To suggest the government incentivising downsizing

[PoinsettiaPosturing]

There seems to be a couple of issues discussed very frequently here that could be potentially helped (not solved) by the government incentivising downsizing for home owners.

There's a significant issue of property availability to buy and rent, and a huge number of older people who are single/couples in 3/4/5 bed houses. This means that younger generations are stuck in their starter homes and priced out of long term homes.
MIL & FIL have a 4 bed detached and constantly complain about the cost to heat and maintain it, but hate that it'll cost them loads in stamp duty, moving fees & solicitors costs to downsize.

Perhaps Rishi could incentivise downsizing, so if you reduce the number of bedrooms when you move it over 60, then you're relieved of stamp duty, and perhaps receive a £2,000 (debatable) grant towards moving costs and expenses.

There are also constant complaints that older people stay in their homes long after they 'should' based on significant care needs, decreasing mobility and long term repair issues.

The incentive could encourage people moving to smaller houses, flats, retirement communities or even combining households with family members.

This would hopefully:

1. Free up larger properties for families/younger people wanting to upsize
2. Hopefully mean older people have less heating and energy expenses
3. Encourage older people to move into properties more suitable to reduced mobility & care needs longer term
4. Mean older properties are restored/better maintained

I appreciate there are loads of people who want to stay in their family home until the end, and this wouldn't change that view point, but maybe a social movement towards older people reducing the size of their homes would create a bit of social contagion where it's more openly discussed?

Also, house builders could be encouraged to build more bungalows/smaller homes specifically for this scheme which perhaps are built with stair lifts in mind etc.

YABU - this will never work, ridiculous suggestion

YANBU - this has legs, you should go into politics

Could you let me know how I can be one of the people who don't die please

Crikeyalmighty · Yesterday 10:30
@MrsSkylerWhite I'm 60 and yes it's free prescriptions- came in handy as I've just started to need them!! You can also get free eye tests (used that too) !! Also at 60 you can get a rail pass that takes 1/3 off all fares. I use that too- most other stuff kicks in at 67 -“

I didn’t know that, thank you. Do wonder why though when I would hazard a guess that most 60 year olds are still working.

my problem is in my head. Where I’m still about 27 🤣 I look in the mirror occasionally and realise otherwise. I really ought to start looking into this stuff.

God! DH is 70. We really are quite normal and capable and intend to stay that way. My DMs friend had a “friend” help her move. Helped herself to her money too. Most of us are capable. We might have big houses but that’s not the same as being too mentally deficient to move. I know loads of people in quite big houses. In fact I know a couple who have just upsized so grandchildren can stay. How dare they?!

The more I think about this, the more I think that it's counter productive, and will make life even more difficult for first time buyers. The demand for small houses will rise and the prices for them will go up. So the young ones will have fewer properties available and have to pay even more (and find ever higher deposits) to get a roof over their heads.

Yes Saraclara. I think nothing needs to be done to "help" the housing market if it means lowering tax for a very undertaxed asset compared to profits that can be made .

All attempts tend to back fire by longterm further raising prices of property.

But down sizers don’t want or need first time buyer properties, they generally want a detached bungalow with garden and garage close to amenities. I have a large 5 bed detached, even when I am 80 plus I don’t want to ever return to my 2 bed terraced first house, it’s taken years to achieve getting to the top of the ladder, I’m certainly not going to want to move to the bottom again.

There is always this suggestion to move older people to small flats. Not all flats are ground floor and not all buildings have lifts.

@LadyVictoriaSponge
No one is building these bungalows. See my comments pages back! Shortages of land, land costs, building costs and fewer buyers all mean detached bungalows are not a cost effective use of land. You could build your own by demolishing your house. Also convert your ground floor. Cheaper than a detached bungalow quite often. Land must be utilized effectively. No developer will build bungalows when most buyers want a house!

No, an identical number of houses become available at each level of the chain and people move into the large houses vacated by pensioners, people move up into those, and so it goes on, right through the chain. It facilitates all levels to be in more appropriately sized housing.

People in houses too small for their family will be more easily able to move and vacate their "small" home for others, instead of extending it - extensions make houses more expensive and reduce the "pool" of smaller homes.

In our own area and another town where DS is moving for his first job after leaving Uni, the market is awash with "retirement" properties at the bottom end of the market, i.e. those with planning constraints for over 55's or similar. Looking at DS's future town, there wasn't a single house/flat on Rightmove that he could afford on his pretty good graduate wage (literally nothing at all), but dozens of retirement flats at the same price level, some shown as being listed for over a year! Our own area is very similar, no small houses/flats/bungalows for normal buyers, but several pages worth of specific "retirement" homes. There's a small courtyard of them built a few years ago near where I work - over half still have sale boards on them and they're not particularly expensive.

Perhaps instead of planners insisting on retirement homes through the planning process, they should open up the market to everyone and let developers build similar flat complexes for younger buyers where there's a clear demand. Or, as said above, bring in some kind of "real" practical help and support aimed at the elderly who want to downsize but aren't capable of organising it themselves.

Why is the default detached bungalows with lots of land. How about semis with smaller gardens?

Not every elderly person is living in a huge detached house with a large garden. Lots will be living in semis, lots will have small gardens.

When we were looking at buying our home 30 years ago, there was a large new estate being built, which included a number of small bungalows with small gardens - they were the first to sell! So there is the demand. In our village, there are huge areas of 1960s/1970s semi detached bungalows - they sell as soon as they come onto the market - mostly 1 or 2 bed, mostly with pretty small/average gardens.

We've also a few roads of terraced single story homes, I suppose you can't call them bungalows with being terraced, but again, they're popular and sell fast on the rare occasion one comes onto the market.

I think "we" as a country, including developers, planners, etc need to stop thinking of bungalows having to be huge, detached with large gardens, and start looking at providing single story versions of the current wide range of housing stock, i.e. choice of bedroom numbers (1,2 or 3), smaller gardens, semis and terraced not just detached, etc. A pair of semi bungalows can be built on the same floor space as a pair of semi houses, so land cost isn't an issue, bungalows use fewer materials, so lower material costs and lower labour, yet likely to sell for similar price to a semi two story, so there should be more profit for the developer. Elderly/infirm will pay more for the convenience of single story even for something smaller.

Why is the default detached bungalows with lots of land. How about semis with smaller gardens?

Not every elderly person is living in a huge detached house with a large garden. Lots will be living in semis, lots will have small gardens.

But the assumption on here is exactly that, it’s what the thread is all about, older people owning the big detached family houses that everyone one wants, while families are living in the small semis. The default perfect retirement home, and one that a lot of people express that they would like, is exactly as I have described, a detached bungalow, close to amenities, people say they either don’t exist or do exist but are just as expensive as their current home so they end up costing more after you factor in moving and refurbishment costs. I’m pretty sure there are many people who don’t want to move from a detached to having to share walls, but are happy to move sideways to a different style of property that suits their needs, hence many people staying put because so few are available.

On a separate note if as you say in your post older people are living in small semi’s with small gardens these do not sound like houses they need to downsize from until they are very old, I think an active older person could happily live in that for a long time.

I think what I'd want when I retire ideally is within shuffling distance a high street, large reception space for family, a bedroom that two kids could sleep in (if we have grandkids, less of an issue if not), easy outside access so you can have pets. I also think maybe people should think of designing homes for downsizers where each flat comes with a big storage space in the basement to store all the stuff your adult kids may still not have room to take off your hands!

I definitely think there should be incentives to downsize. However, I would not want to live in a poky, badly built/converted flat with noisy neighbours and an expensive service charge.

Build quality has to improve (a lot) across the board.

This is an interesting idea, but I feel that a lot of people potentially affected would be reluctant to allow even more state interference in their personal affairs.
Not everyone over 60 (the number used in the original post) needs "old people's" housing.
I know quite a few people of 80 (and 90+) who are still quite happily living in their own homes, where they brought up their families (and some are still more than capable of driving). They do not require any outside "care" - whatever that is and have a social network and, often, very active social life. The moment you start "moving them on" you remove all the familiar and can invoke a downward mood spiral.
Did anyone suggest that the late Queen downsized to a 2 bedroomed bungalow?

Not RTFT, but the point about plenty of over 60s being perfectly capable of maintaining larger houses - I wish more people would consider not their capabilities now but in the future. I know so many people who refuse to move from larger and hard to maintain properties when they are in their 60s/70s and capable for that exact reason, failing to realise that the point where they aren’t capable of maintaining it anymore is often too late! One of my friends has to go round to her elderly fathers house twice daily and help him up and down the stairs and even do his cleaning because he refused to move somewhere more suitable when he was younger and his mobility only slightly failing and now it’s too late and he can’t mentally or physically face a move. So he stays, living in one room while she arranges her life around helping out. I know a few stories like this. But I totally agree that stamp duty fucking sucks and is a massive barrier to people moving as and when their needs change.

@Themidnightpig

I wish more people would consider not their capabilities now but in the future. I know so many people who refuse to move from larger and hard to maintain properties when they are in their 60s/70s and capable for that exact reason, failing to realise that the point where they aren’t capable of maintaining it anymore is often too late!

Fully agree. When we were looking at houses, we were aghast and saddened by the state of some of them, often where the owner had died, where it was a clearly previously loved and well maintained house/garden that had simply been massively neglected, often obviously for 10/20 years. It was hard to imagine people had been living in them just a few months earlier, basically living in absolute squalor.

There is definitely a point in time where it just becomes "too much" to move, and in most cases, the occupants don't know it until that time has passed and it's too late.

We're pushing 60, and at the moment in reasonably good health etc., but we've both agreed that as soon as DS is settled in his job (currently just got a graduate job, so maybe in a couple of years' time when we know he's not coming back), we'll downsize. We've seen it with both sets of parents who got "trapped" in their over-sized homes because ill health (physical and/or mental), hit them before they expected it - in both cases, literally going from being perfectly able to run the home to really struggling and "past it" within a few months.

There has also been a big generational shift in expectations. My grandmother lived in a huge country pile with acres of land so downsized in her 60s when my grandfather died to “small” 4 bedroom village house in the Home Counties. This house although very very old was fine until she died in her 90s. Accessible on foot to everything, garden just the right size, only one flight of stairs etc. When she died it became a family home for a family with 2 children (who would never expect to own a country pile or even want it). In fact, for this family (early millennials/Gen X) it is considered a perfect family house.
Those even younger living clutter free with screens and 1-2 kids have very different expectations to the boomers/and war generation. When you both work full time spending the whole Sunday mowing a garden isn’t even a big aspiration anymore.

So it is my view that the house builders really need to be building 3 bedroom houses that suit most people into very old age. So there simply becomes less need to upsize and downsize. 1 forever home you purchase in your late 20s to late 30s and can stay in.

When you both work full time spending the whole Sunday mowing a garden isn’t even a big aspiration anymore

Some of us enjoy gardening….

My childhood home was a detached house with a huge garden at the end of a culdesac right on the outskirts of town. Just fields behind. I wish she had downsized and moved further into town to the local “village” where she would have had shops etc right on her doorstep. I think it might have slowed down her cognitive decline. As it was she was isolated especially when she gave up driving. But she was obsessed with privacy and couldn’t stand the thought of being able to hear her neighbours.

Sorry, to clarify my post I’m talking about my mum.

We love our house, which is a fairly plain vanilla 70s upside down house overlooking the most magnificent view. It's not the house that will sell. it's the view. The house is nice, comfortable and relatively energy efficient. When we move, it will sell very quickly, because there isn't another house on the market that will permit a price negotiation. My neighbours are not selling.