Do people who talk of a 'forever home' forget they are going to age?

[flashbac]

Who wants to rattle around in a family home when the kids have left and you can no longer do the stairs? Are people intending on hogging a home too big for their needs until they die or am I missing something?

What is a 'forever home'?

I have only heard the term ‘hogging a home’ in relation to council houses. A single elderly person living on one floor in a lovely three / four bed council house sort of scenario.

IL and DP looked at downsizing - there wasn't the huge choice you'd expect and all found they like downstairs space even more since retiring as they spend more time in the house.

My DP have a stair lift now and IL thought about getting one after recent health issue - actually my DP have downstairs toilet so better position than IL - but IL feel too old to move now anyway.

Bedrooms do get used for storage and family stopping over.

DGP one side designed their house - 2 bed but massive downstairs suited them as when they couldn't do the stairs there was a downstairs loo and a room that could be made into a bedroom.

This house - 4bed - but close to GP, chemist shops good bus routes good local walks, downstair bathroom,downstairs room that could be turned into bedroom - easy low mainatance garden - before that coudl turn bedrooms into offices or hobby rooms. We could stop here till old age very easily but will likely move on with work.

I do think about this when I watch one of those property 'move to the country' type programmes.

It's often a retired couple looking to move to somewhere very rural, but their wishlist is astonishing, as I assume they've been used to having a large family home, and presumably have money to burn, having sold off that home.

It's often 'we need four bedrooms, and a separate outbuilding for my art projects, and ideally at least a few acres of land for my chickens, and we don't really want neighbours closer than the next valley'

And I think - you're 66! Fine now, but what about in 5/10/15 years' time, and you can't get out of your rural idyll to buy supplies for days when it snows, or if you have a fall and nobody notices for ages, or if you need help at home a few times a day in the middle of nowhere?

Putting in a stairlift is much cheaper than moving so 'hogging' makes financial sense. A house that you have maintained yourself might well turn out to be less of a money pit than an unknown one you downsize into. I'll stay put. Bungalows can get so hot in a heatwave!

Btw if you own a house big or small is up to you when and if you want to sell it. Regardless of housing crisis. This is not the fault of house owners.

We are in a forever ho e but it's not really forever as when I'm
Too old
For it I will down size so it's a forever for next 15/20 years.

Well I plan to upgrade to a 3 bed flat from our current 2 bed so I hope no one minds me staying there until death.

Also my parents have known some of their neighbors for more than 40 years. Why move from immediate help and support in old age?

It's a recent term
We moved into our home 30 years ago, before DC. It's a huge barn conversion. At the time we didn't stretch ourselves financially but we live in a cheap part of the UK.
I think there is too much emphasis on greed and making a profit rather than having a home
DC now grown and left but I see no reason to move just because the house is large. It was fine for us before we had children and is perfect now. If necessary we could adapt for disability / frailty.
In fact a smaller bungalow would cost the same.

I won’t be leaving my house. I’m in a HA house with a secure tenancy so I’m set for life. It’s taken me years to bring it up to the standard I wanted, and it’s finally done. Now I’m just going to enjoy it. A spare room or two will be handy as I’ll rent one out if I ever need money (this is allowed, you just can’t sublet the entire house).

I think it helps with fitness in old age to have stairs. I read on here about “bungalow legs” and googled and found it’s a real thing. If it becomes totally impossible I’ll get a stairlift.

I would have absolutely nothing to gain by downsizing so I won’t be doing so.

Are people intending on hogging a home too big for their needs until they die or am I missing something?

The simple answer is yes. We designed our home so it can easily be adapted as we age to accommodate our needs. It was built with love and I shall be staying here for the rest of my life.

I don't ever want a forever home. When I was little I remember my Muim chatting to her friend who was moving, and she said 'this is the house I'm going to die in' and that's stuck with me.

I don't want to know I'm only moving somewhere to leave in a coffin.

People often stay in a larger house due to wanting more living space - houses with less bedrooms tend to have less, and wanting a garden. The 2 bed houses near me are mostly rentals with no garden, there aren't many long term residents. There is a lack of smaller, quiet houses with a small garden in city suburbs, so people end up staying in their larger houses. I don't see my house as a forever house, it's the house that suits my situation at the moment and one day I will move if I need to.

Well I’m in mine and it makes me happy to know that this is it.

I'm already looking for my Last House, somewhere with no stairs, or at least a downstairs bathroom and bedroom. I'm in my 40s

That's exactly what my DGPs did - bought a manageable bungalow in their 40s and then lived there until they died aged 83 and 97.

It is a bit of a twee phrase, but I think most people realise they aren't going to be there immortally 'forever' until the end of time. You might as well tell people off for telling their children and grandchildren that they 'love them forever' when, as we all realise, they almost certainly won't be able to do that for the last decades of the younger person's life, however much they wanted to.

In terms of a lifespan, 'forever' is just used to mean 'for the foreseeable future' - i.e. 'if circumstances meant that I never had to leave here, I would be very happy, as I have no desire to move again and am very content'.

I'm wondering how commercially successful Clinton's would find cards and teddy bears saying "I will love you indefinitely" on them

@immersivereader

Kirsty and Phil lingo to sell their program

Agreed. It's a nonsense concept.

Lives change, people move jobs, people age and their needs change. No-one can commit to living somewhere forever.

It just means long term home to me.
I take it that they are happy with location for as long as they can see and dont intend moving unless something significant forces them to.

I don’t like the phrase either, OP.

I’m not very good with “where do you see yourself in ten years time?” type questions. Who knows? We might move abroad or move to the coast, we might have a big windfall and move to a mansion, we might lose our jobs and live in a little 2 bed somewhere cheap. We might fall out of love and part company, we might have a fourth child, deliberately or accidentally.

It’s not so much the tempting fate thing that bothers me, just the lack of recognition about how firmly and quickly life can change.

YANBU at all - it’s such a wanky saying.

It’s almost as irritating as “get all your ducks in a row”

Are you hoping that everyone in under-occupied homes will put them on the market and create a glut so that you can afford to buy one, OP?

Without a doubt there's a housing crisis in the UK. If you're suffering because of it, your enemy isn't the relatively few billionaires who leave large properties empty in central London. It's not the retirees living in 4 and 5 bedroom homes that they worked their whole lives to pay the mortgage on. Neither is it immigrants 'stealing our homes and jobs' which you're a short hop and skip away from saying.

Look to successive governments which have promoted all manner of social and economic policies aimed at making the rich, richer and keeping the poor, poor. The poverty trap in the UK is encompassing more and more people each year, and the breadth of poverty can now be measured not just by housing insecurity but food insecurity and - for the most unfortunate souls - insecurity of life and limb.

I don't want to know I'm only moving somewhere to leave in a coffin.

But what's the alternative? You know that you will be eventually leaving somewhere in a coffin, so why not spend the time before then living where you're happiest? How does it improve matters to seek out a mouldy ramshackle hovel to move to for the last 10 years of your life, just so that you won't be ending your life in your beloved home?!

We are hopefully in our forever home but it's a new build designed for the over 55's. It has a downstairs loo and shower. No front step so you can just wheel in a wheelchair at ease if needed. It has upstairs bedrooms but one room downstairs can be turned into a bedroom if needed. Lesson learnt after watching parents in a large house with large garden unable to cope.

How can they be "hogging" a house that they own?

I suppose it's better than "this is my 'until I become unable to care for myself and move into a nursing home where my arse gets wiped by well meaning kids struggling on minimum wage because carers are not valued as they should be who call me pet or dear or love and generally talk to me like I'm 5' home"

@flashbac

Who wants to rattle around in a family home when the kids have left and you can no longer do the stairs? Are people intending on hogging a home too big for their needs until they die or am I missing something? What is a 'forever home'?

What if my needs require a music room, a sewing room, a home gym, and a separate TV and living room space, guest rooms for all my kids during Christmas?

I can always put a stairlift in.

Why do older people have to be stuck living in tiny one-bedroom bungalows?