The Sunday Times November 28, 2021 7
PROPORTION OF
OVER-60S MOVING
OVER 20 MILES
lCornwall 2.9%
lWiltshire 1.8%
lDorset 1.5%
lEast Riding of
Yorkshire 1.4%lEast Lindsey
1.3%lBournemouth,
Christchurch
and Poole 1.2%lNorthumberland
1.2%lArun 1.2%
lKing’s Lynn and
West Norfolk 1.2%lEast Devon 1.1%
Anne and Lloyd Grey, both 60 and
London born and bred, never thought
they would leave their three-bedroom
terraced house in Lewisham, southeast
London, until they went to visit a friend
who had moved to the Kent coast.
While there they discovered they could
get an extra bedroom for less and be
mortgage-free earlier. “We were
absolutely gobsmacked at what we could
get for the money,” Lloyd says.
The couple bought their first house in
1993 for £70,000, but remortgaged
in the 27 years they lived there. It sold
for £625,000 and they bought a new
four-bedroom detached house off plan
last summer on Redrow’s Herne Bay
development for £480,000. In the
process they halved their mortgage term
from ten years to five years and they are
paying £100 less a month in mortgage
repayments. Having two extra bedrooms,
one for each of their children and their
partners when they come to stay, was
seen as essential.
Over-60s moving outside of their local
area tend to move farther than younger
buyers in search of a change in pace and
lifestyle. The top ten areas with the most
over-60s moving more than 20 miles are
all in countryside or seaside hotspots.
“The concentration of coastal locations
shows the appeal of sun, sand and the
space to spread out. However, these
moves also reflect poor supply of homes60%
of over-60s downsize
40%
of under-60s downsize
AGE MATTERS
Left: Anne and
Lloyd Grey left
Lewisham for
Kent. Right: Joan
and Bill Timm
downsized from
Didsbury in
Greater
Manchester to
Cheadle. Far
right: Andrea
and Dennis
Robertson moved
four miles from
their family
home in
Aberdeen
to a new
development
bungalow that has roughly the same floor
area and value.
“Our old property needed a new roof;
there was so much work needing to be
done and it was just all getting a bit too
much — especially as we aren’t getting any
younger,” Andrea says. “It took a lot of
time to sell our old place, frustratingly,
because of Covid and people being
furloughed. Our sale fell through a couple
of times, but we held our nerve and
eventually made it work.
“It’s much the same size, but so much
easier to run — and not only are our utility
bills much cheaper, the council tax and
home insurance are cheaper too.”
Those who are moving to cheaper
properties to release equity for their
retirement or to help adult children on
to the property ladder tend to be in the
60 to 70 age bracket. Overall 61 per cent of
these movers bought a cheaper property,
and released £138,242 worth of equity on
average, according to Savills.
Londoners are in the best position to
release equity, having seen the greatest
house price growth over the past two
decades, but many of them are reluctant
to move from the capital. A survey by the
housebuilder Barratt London shows that
63 per cent of respondents do not
envisage leaving London when they
downsize. And 70 per cent said they are
empty-nesters, with at least three
bedrooms and no mortgage.
that older households want to move
into,” Bowles says.
Others are only just starting their
travels and want somewhere they can
lock up and leave in a less secluded area.
Bill, 85, and his wife, Joan Timm, 84,
have children in New York, France and
Australia to visit, but they felt increasingly
uncomfortable leaving their six-bedroom
Victorian house in Didsbury, Greater
Manchester, to do so.
“We had a bout of thefts and burglaries
and that becomes a big worry when
you’re elderly,” Joan says. “We found that
we were wondering if we should answer
the door if the doorbell rang late in the
evening, little niggling things like that.
“We were aware that there were two
people in this huge house and was that
fair? When you’ve got young families who
are house-hunting?” They settled on a
three-bedroom retirement flat, which start
at £449,950, in the Chimes in Cheadle,
Greater Manchester, where they bought.
“If there hadn’t been a three-bedroom
apartment here, we wouldn’t have come,”
Joan says. “I sew a lot, I do a lot of
patchwork — I need my ironing board, my
sewing machine and boxes of material.
Bill loves reading and likes all his books
around him, so he has his man cave and
then the rest of the flat is for both of us.”
If we want older homeowners to
downsize, we may need to upsize our
retirement homes.DOWNSIZE YOUR BELONGINGS
It’s never too early to start clearing
things out, says Amanda Fyfe,
co-founder of the Senior Moves
Partnership, which works with
Riverstone and other retirement
housing providers to help older
movers to declutter. Once an offer has
been accepted or a home reserved,
the typical three months it takes for the
sale to go through should be enough
time without it feeling like a rush.
Her team take an inventory of
belongings, the measurements
of the new home and create a
floorplan so it’s easier to see where
everything will go.
“Adult children almost never want
their parents’ furniture,” she says, but
they may want photographs. Discard
any without people in them and slot
old ones into Christmas cards for
friends and family — “people love
that” — until you have a core set of
photographs left.
In apartments it’s important to
use every bit of space. Put shelving
in gaps and extra rails in wardrobes
and be open to ideas. “The golf clubs
may have to live in the car or the
crockery and table mats in a chest of
drawers in the hallway.”If there
hadn’t been
a three-
bedroom
apartment
here we
wouldn’t
have come.
I sew a lot
and Bill
has his
man cave
CORNWALL FROM £440,000
The Heaths is a new development of nine
bungalows near Redruth with downsizers
in mind. Properties include guest rooms
and storage. burringtonestates.comDORSET £675,000
Thatched Brock Cottage has four
bedrooms and a south-facing garden
with a vegetable garden. It is 12 miles
from Dorchester. knightfrank.co.ukDOWNSIZING DELIGHTS