Should older people move house to make way for the young?

Maybe I'm not 'getting' it, but say if I was to downsize from a 5-bed house to a 1 or 2-bed, isn't that taking the smaller houses out of the first-time buyer market?

No they shouldn't have too Doodledog and you make a good point ViceVersa about smaller houses being taken out of the first time buyer market.

Good point ViceVersa, I hadn't thought of that.

What about older people who need at least one spare bedroom to accommodate visiting family?

Yes I do love my home and have no real wish to downsize. The thought of moving again fills me with apprehension. We have done so much to improve our house and to make it into the home we want. One of my biggest concerns would be if a new place needed not just painting and decorating but if it needed major work such as a new bathroom or kitchen. Not sure we could cope with that. We would if possible try to make adaptations to our current home to meet our needs as we age.

ViceVersa

Maybe I'm not 'getting' it, but say if I was to downsize from a 5-bed house to a 1 or 2-bed, isn't that taking the smaller houses out of the first-time buyer market?

Quite.

Plus times have changed, even in the last year.

Few younger people want a 5 bed nowadays[cost of maintenance, upkeep, renovations and utility bills].
5 bed and upwards often have to lower their asking price, or come off the market altogether, from what I am seeing.

I didn't post on the thread about loving your home, but I do, in part due to the location. I'm ten minutes from a bus, or a train, the beach, High Street shops and my doctor's surgery. The bus route includes the hospital, if I need it.
All of this will, hopefully, help me to maintain my independence.
As others have said, newer builds seem larger than my 1930 semi, unless I want an apartment with no outside space, and are often out of town.
A small development nearby included a new bungalow. It sold very quickly.

This comes up regularly doesn't it?

Argument can be made for both sides. But my gut reaction - so not an objective thought - is this:

When you buy a house, it has to be yours until or unless you decide to sell. For whatever reason you made the choice, be it for the location, the amenities, the size, the garden, whatever - it is your sanctuary.

No-one is going to buy a house on the proviso that at a point in the future to be decided by some political bod or journo it should be up for debate as to whether or not you're entitled to stay in it.

In my small Cotswolds town there are 3 and 4 bedroom new-builds. Most are still unsold after 2/3 years on the market. They are nice houses in pleasant locations and only minutes away from the local shops and not far from the two schools. They are not cheap, but comparatively speaking, they are not over-priced either.

The house next door to me - a Grade II Listed, has 5 bedrooms and is on the market for less than the price of the new-builds because the owner cannot find a buyer, so continually lowers the price. Still no takers.

Maybe mortgage repayments are too high? Maybe people just don't earn enough to be able to even save for a house - we do, after all, have to top-up the earnings of the low paid with credits?

Perhaps the fault is not ours for wanting to stay in our sanctuary, but lies with the economic model that we've accepted as the norm - where the Corporate and billionaire class suck up money from the economy; where the average worker simply does not earn enough to save for, or buy a house - or possibly those houses that are fit for a family are just too expensive... maybe we are not building sufficient family homes at prices that the average family can afford?

... and if they cannot afford a nice, new, clean, new-build at a fairly reasonable price - how will they be able to afford a similar property vacated by a pensioner?

We're in a similar situation. I am 66, and my husband is 70, so now would be a good time to move if we were going to.

The house is a family house, and was perfect for us bringing our children up. It should really be used by a family again, but we don't want to move. We use all the rooms - we still eat in the dining room, but it doubles as a second sitting room, one of the bedrooms is a study and another stores my yarn, and I sleep another when my husband snores. Three bedrooms have beds in them, so there is space when the children visit. As I said on the other thread, the house is well situated for everything we need, and bungalows here are on the outskirts of town, usually at the top of hills.

But ours is a short street with six houses, and all are lived in by older people. When we moved in three of the six had young families (including us) but now all the children have grown and moved on, and none of the houses have changed hands. The other three had people who were a lot older than us and they are still here, too.

I don't think older people should feel obliged to move out of homes we've loved for years- to me the whole point of buying a house is that it will be your sanctuary when you get older.

Most of the houses here don’t have children - some like me have adult children who’ve moved away, then spouses who’ve died, while there are 3 forty something couples who’ve opted not to have children.
However, a friend who is 70 and her slightly younger husband have just bought a new build 4 bed detached and gifted their ‘big’ house to their son and his family.

New houses popping up all over the place. As you say they boast very expensive 5 bedroomed detached or terraced 2 bed but no bungalows. Without exception they are on the outskirts of town with no services not even a primary school within walking distance.

My DD would love to get a foot on the housing ladder but there's no way they could afford a large house.

We definitely need cheaper houses for the young and bungalows for the older folk.

I find it interesting that the current government recognised that we need more housing for our ever expanding population and so decreed that 1.5 million new homes were to be built. I'm in the NW of England and the sheer scale of new housing estates being built is staggering; 450 across the road from me, 220 just down the road and another 800 in the next town. But all of the houses are 4/5/6 bedrooms, costing £500k to £750k, so hardly a first time buyers price point. Only 6 or 8 of the houses on these estates are 2 or 3 bedrooms and even they are £350k to £450k. There are no bungalows, no apartments, no nearby shops and no bus routes run nearby.
The vast majority are unsold, even 18 months after building is completed; I assume because people can't afford to buy them. My 3 bed semi is a good sized family house and I'd happily swap it for a 1 or 2 bed bungalow or apartment. But until developers and local planning authorities recognises what is actually needed vs what will bring in the biggest profit; I'll stay put.

If you own your own house (on a mortgage or without a mortgage) then my opinion is that you can have 90 or 9 or 1 room/s. So long as it’s yours and you can afford to run it, then it’s no one else’s business.

However, if you live in in social housing and your children have moved out and you are one person or a couple living in 4 bed roomed accommodation, imo, your council should downsize you (easier said than done) to a smaller property, that you like and is in an area you like, and use the bigger property for a family.

I think the major problem facing young families is the unaffordability of upsizing. They are often faced with trying to find a mortgage for up to 6,7 or 8 times their salary and the deposit required on a modest home can be a tough call (without help from family possibly).
I'll bet Gnetters holding onto their homes is the least of their worries!
I will happily downsize & future proof as soon as needed to take the burden of worry from my family. I want my daughter to think of me as safe & warm & happy and just visit for fun and cupcakes!

Not necessary.

My husband and I are pleased with our home, we use all rooms, if only occasionally. It suits our life. We've no reason the leave the home we've lived in 65 years. Our daughters and GC may do as they wish - later.

Stamp Duty (SDLT) is a good example of what taxation is for. It isn’t to fund public spending but to control inflation. Stamp Duty “holidays” result in a rush of people trying to buy a limited number of properties. Sellers raise prices as a result. Similarly, we know that developers took advantage of Help to Buy by raising their prices. Demand pull inflation. Give older people an SDLT concession to downsize and they will be competing unfairly with people at the lower price ranges. Prices will rise and trickle up. In addition, older buyers without a need for a mortgage will have a unfair competitive edge over younger people.

There is a paucity of new homes built which are dedicated to the physical needs of older people. This has been the case for decades. The McCarthy & Stone model is ridiculously expensive both in capital costs and maintenance charges. Small apartments are priced the same as an average four-bedroomed home. Here anyway, these developments have been built in unattractive locations I would not want to live in, on major roads with the ensuing noise and pollution and not even that close to the city centre.

There are some older developments of bungalows but many have been converted into larger dwellings and not only by younger families. There there have been a number of bungalows on good-sized plots extended and converted into HMOs, rented to students and hospital staff.

There is also the issue of potential care costs. The capital value in a larger property is money that might be needed for that. Downsize and what does one do with the capital released? Simple cash investments won’t keep pace with the rise in care costs. Inflation will erode the value. Leaving the £20,000 cash ISA limit place for older people was an acknowledgment that they doesn’t want the risks or don’t have the time for long term gains that they might get from stocks and shares.

Dickens makes the point about corporate greed, one of the reasons care is so expensive since it was made into vehicle for venture capitalists to profit from. Were government to tackle that then we might see a knock on effect in older people not hanging onto large properties. The proposed cap scheme that was subsequently abandoned was only a half measure that would eventually have pushed the cost of care for everyone onto local councils while the money men still got their slice.

There already is a kind of penalty for staying in a larger home in the form of council tax and higher insurance premiums.

I also think it’s important that older people feel they are part of a mixed community and not herded together in “bungalow land” or retirement developments. I try to be as self-reliant as I can but there are occasions when I need someone younger and stronger to help me with something. I don’t have family to call on but I do have some good younger neighbours I know I can rely on. For the future, I am starting to look at co-housing as a possible solution to moving to something smaller but in a mixed supportive community. Schemes are few and far between but seem to offer the kind of community living I would like.

I do live in house that is much too big for me and the usual things apply about proximity to local services which are becoming more important the older I get. I moved here when I was 28. I’m now 70. Some years ago, a friend who was a senior nurse suggested I rent a room to a student nurse as she did. However, the accommodation was over her garage with its own entrance, discrete from the rest of the house. I did think about it but my house is open plan, not designed in a way that would allow two people to have much privacy. To that end, I did go to look at a new development of houses of a design that would have been more appropriate to sharing. They were ridiculously expensive. It occurred to me that the developer could have fitted twice the number of smaller homes onto the plot. Why didn’t they? I asked the developer. His answer was to do with the social housing developers are obliged to provide. The more houses overall, the more “affordable” housing has to be included which, in his opinion, would make the development less attractive to private buyers. I don’t know if that's how buyers thinks. But it’s a similar thing with new developments generally, that social housing provision and the cost of infrastructure obligations mean developers make more money selling big detached houses rather than a mix with apartments, bungalows, terraced and semis.

The whole housing model needs to change but where to start? I would start with three things. The cost of social care, more co-housing projects and removing the obligation for developers to pay for infrastructure.

Are we the first generation to be faced with this 'issue'? If so, why?

No young person would want my 3 storey Victorian house with no central heating, sash windows, and fireplaces but
I love it. One grandaughter loves it who knows what ll happen when I’m gone

Maremia

Are we the first generation to be faced with this 'issue'? If so, why?

Good question. I don't know. If so, probably because of the huge rise in prices in many areas. Before the war the majority of people lived in rented accommodation, and council houses were built to replace both bombed houses and slums. Now so many of them have been sold and prices have risen there is a shortage of places the young can afford.

Also, divorce and the fact that many people live alone before marriage means that there are more single person households than there used to be, and it is less usual for children to share bedrooms, I think. Probably the fact that we live longer adds to that, too.

No ,I ,m staying put ,I don’t think council tenants should be moved out either it’s THEIR home they,ve paid rent I and in many cases spent a lot of their income in keeping it nice.
We had a council house when we got married,brand new 2 beds and box room with garden back and front and a garage across the road .
There are still people in those houses who were there when we were.Why should they move in Scotland there’s never Ben shame in living in council houses and they were told they were for life.
The answer is more council houses.
There are hundreds in this wee town,many of them flats for the elderly

I agree that houses are homes regardless of tenancy, but I wonder if it is right to have a single person in a large house when families are overcrowded. The answer is to build more, you're right, but until that happens I'm a bit on the fence.

paddyann54

No ,I ,m staying put ,I don’t think council tenants should be moved out either it’s THEIR home they,ve paid rent I and in many cases spent a lot of their income in keeping it nice.
We had a council house when we got married,brand new 2 beds and box room with garden back and front and a garage across the road .
There are still people in those houses who were there when we were.Why should they move in Scotland there’s never Ben shame in living in council houses and they were told they were for life.
The answer is more council houses.
There are hundreds in this wee town,many of them flats for the elderly

The answer IS more council houses, but in the interim period something does need to be done.

We don’t have enough social housing, due to Mrs Thatcher selling them to existing tenants, no issue with this this, however the money received was not used to replenish stock and personally I think there should have been stricter controls in place around who could apply for social housing and for the period after which they bought and subsequently sold extended.

I personally know three different sets of people occupying three and four bedroom social housing, all of whom are on very good incomes, paying literally peanuts for their homes, along with the benefit of never having to pay for new roofs, new kitchens, boilers and bathrooms.

On the other end of the scale my daughter has two close friends, both on awful accommodation, both with two children, due to having to be moved due to domestic abuse and the other due to losing her job. They’ve both been told, by different councils, not to expect permanent housing for up to three years!

Cossy

If you own your own house (on a mortgage or without a mortgage) then my opinion is that you can have 90 or 9 or 1 room/s. So long as it’s yours and you can afford to run it, then it’s no one else’s business.

However, if you live in in social housing and your children have moved out and you are one person or a couple living in 4 bed roomed accommodation, imo, your council should downsize you (easier said than done) to a smaller property, that you like and is in an area you like, and use the bigger property for a family.

👏

I agree on most of this.

Though I feel it’s not quite the same if you live in social housing but are paying the full rent yourself, then you are entitled to live there, even if it’s too big now.

If you are getting your rent paid through housing benefit, a smaller residence should be used (if possible, of course) and the larger home allocated to a family.

The answer is to build more, you're right, but until that happens I'm a bit on the fence.

Well, they are building more; very many more but, as several posters have reported here, they're not building the size of houses that first time buyers, small families or older people need; they're building 4/5/6 bedroom houses because they're selling at a bigger profit.

In the next village over from me, the local council is demolishing 45 old people's social housing bungalows. Originally the reason given was that they needed major maintenance and upgrading and that, once completed, the residents would be able move back in. In truth, they've sold the land to a developer for millions of £s. The residents who have lived there for many, many years have already been evicted, rehoused a long way away from their families, friends, church and social support networks. The plans show that 30 new 4/5 bed houses will be built with a block of 8 apartments. So even having raised millions of pounds in selling off some of their social housing stock, they're not replenishing it. They're just pocketing the profit. And the elderly residents have just been told to accept where they've been placed or sort an alternative for themselves. Where's the humanity in this?