A slippery slope to being forced to downsize?

Yes. MOnica makes a very good point. As you probably know we are downsizing from a three bedroom bungalow to a one bedroom conversion at the end of the garden but it won't be the dinky little abode it might have been if we hadn't given lots of thought to how we want to live in the future. The kitchen/dining/living area is based on what we already have because that's what we use all the time. I couldn't bear to have a home that's not a productive unit. I hope it's a very long time before we spend our days slumped in front of the telly.

We have a very large garden and I want to spend as much of my active life as possible in it not doing housework. DH spends most of his time in his workshop which is just across the yard so we won't be under eachother's feet (I hope)

The issue of accommodation for visitors will hopefully be taken care of by keeping the large mobile home (also in the garden) which DD and the DGSs have been living in for the last year. Decorating it and making it a bit quirky will give me a project once the annexe is finished.

So..... we're freeing up a three bedroomed home for a family. [smug] emoticon.

We are selling our family sized 4 bed, 2 bathroom, plain new decor house.

The majority of younger viewers have rejected it because it is not to their particular style, taste, including the one who said the bedrooms faced the wrong way!?

Who really wants to go through this in order to downsize?

x

Or we could all go over to visit granjura in Switzerland ....

The other thing is that older people use their houses much more than younger people, we are in them more. Most retired people I know, like me, live very busy lives, but we still spend much more time in our houses than before and often have actiities and hobbies that require space or extra rooms
That's a very good point, MOnica

Someone I know downsized after they retired; she then bemoaned the fact that they 'couldn't get away from each other'!!
We all need our own space sometimes.

Older people often do voluntary work, which may need a study for all the extra paperwork; if we are at home a conservatory is lovely to spend an afternoon doing craft work, eat a meal etc.
Then the DGC come, we need to keep toys for them somewhere - and spare beds.
Often the DC use us as a storage facility too.

The list is endless.

This is yet another ageist attack by the media. Firstly us OAPs are over-funded because many of us have final salary pensions in addition to state pensions, we are clogging up the NHS because we are an 'ageing population', we're responsible for global warming and now it's our fault that young people are unable to get on the housing ladder.

Wonder when we'll be asked to wear arm bands with '60+' on them and herded into ghettoes residential homes - room sharing of course.

I am going to rant because these stupid people saying we should all down size, all seem to think that all old people watch television all day and a nice little one or two bedroome flat is all we need.

To begin with old usually means 60 and with more and more people living into their 90s and more that covers two generations and 40 years and housing needs and requirements differ between the newly retired and very old.

Supposing we lumped everybody between the ages of 20 - 60 together in one group and talked about the housing needs of this group, which would cover families, single people and childless couples at both ends of the age spectrum, people, like those pontificating on the needs of older people would say this is ridiculous and immediately start breaking the group down, well the same applies to older people who can be a generation apart, have very different life styles, states of health and other demands on them. One idea does not fit all.

It is the same when they say that 50% of older people want to move. and infer that 50% want to downsize. 50% of older people may want to move, but not all want to downsize. Some want to retire to the coast, or the country, or into town, or to be near the grandchildren, but do not necessarily want a dinky little retirement flat, they want houses the same size, bigger, with more land etc etc. Do none of these people watch 'Escape to the country' and other life style housing programmes? An enormous proprtion of the people wanting smallholdings for horses and pigs and chicken or requiring large gardens to grow veg are the newly retired or about to retire

The other thing is that older people use their houses much more than younger people, we are in them more. Most retired people I know, like me, live very busy lives, but we still spend much more time in our houses than before and often have actiities and hobbies that require space or extra rooms.

Now younger people, 20 - 60s are, generally, out at work all day and out meeting with friends etc in the evenin s and weekends. The amount of time they spend at home and not sleeping is very small compared with retired people. So surely before putting all us older people from are well occupied, well used homes into tiny little flats, all those singletons and child free couples (not those planning families) who are living in three plus bedroomed properties, which they are hardly ever in should move out and downsize to properties commensurate with the time they actually spend at home. There are several millions of them. Once they have done that, then we can talk about the elderly downsizing.

Oh that feels better!

No doubt some bright spark will start thinking about making everyone who has more bedrooms than they need, pay for their own care.....a sort of bedroom tax but applied to the owner occupier.

I agree with you all petitpois, MamaCaz and janeainsworth. This is yet another deflection from what is actually needed.

“Almost a third of over 55s have considered downsizing in the last five years; yet we know that only 7% actually did,”

I wonder why only 7% actually moved; could it be because there is nowhere to move to - just the same as there are no properties for the young, middle-aged or any other group.

Quite ridiculous but sadly some "body" may take it seriously.

Lynda Blackwell, who lives in a £1.28million house with five bedrooms, was accused of making ‘lazy and wrong’ assumptions and blaming retired people for the problem. The financial regulator she works for was forced to insist it does not have a policy of wanting older homeowners to move out of their large properties. But it would not comment on whether the 55-year-old, who shares her spacious south London home with her partner, would apply the same rule to herself. Miss Blackwell, the Financial Conduct Authority’s head of mortgages, told a debate on Thursday that older people who ‘sit quite happily in a very big house’ should be encouraged to downsize to free up the market. She said Britain had a ‘real issue with the last-time buyer’, adding: ‘Does there need to be thought given to trying to encourage older persons to actually move away – build proper housing for retired people in the right places?

Does she mean 1 bedroomed reitrement apartments without gardens?

some typos in my posts above, not checked before posting

we be! not we we!

Why should be be forced into doing something we may not want to just because they have failed to provide enough houses suitable for younger people?

I did see a report the other day about this, and I thought 'here we go again'.

We are such a problem, we oldies, carrying on living in our houses that we bought on a high interest mortgage, probably paid for, now needed for younger families who may not be able to afford them anyway.

Anything guaranteed to make me dig my heels in and stay where I am is this sort of report; one was written by a woman who lives with her husband in a five bedroomed house (just the two of them). However, she is not 'elderly' so that's apparently OK then.

www.telegraph.co.uk/active/11885825/Elderly-people-should-be-given-emotional-support-to-encourage-them-to-downsize.html

If we need 'emotional support' to help us to downsize, why not leave us where we are?

Of course, if they send 'practical support' ie come and decorate my house all through, put in new carpets, a new kitchen, do the garden etc to make it marketable and pay stamp duty, estate agents fees, solititor's fees - oh yes and find me somewhere in an equally nice location but smaller then I may think about it.

Oh, but what is the family from overseas wants to come and stay? Will they put them up in a hotel at their expense?

Sorry Mamacaz I didn't see your post before I sent mine.
#greatminds

Well it doesn't exactly make sense, does it?

If 25 million homes are vacated by older people, they have to move somewhere.
So unless 25 million dwellings are built for them to move into, no homes are going to be 'freed up'.

It's only the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Petitpois. I don't think they'll be issuing us with compulsory purchase orders just yet.

In addition to your own opinions on this, petitpois (with which I agree), I don't even agree with the basic claim made in the title of the article. Call me stupid, but if taken literally, I don't see how downsizing frees up any homes at all. Not unless the 25m people/households who free up a bigger home somehow evaporate into thin air, without moving into another property.

I can see why this might be good for business - estate agents must be rubbing their hands together with glee at the thought of all the extra money they could potentially earn if 25m extra houses suddenly went on the market, and again as they sell other properties to those 25m households, but as to solving the housing crisis, I very much doubt it would make a jot of difference.