Retirement properties

There have been loads if retirement flats built in East Surrey. A ridicuolus amount but hardly any social housing.

Older people sell their £500k+ houses, take the cash and take the subsidised flats and rake it in.

Whilst normal house prices continue to go through the roof.

Do you live in Caterham?

I did a fair bit of housing association stuff around there, but they just couldn’t compete with the retirement village firms buying up all the land on Stafford Road.

My aunt in law flogs a lot of them

Keeps all the old people in one avoidable place. Good idea

I do yes. I nearly bought on Stafford Road but pulled out due to developers having some clause to buy back and build yet another.

I’m very close on the other side of the train line.

How do you find these properties. Might suggest it to my parents

Look on Zoopla or Right Move and every place that looks too good to be true is one of them.

Always listed on rightmove etc, for around half price of the normal value.

Office for National Statistics Projections, in most areas, suggest that the largest single area of housing need is in the over 55 age bracket. As such, there is a well rehearsed argument in planning circles that the provision of specialist age restricted housing for older people has the direct knock on effect of freeing up otherwise under-occupied housing stock, and therefore ‘feeds’ the housing chain. The age restriction is embedded within a legal agreement that the developer has to voluntarily enter into, and which subsequently becomes a land charge.

Providers of specialist older persons housing generally get away without having to provide affordable housing on site because of the communal facilities incorporated. The provision of those communal facilities is funded by a residents’ service charge (usually inordinately high) which would be incompatible with affordable housing. The providers will sometimes be asked for a financial contribution towards off site provision of affordable housing - but they will argue tooth and nail that they should not be liable. For example, Sadiq Khan recently introduced guidance for London that would have required affordable housing provision within older persons housing. A consortium of providers clubbed together to challenge that requirement in the courts, and won.

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