Downsizing

[Dod101]

Has anyone considered downsizing their property or gone through the process?

I turn 70 this year. Our home is 30 years old and in good condition. Insulation installed, zone heating, garden maintenance minimised.
We are looking at installing solar PV and storage batteries with emergency power backup, but the Scottish grant scheme may expire this month.
If we go ahead with Solar then we will probably stay in the property for another 10 years. The energy rating will go from mid C to lower B so should be attractive for selling if we downsize. We feel it is maybe too early to downsize at present.

Has anyone considered downsizing or actually done it? What were your considerations? What was your decision ? Was it a success? Did you consider a "retirement" type property ?

Thanks in advance.

Scotview

By the time you are 80, you will be most unlikely to downsize, unless to a newish retirement type property. It will be just too much hassle. MY house sounds a bit like yours, about the same age. When we moved here about 16 years ago we replaced all the bathrooms (I have three, one for each bedroom) and were I moving in today, I would be replacing the main bathroom again because after 15 years constant use, whilst it still functions perfectly, it is now showing signs of wear and tear. As it is I will just keep it as is. The house is all on one level and fairly easy to maintain.

To downsize, all on one level, a fairly easily maintained garden, and good insulation would be my basic requirements.

Dod

[tjh290633]

By the time you are 80, you will be most unlikely to downsize, unless to a newish retirement type property. It will be just too much hassle.

I will second that view. Sorting out the contents of our loft will be a major job, much of it dating back 1970 or earlier.

Easier to close off rooms that we don't use.

TJH

[Hariseldon58]

We downsized from 2000+ sq ft homes in our late 50’s but it took several attempts….

When I looked at the space that we had, what we used and what we needed, it reflected unused rooms and the realisation that we had too much ‘stuff’ and secondly if we could customise the design of a home we could have more of what we used and eliminate the rest.

So from 6 bedrooms to just one ( so much easier to use a Premier Inn than have spare bedrooms that are unused virtually all year round. Getting rid of stuff means you don’t have to store it and the furniture to hold it.

We have the living space of a decent sized 4 bedroom home in just over 1,000 sq feet in a new one bedroom bungalow that was custom built, brilliant.