Upsizing in retirement

[Mum2Fergus]

Posting here and in Money Matters too for traction.

I’m going against the grain in retirement and looking to upsize instead of downsize…or rather, I’d like to upsize - however no-one will take me on for a mortgage as I effectively have no ‘earned’ income…it would appear pension drawdown is not counted. Frustrating to say the least!

Has anyone successfully navigated the same or similar position?

It's obviously unusual to be upsizing in retirement, is there a particular reason why you need to do so? DH and I upsized a few years before retirement but moved areas so ended up in a larger home but still saving money from our previous sale. We are now youngish retirees and while I would say that all the extra space is wonderful, room to entertain, have several people stay at one time, there are also some downsides. Everything like heating and insurance costs more and there is more maintenance, decorating etc to be done. So you really need to consider if you want this space and how you are going to manage it. Our next move will definitely be to a considerably smaller home.

In terms of financing, we obviously continued our mortgage from working days. We are just at the point where we need to remortgage and have come across exactly the same issues as you. Our considerable savings and DH's relatively modest pension drawdown income (at this stage) are not sufficient to get any kind of decent deal so our only option was to remain with our existing lender and move onto a higher rate. For us, it's not the end of the world because we could theoretically pay off the full amount but decided to stick with the mortgage bacause we still earn a higher percentage from our investments than we are paying on the mortgage.

Do you currently have a mortgage? Will your current lender not consider continuing with you, perhaps porting your mortgage to a new property?

We upsized and retired (57 & 53) but used savings so no mortgage required.

Fully understand the desire for a larger property in retirement and we are definitely not downsizers.
We had not bothered moving while still working as we knew we wanted to relocate for retirement but equally, we knew that when we did move it was going to be to a more spacious property.