Help to Buy? What downsizers really need is Help to Sell

Home ownership for those in early adulthood in Britain has become an issue. The high prices for homes and the deposit requirement makes it difficult for those between the ages of 25 and 34 to afford a home. Those born 10 years earlier and in that age group were twice as likely to buy a home. However, the truth is many of the homes in Britain are owned by the elderly. It would help the housing market if some of them downsized and moved into more manageable spaces or even retirement homes which are few and far between. The problem with that is many of them own their homes outright and their homes would probably sell at a loss. Now it seems land is the issue for they would need land to build properties for the older generation to afford.

Key Takeaways:

The Help to Buy initiative, aimed at helping first-time buyers scrape and together the deposit needed to buy a property.
In principle, this should be good news for aspirants to home ownership if older folk downsized, it would put homes that are right-sized for growing families on to the market.
A 2016 report for the International Longevity Centre suggests that a significant percentage of older adults in the UK want to downsize, but at that time, there were only 128,000 specialist properties

“Yet those born a decade earlier would have been nearly twice as likely to own their own property.”