Property for old age pensioners - this really needs sorting out

[Egggyweggghead]

My mum is 83, and fortunately still quite active and independent. My dad died a few years back, so she sold her house and moved near me
She lives in a 1 bedroom private flat with garden in a small town, that she pays £800 per month for (which is cheap)
Her landlord, due to an illness is selling up, so she needs to find somewhere else to live.

It has been quite an eye opener over the last few weeks over how few options there are regarding housing for this age group

Because of where we live is really expensive She has just enough money to purchase a 1 bed flat or terraced house with no or unkempt garden in a not very nice area of town or in a bigger town 10 miles away,

There are no rentals- anything that comes onto the market gets snapped up quickly and she needs something on the ground floor.

There are hundreds of retirement houses around us that have been up for sale for months/ years, yet they are building more and more 'luxury' retirement villages
The maintenance and service charges on the places up for sale are £2-5000 + per year
All are being reduced in price, so the prices are as low as £70,000 and still dont sell -whilst a small bungalow would be £350,000 which she can't afford

Also the retirement homes take 3-4 months to purchase, like a normal house and she needs to find somewhere quickly

I have hunted for retirement homes to rent, but they are either stupidly expensive at over £2000 per month or are for social tenants only, which my mum doesn't qualify for.

It seems to me that we are desperate for housing in this country, and loads of oaps are living in houses that are too big for them and they want to downsize and move to a more manageable property

But the only option available is to move to a retirement home that they have to purchase which will lose them money and will be unsaleable in the end

I wish someone would look at the 1000s of retirement properties that are sitting empty around the country and change the leasehold and allow them to be rented out at a sensible price.

On rightmove there are 335 retirement properties for sale within a 5 mile radius

I can only sympathise. We’re in private rented accommodation and our landlord gave us notice earlier this year that our lease won’t be renewed in January. On the plus side, we’ve had plenty of warning. The flip side is that I have become increasingly disabled since we moved here and we haven’t been able to find a single accessible property to rent anywhere near.

We have applied for social housing as I am now confined to the first floor, where the bathroom is, and currently spend my life in bed. Social housing is literally the only option if we want anything accessible, and we’re having to wait for a housing assessment from adult social care before we can apply for anything suitable - I’m not yet 55, and that’s the age cut-off for applications until the assessment is done. The process is taking months, and there is no guarantee we’ll have somewhere to move before our lease ends. We’re also not in a position to buy.

The whole system is a mess. There is next to no accessible housing being built, and with most new builds being designed to maximise the number of properties per site, proportions are such that adapting them is also hard as they’ve not been designed for a wheelchair to navigate even the ground floor.

There are some good retirement properties in my village that have restrictive covenants do that they can only be sold to over-65s. It keeps the prices down. They are mostly bought by people in their late 70s / 80s so they come on the market reasonably frequently and are a fraction of the price of other housing locally.

I live in a road with 38 houses, 8 of which are occupied by 1 person. 5 of the houses have 4 bedrooms. The problem is that most of the occupants have lived in the village for 30+ years and so want to stay here. There are no flats, and only a few bungalows, which when sold are converted into 2 stories. Growing families have nowhere to move to and neither do people wanting to downsize.

A one bed terrace with no or unkempt garden would be ok surely? You could sort the garden, if terraced if would be tiny anyway. Or a place 10miles away? Sounds ok too.

I think if you sell up and go to a more expensive area to rent there is obviously a massive risk that things may change. I'd accept the unkempt garden or a 10miles from you property if I were her.

I live in a road with 25 houses. All four or five bedrooms. One is rented out to a family. Two others have been bought by families in the last 2 years. One is currently for sale (widow owner died).
All the others are lived in by late middle aged couples, about half of which bought the houses from new in the 1970s for around £10k. Their mortgages have all been paid off for years.
None of us "oldies" are planning on moving out. I like having plenty of space for my adult children and their children to come and stay.

This. Which is often why this below happens

I'm not sure if you have seen the threads on here when developers have plans for big housing schemes but there is alot of angry people

Round here there's several new housing schemes being built but they're not social housing or even affordable to buy.

They're expensive to purchase despite being described as "affordable" (and few are 1 bedroom homes). They're also not building extra infrastructure - GPs, public transport, shops etc.

Re house prices potentially falling. It wouldn't actually matter that much, if there was sufficient social housing of all sizes - vitally including 1 and 2 bedroom homes for single people and only-child families, and including accessible homes for elderly and younger disabled people, and mixed communities so not "sink estates", and with extra infrastructure included - shops, GP practices, public transport.

Also I doubt house prices would fall by much. Loads of people would still want to buy. It provides equity for later life plus gives more choice over where to live and type of home.

I also don't know that many people really care (aside from a minority). Most people buy simply to have a secure home of their own. House price inflation isn't something they cheer on - because it stops them upsizing if growing family, and it stops their children and grandchildren having a (decent affordable) home.

I think I’m showing my age here as I remember when there was a shortcut of bungalows and hardly any flats!

one unspoken part of people eyeing up retirement flats - no children around. I find it unfair I can’t get one till 55, though in reality I might not have the money for service charge. I’ll pay extra for no children around.

but yes, 20 years ago there were no flats in my parents area so a lot of people were stuck in houses.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I do wonder if the retirement blocks with huge service charges will prove a long term business model or if they have to change it.

You’re absolutely right. We wanted to downsize. We did not want to live in an overpriced, soulless rabbit hutch. Took years to find our lovely flat.

'I’m not sure what the answer is'

Well, people should think twice before selling up and moving to a more expensive area then finding they can't afford a house they like. This scenario would have been the same if she was 84 or 40. We need to plan to live within our means and if we privately rent then always be aware that that may not be a long term secure solution.

I've every sympathy for those who cannot get on the property ladder but the op's mum had a mortgage free home. Why risk that then complain that the available properties in the new area are too expensive?

This thread also highlights the unacceptable postcode lottery in the UK (for those posters here abroad, is that the same where you are?)

Some posters mention having fairly good availability of older people's social housing, if not through the council then directly from housing associations.

Unfortunately that's a postcode lottery - and it shouldn't be. And people can't apply for social housing elsewhere even if they wanted to, because there's Local Only rules.

OP says she's in an expensive area. Many expensive housing areas used to be more affordable and have suffered from house price inflation over the last few decades, to the detriment of local people).

I don't know if OP is in London but if she is, I know from friends there that there's a massive shortage of housing for elderly (and younger disabled) people. It's also over 60, instead of over 55 like it is in many other areas. Obviously there's a shortage of housing for anyone not rich in London (which is another disgrace) but it's less difficult practically and psychologically, for young and healthy people to move elsewhere. Elderly and younger disabled need to be near family and support. Also there's Local Connection rules so people can't move elsewhere even if they wanted to.

Where I live isn't much better than London for social housing availability especially for elderly and disabled people, and it's not even an especially expensive area. It's not the very cheapest but it's just average for the UK.

@GrumpyInsomniac highlights a huge issue that's too often ignored. Younger disabled people, as well as older people, need suitable and affordable housing.

Her mum had a house too big to manage alone after losing her husband. Many older people struggle to manage in their former family home when alone - financially or in practical terms. She was also grieving and maybe didn't have the clearest headspace at that time.

Also maybe she didn't live close enough to OP and moved to be nearer. It's important for many other people (and younger disabled) to be close to family and support. There might've been few suitable homes available to buy at the time so she had to rent.

She probably also didn't realise the change in private renting. An 85 year old would've known private renting as being a relatively secure option. Because in the past it was. It had secure tenancies, so if the landlord had to sell (as is the case with OP mum's landlord) it simply sold to another landlord. Even although that ended in the 90s, just in the last 10 years private renting has become more difficult - more unaffordable and less homes available, especially homes suitable for elderly or disabled people, eg. ground floor.

If you start restricting extensions etc like this, where does it end?

The reasoning behind suggesting a ban on extending bungalows to two storeys is because bungalows, being 1 storey so no stairs, are ideal for elderly and younger disabled people. There's a shortage of this type of housing so it's a sensible restriction imo.

We have a new development of retirement flats about five minutes walk away. The cost of a two bedroom flat is similar to a recently built four bedroom semi.

Price of bungalows is often down to the large plots they are built on, quite why they have such large gardens I'm not sure? Some idea about the retired needing a project?
The next street to me has some lovely 2 bed bungalows, they all regularly sell for 40k more than my 3 bed terrace is worth.

@JohnCravensNewsround I think my father in law would be quite happy to rent- I think the main issue is he's worried about instability and being booted out with not much notice at any point at 85- and he won't get social housing around here

It would be good in areas of high need to restrict development projects on bungalow plots to units with single floors only. Some of those big plots would make really nice sites for a group of small 1 or 2 bed single floor houses, rented on either an almshouse model, a cooperative community model or just plain old social housing. I worry about social housing still being vulnerable to Rifgt to Buy though. I think there should be more tenant cooperatives in this country.

I have friends in a park home and they love it, feels like on holiday when I visit, but they are difficult to sell, you just have to be prepared that you will lose money in the end and that it is just for living in not an investment like property. Also look carefully at the small print as some say once a home is over a certain age it has to be replaced. Its also a bit cut off in the countryside but they are happy to online shop a lot of the time so if unable to drive they would do that all the time. It feels very safe.

I don't understand it either. I have a couple of friends in the UK with parents living in bungalows. They can't really cope with the big gardens and dealing with this becomes yet another task for the adult child.

The bungalow estates are also stuck on the outside of town, so once driving becomes difficult, that's yet another issue.

Perhaps self-driving cars will come to the rescue, but even once they are 100% foolproof it is going to take decades before these are widely available at a commercial level (also, self-driving cars'll probably just turbocharge congestion, with roads getting more and more clogged up because they are full of older people sitting there in the car doing the crossword while the car slowly inches its way to the garden centre, while working-age people tear their hair out with frustration...)

Bungalows here are all on cul-de-sacs off the main desirable road. It's about 10 mins walk to town. So of course most have been knocked upwards into the loft to make them 4 beds and a few have had large conservatories added. They sell for over £300k for a 2 bed in a town where you can get a 4 bed detached on the outskirts for the same price. Location x 3!

That’s true where I am as well the only flats that don’t need to be bid for are over55s which seem to be regularly available. They are good in a way as many of the other residents have carers and cleaners etc. It’s easy to step up care when needed. I live rurally and it’s impossible or eye wateringly expensive as carers need to come from the city. It costs £60 per visit in travel and mileage before you’ve even got them in the door.

Same here. Small estate built in the 70s. All 4/5 bed homes. All but one are now occupied by 60+ couples or singles whose children have left home. It’s crazy! Some are having carers daily. It’s a mix of people who want to move but can’t find anywhere suitable or people who wished they’d moved when younger but now stuck because they’re too old to cope with the hassle. Such a shame to see the only two young children playing out on their own when there were loads of kids playing and socialising when we first moved here 30 years ago. Now it’s akin to a retirement complex! All these family homes going to ruin when families are desperate to find bigger homes!

I don’t entirely get what you want? You know £800 a month is low for the area so now she has to move she needs to accept rent on a comparable place will be more.
Whats wrong with purchasing a one bedroom with no or a poorly maintained garden? Could she even maintain it herself anyway at 83? After the cost of purchasing it’s a relatively minor outlay to have someone come and clear the garden.
And I don’t see the issue with the retirement property? Doing that even 5 years ago would have been a much better investment than £800 a month in rent.
It seems people sell their big home but resent the money going on housing then now and in the future. Sure this property doesn’t become an asset to pass on but financially it would have made sense.

Some council tower blocks in Manchester ended up being mostly old people. They were nice places. Communal laundry rooms in some and a good caretaker meant they were nice places to live. Lift sorted quickly when it had a problem but that was a good service across all the blocks.
That was twenty years ago though so things have probably changed.

I'm not sure they have residential caretakers any more.

What is the point of this post?