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

And that's lovely Monica. Genuinely I'm pleased for you. But your experiences are not the norm

But things that may happen/will happen that need planning for
Not having a car
A couple becoming a widow/er
Becoming less mobile
Heating bills increasing suddenly/massively
Etc

Yes. Not just for the benefit of younger people but going forward for the benefit of the older occupier.

I posted a resounding “yes” on the do you love your home? Thread. We’ve recently downsized and love it. The family home was becoming burdensome. Selling, moving to a city we’ve always loved, has boosted our pension and allowed us to gift substantial sums to our adult children. Everyone wins.

We are used to having a study and my studio in bedrooms - so if we were to move would want 3 or (ideally) 4 bedrooms.
If we can't find what we would like (in order to live as we do today) then we will have to consider a stairlift in future.

Ideally we will find something.
Not a bungalow though.

I tell myself that if my mother-in-law can move into a new 3 bed with a big garden at 95 and completely remodel both in and out then we should be able to do this too as we are much younger than she was.
🤞

Younger people cannot afford big houses in many parts of the country. The problem isn't older people

Chardy

I watched Escape to the Country - a retired couple who wanted 'more space' than their 4 bedroom house in suburbia. I switched off.

At 65, do people not look at 75 yr olds and say that could be us in 10yrs?
Why does people want a big house to keep clean and heat?
Why do people not see that modern houses are easier to keep clean than 'character properties'?
We like gardening, we'd like a bigger garden. Do you have magic knees?
We want views. No, you want to be a short walk from shops and a health centre. And public transport would be good

UK needs a lot of 2 bedroom homes without stairs (accessible to wheelchairs would be good). Definitely affordable. Upstairs flats would be good for young couples, singles and non-resident parents

Chardy you are you, and know what you want, but other people have different priorities, different reuirements and one persons dream house is another person's nightmare.

We have just downsized from country to towncentre where all facilities are within a couple of hundred yards. We have also bought a 500 year old house in need of renovation, we are both in our early 80s. This is our 4th and, I assume, last project.house. The difference being that having down sized from a large 4 bedroomed property in an expensive area to a 3 bedroomed property in a less expensive are, we have freed up enough capital to pay other people to do all the renovation work.

Someone asked how the downsizing idea starts. Well we bought our first retirement home 30 years ago when we were in our early 50s. and it was not a downsize. We are essentially country dwellers, but when our children got to secondary school age we moved into a town to enable them to grow up with the freedom and independence to visit friends, go to activties without needing a parent to drive them everywhere.

When they flew the nest, we returned to the country to a big house with a big garden and lived there uite happily until we were about 80. then the garden became too much work. we were more than happy to continue in the house.

We had always assumed we would downsize in the community we lived in, but both our children's lives had taken them to the other side of the country so it made sense for us to move closer to them. We had already weathered one health emergency with one child facing a 200 mile cross country journey to make what they feared would be a final visit to a parent.

We did not look at a single 2 bedroomed house without stairs. Stairs can have stair lifts fitted and ever since we bought our first new terrace house one room has been a dedicated study/office. Our interests are academic and we have both studied for a number of further degrees. We occupy 2 of our bedrooms, with one free for visitors and the house is big enough to have 3 reception rooms.. Space for us not to live in each others laps all day.

You cannot specify how much accommodation any specific household reuires, minimum size for households of different sizes possibly, but even then, we all have different lives, different budgets and different reuirements. Our single childless daughter has just bought a house described as having 5 bedrooms. Two have ceased to be bedrooms and the other three are for her and a stream of visitors.

Somewhere I have an old copy of the free newspaper Mature Times. I kept it because there was an article about downsizing, reporting on a survey done by a large organistion; I can't remember which. But I do remember it said that people start to think about downsizing in their 50s, once children have left home, but many do nothing about it until they are in their 80s. Thirty years is a whole generation.

Things have now changed, adult children living with their parents for much longer that they used to. People having their children later in life will also factor into that even without the problems that young people face in affording their first home.

Those who have downsized, I would be interested to know what age why were when they started thinking about it and what age they were when they actually did it. If years, even decades, went by in between, why?

TBH I’ve seen articles on this theme for ages. The sad fact is that many young people/families nowadays couldn’t in any case afford to buy the sort of houses that many in their 60s/70s/80s are now said to be ‘hogging’. Even modest family houses have become relatively so much less affordable for anyone on an average sort of income.

My elder sister and BiL bought their first home - a new, 3 bed semi in the early 70s for under £4k.

And around 10 years ago a dd bought a very good ex council house that had been lived in by the former owners for 60 years. After a good old nose on the Land Reg, dh found that they’d bought it in 1971 (incidentally well before Thatcher and Right to Buy) for almost exactly 1% of what dd paid.

Funnily enough though, all our bungalows around our way all seem to be built on steepish roads, or have steepish driveways up, or downwards, or steps up to the front door. I am thinking ice & snow 🤔

I mean bus stop is 100 yards away 🤣 mind you it does feel like that sometimes

Grandmabatty

I did downsize 8 years ago. It was just me rattling about in a 4 bedroom house with a large garden. So I upstick and moved to a 3 bedroom bungalow, one of which I use as a dining room. It was the best decision I made. I'm close to family and shops etc. I now have reduced mobility and balance issues so being on one level is great. The garden is small enough for me to manage. The big house was more suited to family living. However I didn't think that I had to move to help out a family. I moved to help me.

That’s great GMB.
Every bungalow we looked at needed guttting, super overpriced.
I really could do with one, but like said previously, by the time we have paid all the fees, etc we would need at least seventy k+ to bring up to date. We just wouldn’t be gaining anything, plus I haven’t got the energy or motivation to do up another house.
At least I can say our house is all done & there is a cloak room downstairs, & space to put in a bed/shower room.
Bus stop 100yrs away.
Plus we have super neighbours who tell us to ring anytime we need anything, ( which I haven’t done).
I don’t want to be to out of the frying pan, into the fire.
But really we don’t know what’s round the corner for us.

I moved out of my large four bedroomed house twenty
years ago and it was bought by a couple with three children so I was pleased it would be used.
My two bedroom flat is so much easier to manage as the big house was becoming physically and financially difficult to cope with.
To answer the OP I don't believe anyone should downsize if they are happy in their home. It's a choice I made for me but to uproot just to give more room to others and possibly be unhappy in a new place isn't good especially for older people.

I did downsize 8 years ago. It was just me rattling about in a 4 bedroom house with a large garden. So I upstick and moved to a 3 bedroom bungalow, one of which I use as a dining room. It was the best decision I made. I'm close to family and shops etc. I now have reduced mobility and balance issues so being on one level is great. The garden is small enough for me to manage. The big house was more suited to family living. However I didn't think that I had to move to help out a family. I moved to help me.

Mae 🙋‍♀️ I m here
5 bedrooms plus two attic rooms, ….but luxurious, you re having a laugh. No central heating, a shower over the bath and windows that need replacing, far from ideal in most people eyes, but I am happy and will stay here and if needed have a stair lift put in. I don’t envisage struggling…. if I need the bath taking out and a proper shower unit put in I will do that.
I don’t want to move I am opposite a bus stop to town and just round the corner to a bus stop to go in the opposite direction
I have a street of small independent shops a stones throw away
A doctors a five minute walk and the beach and sea literally on my doorstep plus two parks less than five minutes away.
I will stay and once I m gone and the house sold it will be made into multi occupancy I expect
Not everything is as it seems

I’ve watched a number of friends, and my parents, really struggle because their homes have become unsuitable for their needs as they age, and they have had to make compromises which I would not want to do, for example, having commodes where they have no downstairs toilet, living and sleeping in the same room, etc.
I do therefore think that hanging on to our large, high maintenance, and less than ideally laid out family houses is a mistake if we live a long life, and I want to move to somewhere easier to manage and less rural once my son leaves home. I wouldn’t be doing it because it would free up my home for a young family though, but because my needs are better met in a different house.

Re shared bedrooms.

My sister and I shared a bed until we were in our teens, and moved house, when Mum and Dad lashed out on two single (second hand) beds instead of our shared double.

Were we abused?

Probably, if you look at Mumsnet.

We actually did give up our family house and moved into a flat. Our DD and family bought our house (at very substantial discount) and we moved into my recently deceased mother's flat. It's been a great success. DD and husband renovated our old house and sold it enabling them to move into one of the new 5 bedroom houses mentioned above. A spot of family help plus hard work renovating and we're all happy.

fancythat

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.

Er........where are all these elderly folks luxuriating in grandiose 5 bedroom properties?

Five (!) bedrooms? In your dreams (and nightmares.)

Doodledog I missed that.
Apologies.
I did read the whole thread so maybe it was you that made me think of it.
We had 5 children and only 3 bedrooms.
The baby was in with us.

We did move when he was nearly one but I'm sure that sharing rooms happened a lot.
.
We had friends with four children and three bedrooms and two lots of friends with three children and three bedrooms - I think that was very normal.

Norah

BlueBelle

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

I feel the same.

Nobody wants this old one storey home, no central heating, fireplaces, huge gardens, even larger yards.. we love it as much as when we married.

I always think your house sounds lovely, Norah. I can't really picture it (in my head it could be Downton Abbey or Little House on the Prairie), but you always describe it as homely and happy, which is what matters.

NotSpaghetti

Is it also that children don't share rooms so much these days?

I said that upthread, and think it is the case. I shared a room with my sister from the age of 8 when my brother took my sister's room, until we left home to get married. I hated it, but there was no choice as my parents had a 3 bed house and 3 children.

These days, if MN is to believed, that is tantamount to abuse. I don't agree FWIW, but have read several posts saying that people shouldn't have children unless they can provide at least a room each.

It's an irregular cyclical event during Austerity for politicians / ex-politicians / newspaper columnists, etc, to pop up and suggest ways of alleviating an economic problem by - in effect - blaming the older and elderly generation for it when, in fact, it is the mis-management of the economy by past governments - all of them - and the 'short-termism' modus operandi that is necessary for any government when Parliament is automatically dissolved on the fifth anniversary of its first meeting.

I realise that continuing Austerity is a debatable matter and that the 2010-2019 period of it has officially ended, but services and budgets have never been fully restored. I suspect many individuals, especially those on low incomes, have seamlessly journeyed from 2010 to 2026 cutting-back, budgeting, robbing Peter to Pay Paul, without dropping a stitch... so as far as I'm concerned, Austerity continues. Hence public dissatisfaction which = looking for a scapegoat!

... and it seems it's our turn. Again. Do you remember when it was suggested that pensioners should return to the work force - post Brexit - to fill the gaps in the labour force left by those who abandoned them to return to their native countries?

Pensioners were encouraged by Conservative Peer, Lord Moylan; and Robert Jenrick as Immigration Minister - and Rishi Sunak's government launched an 'initiative' together with Jeremy Hunt, to encourage the "economically inactive" back into the workforce so that the country didn't have to rely on those bloody immigrants again! Note how pensioners were seamlessly transitioned into the 'economically inactive' demographic along with the long-term sick and disabled, unemployed, etc.

... I'm sure that detail did not form part of the aggressive Brexit benefits campaign.

Home ownership is one of the right-wing's little flag-ships - so much so that Margaret Thatcher encouraged council house tenants to take the opportunities offered to achieve that imperative. Though I suspect it was less to do with altruistic reasons and rather more to do with breaking up the troublesome cohesion of the working class, as home-owners morphed into little Capitalists - as she later boasted.

Forgive the cynicism but I hope no one on here feels shamed that they are living in, and intend to stay living in, the house they chose as their 'dream' house - or their sanctuary in old age, or just a house that enables them to live close to friends, amenities, and the infrastructure that they need as they age.

Lord Moylan now lives in a mansion-flat located off Kensington High Street. These spacious apartments in that location have a hefty price tag - somewhere between £3-£6 million. Undoubtedly, he downsized at some point, but I suspect there were very few families who could afford to buy his family home. He is now 70 years old and as far as I know still active in parliamentary debates - a comfortable position from which to advise others to go back into the workforce. One less Peer in the debating circles would not be missed, but the services and hospitality industry is in need of staff - he could apply for one of the positions in, say, my local Waitrose coffee shop - it's very genteel and in pleasant surroundings, but they are short of staff probably because the wages are pretty low. After you, Lord Moylan...

Chardy

I watched Escape to the Country - a retired couple who wanted 'more space' than their 4 bedroom house in suburbia. I switched off.

At 65, do people not look at 75 yr olds and say that could be us in 10yrs?
Why does people want a big house to keep clean and heat?
Why do people not see that modern houses are easier to keep clean than 'character properties'?
We like gardening, we'd like a bigger garden. Do you have magic knees?
We want views. No, you want to be a short walk from shops and a health centre. And public transport would be good

UK needs a lot of 2 bedroom homes without stairs (accessible to wheelchairs would be good). Definitely affordable. Upstairs flats would be good for young couples, singles and non-resident parents

We like gardening, we'd like a bigger garden. Do you have magic knees?
Chardy 😁
And Luckygirl

Yes, we often watch Escape to the Country too.
We say "Think of the future, it's not that far away!".

Maremia

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

Yes.
These questions have arisen since the formation of the Intergenerational Foundation which many believe is the source of resentment between generations.

Should we downsize? If we wish to yes, but there is little in the way of suitable property for older people. Chance would be a fine thing! We should not be made to feel guilty if we stay put.

Many of us are very attached to our homes - and that is what they are, a home, not just a house or a piece of real estate. We like our neighbourhood, know our neighbours are there if we need to call on them and vice versa. We may live in an area where we have made social connections over years and which is convenient for shops, GP surgery etc.

As others have pointed out, many new builds are 4/5 bedrooms anyway and suitable bungalows are just not being built any more.

Only two of us I should have added
To Cossy

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.

Exactly this Cossy.
I am not moving to please anyone else. We use all four of our bedrooms.
By the time we have paid SD, estate agent fees & solicitors fees, to downsize, it’s not worth moving.