can sleep on the ground floor is often the best option.

My parents don't want to replace their 1960s kitchen or bathroom. They don't care that the central heating pipes are visible. It's been good enough for 60 years, it will do another 10.

And I agree. We've been in our house for 25+ years. It was a new build estate. I think we must have one of the few original kitchens and bathrooms left given all the skips I've seen over the years.

Same. My neighbour only heated one room of her house. Her house doesn’t have central heating. No real insulation in the loft. 1970s kitchen that’s falling apart. The house needs significant work. She’s selling up and it’s on the market for 200k and finally going to live with her daughter.

Me too.

Now this is ageist. So insulting.

No, that's perfectly true. Not all elderly people are wealthy. many (most?) live on a pretty basic state pension and paltry occupational one. Their only capital IS their house. Replacing kitchens and modifying bathrooms, updating antiquated heating systems and having to pay for repairs and tradesmen requires spending completely out of their league. I think downsizing is sensible for many people. I appreciate that I may change my mind if I get to that age, but Christ I'd be out of there like a shot, give some money to my kids, and take a sheltered rental, far cheaper to heat and maintain. No point scrimping when you have an asset you can realise.

For every "boomer" sat in a multi million pound house that they bought for £10, there are millions more older people in poverty.

Not true. Pensioners are less likely to be in poverty than any other cohort. Overall around 20% of people live in poverty, but the rate is 15% for pensioners and 27% for children.

I'll repeat that last bit for the hard of caring. Children are the group most likely to live in poverty in this country.

https://www.jrf.org.uk/data/overall-uk-poverty-rates#:~:text=In%202020%2F21%2C%20around%20one,living%20in%20poverty%20(27%25)..*

We live in a 4 bed house just DH and I retired in our 60s. It is owned outright. We keep a spare room for our DD to visit as she lives a distance away and DH has a hobby room and one room for my books, piano and grandkids toys and bed. We have no intention of moving and would give short shrift to anyone trying to make us. I cannot imagine any government of the UK would bring in mandatory moving at a certain age. There is certainly no way it could be enforced. Never going to happen thankfully.

I live next door to a house exactly like this.