Pensioners to be encouraged to downsize

Only way I can down size is into a tent , like you love living in a mixed community and have no plans to move.

He won't get anywhere with us either.
We need our house so that if necessary we can have live-in carers rather than going into a home.
I certainly don't want to live on a development with other oldies. While we can still afford cleaners and gardeners we are staying put.
Also I don't think first time buyers could afford it!

I know a few couples who have found it not financially sensible to downsize !

When people who come out with these notions (and who probably live in stately piles) downsize to a one bedroom town house (shed), I might consider it, otherwise, no thank you. I like my space and my garden too much. I also hate the idea of living in a development specifically designed for a certain age group.

We downsized in terms of cost when we moved here 5 years ago today, but not the size of the house. It is very big for the two of us but we absolutely love it and have no intentions of leaving.

Rather than building with pensioners in mind, why isn't there a drive for more affordable housing for young families?

Lucca, did you mean, NOT financially sensible. I am interested , only because I really should downsize or not …

I don't think a young family could afford one of these large houses.

The pensioner will move to a small house or sheltered dwelling, a wealthy family will move in and the first time buyer will still be waiting.

Yes! All the cost of moving house etc etc.
My brother decided they would be better off spending some money on a gardener and a cleaner,
The difference in price between the big house and the smaller one was not huge.

Good point Lucca legal fees, moving costs and the possible costs of new carpets, re decorating and perhaps replacing white goods etc. can make it very expensive.

I sometimes think that some politicians imagine all 'ordinary' pensioners ( those who are not of their own ilk ) do is sit in an armchair watching TV.

I'm in a 3 bed semi in an area where they are popular with young families. I would happily move to a 2 bed bungalow but they are like hen's teeth where I live.
I would prefer to be integrated inyo a mixed community though. I think it would depressing to live in an oldies community. No thank you. I love seeing children outside.

Also does anyone else get fed up with youngsters ( mumsnet) moaning about baby boomers?
Moaning because pensioners own their own homes and may have workbased pensions.
I don't actually think I am a baby boomer as I was not born until 1957 but I do own my own home and have a teacher pension, still have to wait for the state pension.

My husband and I worked really, really hard, went without an awful lot to own our own home ( interest rate at 15.5%), and have paid through the nose for our pensions, not to mention the fact that we stuck at our jobs despite the fact that we were bullied, jumped through hoops, goalposts were moved all the time and worked 24/7
I could go on but won't.
Just don't know why pensioners are 'picked on' all the time.

I live in one of the 32 outer London boroughs, I have a two bedrooms house. I dont want to move to a development with people all of similar ages.
We dont all have massive houses. Downstairs is extended and a good size, we did not add a further bedroom.

Those first-time buyers won't be able to afford the houses that the pensioners leave, anyway. They need first-time houses at a price that doesn't mean they can only eat bread or baked potatoes for the next twenty years. The ones who buy the pensioners' family homes will be middle-aged couples whose parents have died leaving them a share in their family home (with their sibling(s) getting their share too) and as a consequence they are able to upgrade to a similar sized home themselves.

Oh, no, I forgot. Their parents will no longer have the family home to pass on (or the value of it - that will have been spent on buying the downsize house, outbidding a first-time buyer. Anything left over will be needed to buy care), so the middle-aged won't be able to upgrade, so won't be able to sell their current home to younger people looking for a stepup home who won't be able to sell their starter home to a first-time buyer.

Does he not know that any item sells for as much or as little as someone will pay for it? If no-one can afford it and there are no similar others available at a lower price, it remains unsold, and the price drops. Supply and demand. To make the average price fall, increase the supply available, or increase the availablity and attractiveness of alternatives, such as social housing rentals, and don't sell off LA housing stock at laughable prices without replacing each unit that leaves the national rental stock.

I’m very torn on this issue. I too like my spacious house with lots of spare bedrooms, rooms for hobbies, a garden to wander BUT I do feel guilty that young families live in cramped quarters with little or no garden.
I’d like to see empty town centres, where tumbleweed rolls about, adapted to be flats for the old or young with vibrant life going on below in the form of cafes, bistros, galleries, independent shops. Freeing up suburban housing for families with children to have space.
I take your point that more affordable housing should be made available but doesn’t that just use up green spaces?
Green spaces to grow trees to control our environment, crops to feed us and room to roam.
We can’t have it all ways.

Chris Pincher is the 10th housing minister in 10 years. By the time anyone has spruced up their kerb appeal and put their house on the market the wind will have changed and he'll have been replaced.

I have downsized to three bedrooms and the only further downsizing I intend is into a coffin. How exactly are FTBs going to afford these large houses? What a load of tosh.

If the house is yours then you can do what you like. They can wait for you to leave in spirit!
The problem is there are too many people in the country. They cannot keep endlessly building over farmland, our countryside is disappearing at an alarming rate. People keep saying more homes should be built, but there will never be enough homes if the population keeps rising, so even more have to be built.....on and on and on.

Ginpin you and I are both 'Boomers' i.e. born between 1946 and 1964.

Stopping the triple lock and chucking us out of our homes.....it really is hard to see why the retired are the age group most likely to vote Tory. Let's hope we desert them in our droves next time around.

The sort of house that a pensioner would be "Rattling around" in is going to be way out of reach of a young couple. DD and her husband started their family in a one bedroom flat, which they eventually turned into a one and a half bedroom flat. It was another 10 years before they could afford a three bedroomed family home with a garden.

Chris Pincher has overlooked the fact that a house is also a home. Many pensioners have been in their homes for a long time, have local friends, enjoy local amenities, belong to community groups, have a familiar trusted GP etc. It is harder to settle into a new area when one is retired and while new friends and neighbours may be delightful, the relationship is not the same as one that has laster ten, twenty years or even longer.

lasted, not laster – and I claim to proofread.

I hope he realizes that many pensioners with children and grandchildren still want homes large enough to allow several of them to visit at the same time.

We live in a two bedroom house, which is good, as the second one, although small, means we can have either grandchildren or elderly parent to stay over when wanted or needed.

However, the living room and kitchen are too small for us to have more than seven people in the house at once (including me and OH), and that's a tight squeeze!
It's impossible for us to have both sons, their wives and our three grandchildren here together for a family meal

If I could afford it, I would upside, not downsize now!