What's the deal with residential park homes??????

[A9SheryRan]

My mum is 60 next year and is currently going through a messy divorce. She is having to sell her home in the process and will have to downsize.

She won't come out of the divorce with a lot of money and doesn't want a mortgage/loan in her retirement. She's currently looking for properties now and her only asks are that she has a garden (she LOVES gardening).

We've seen some residential park homes which are within her budget in some decent areas but what are they like?
She's young at heart and always spends time with the grand-kids. After she's settled she wants a pet too.

Are residential park homes a good route to go down? Anyone live in or know anyone who lives in them? What are the pros and cons for someone like her?

All I would say is be VERY careful, they have a habit of changing terms when they please and the initial paperwork permits this.

Do a search for the support groups that have evolved due to disgruntled residents and join them before you buy.

Lots of hidden charges in retirement villages which can make them difficult to sell. Have a careful look at the terms. there was a recent article about this in the Guardian.

My grandparents live in one, have done since the early 00s. It's a beautiful home, probably bit much difference size wise to my house. I don't know what fees they pay, but they did mention last year that gas/electric are billed to the site as a whole and the owner pays it. They all pay a set amount every month which the owner didn't put up. So even when utility prices went up their bills didn't.

I'm not sure how many park owners are so nice though.

Oh and they live there year round, and are allowed visitors including children, including overnight. You just have to be a certain age (55?) To live there.

Go to Hull for a month?

I think you have to earn a certain amount to be considered

My mum looked into this in similar circumstances at a similar age and was warned off them by a solicitor. I think a lot of the same sort of problems exist with them as with retirement flats.

But if you go into it with your eyes open and think through how some of the rules could affect you in future, then it could be a good solution.

That applies to a lot of leasehold flats as well.

Residential park homes are generally lease hold so make sure there is a decent lease before she buys anything. You can live in it all year round, it's the holiday homes that you have vacate for 2 months out of 12 due to council tax charges.

This is my understanding, especially that the owners of the parks are extremely prone to becoming dictatorial and rapacious.

No that's a really bad idea. Ground rent, service charges, moving out for 3-4 weeks every year. On top of that the park can force you to upgrade your static home if it gets older, and given that your mother has a good 20-30 years left it will almost certainly happen. Can she look into a shared ownership flat or bungalow? The housing association owns half but the rent on that half is usually pretty low.

Be careful with holiday residential parks. There was a Panorama on them very recently and a lot of people can be turfed out unexpectedly and lose a lot of money. In particular, a lot of people on the show encountered problems if they complained about the state of their homes.

That's not true. Loads of people live on a site near me and they have to move out for 3 weeks in January.

A load of my husbands family have sold up and moved onto park homes. They love it. Their home is bigger than our house. They do have to be off site for a month a year. They've got a villa in Spain so go there.

They depreciate like anything but they don't intend to leave.

Your husband's family are the mercy of the Spanish government and the park owners.
That sounds precarious to me 😬

It seems that there are good ones and bad ones.

If she finds a park she likes, make sure that she speaks to several current residents about things like charges, maintenance, etc. (Or do it for her; we all go a bit rose-tinted when we find a home we like the look of.)

And even with a good park there is always the risk that a nice park owner might sell up to a bad one, either a shady operator like Alfie Best (Google him, it's not pretty) or a rapacious private equity company, as has happened with care homes. Ensure that there is money in the budget for repairs and unexpected charges.

It looks like the government may finally be about to reform some of the worst bits of leasehold law (the Tories started to, but ran out of time), but I don't know if that will also cover caravan parks.

60 isn’t old 😢

My friend lives in one. She is in her 7Os now has been there for about 15 years. She loved it until the owner sold it. She and the other owners are now scared of the new owner. He does illegal things, makes unfair charges and apparently when someone died he burnt her home, saying the service charges hadn’t been paid.The plan is to get rid of the original owners. I don’t know the ins and outs but she is convinced that now her home which would have been 165000 pounds ( much less than any house in the area) will be worthless. She is convinced he will somehow destroy it. She is convinced there is nothing she can do about her situation. When I saw her I tried to understand but couldn’t. Not sure if my comments help at all.

I would be very careful. There will be ground rent and payment for services. Look at the clauses - a friend was told to move her home at short notice because it was not new enough. She couldn't re-home it within the given time, so it was taken from her by the freeholder. A ground floor flat might be a better option.

We're doing everything we can to get her what she deserves from her situation but morale is low and stress really high at times so we're exploring all options to be prepared - her biggest worry is where she will live after.

She is also welcome to live with us (her kids/grandkids) for as long as she needs but she is a VERY independent person and is adamant to pick up the pieces quickly and start the next chapter of her life (by herself).

They are an absolute nightmare and I wouldn't go near them.

The one near where I go on holiday have a line in the contract that make clear you own the home but not the land it is built on. Which, according to one of my friends (solicitor) is not unusual.

They're notoriously hard to re-sell because so many have dodgy leases or come with dodgy contracts - ditto like retirement flats tbh. They often have service charge/ground rent which has not limit on how much they can increase by year on year etc.

Honestly, I think if people have family they're better off trying to move in with family and adding on a granny annex than touching a residential park home/retirement home/insert other type of harm. Multi-generational living is on the increase and tbh if OP's mum loves spending time with her grandchildren then it might well cater to her requirements better.

By BIL lives in one. It is spaceous and in a stunning location. He is trying to sell as forced into retirement due to ill heath. No one interested as ground rent is currently,£4000 a year. It was £750 when bought 4 years ago. The landowner can charge anything they like. Also council tax is quite high as it is in a high band. It is assessed a normal 2 bed detached bungalow despite being on a residential park.

My parents live in a residential park home. You need to be over 50 to live there, but apart from that there aren't any other stipulations. Most of the residents have dogs and my children have stayed with them overnight with no issues. The owner of the park doesn't actually live there. The ones people are referring to where they're expected to leave for a month a year, are usually on holiday parks, rather than residential parks.

My parents plot has a garden on 3 sides, and my Mum has made it really lovely.

Yes this is correct, you only own the home, you don't have any property rights to the land it is situated on and legislative protection is weak.

A lot of them look quite nice, it's the legal and financial position that makes people so vulnerable

Has she seen a lawyer?

Of course it will be expensive. But they will get a fair deal for her and go some way to shielding her from this crook. It will be an investment in her future. Both in peace of mind and financial.

Stress and low morale really will be bad if she ends up on one of the nightmare parks that pp are describing.

My inlaws live on one that's for 60+ and it's quite lovely, very community based, they even have a residents club house being built; they already host groups themselves in their homes, doing raffles and knitting for the local hospitals...FiL was in hospital a while ago and many of the residents would pop some food and mints in or pop a card of well wishes/anything needed 🤭 their's is year-round living (some parks do have 2-4 weeks when have to leave, this one does not). There's no restrictions regards visiting children/grandchildren on site (never heard that one before) as inlaws take the grandchildren occasionally for sleepovers 🤷‍♀️ no restrictions on parcels etc being delivered (didn't even know this could be stipulated!) and I think the only real restriction is how long people can stay - that's 28 days (inlaws occasionally have their siblings to stay as their static home DOES have 4 weeks where have to leave the site; this is where the siblings have to lean on family to host them 🙊 not great when the people aren't overly easy to tolerate 😉). There is maintenance that's done on the buildings which is covered by occupier, BUT there are adaptations which are covered by the 'association' like easier to use taps, which are covered.

It really is a case of researching all the terms- but inlaws are happy and enjoy an active/accessible social life (they're mid-late 60s so plenty of life in them yet 😉) it reassures us as well that there's always people around incase anything happens as get older.