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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?