The Housing Minister, Chris
Pincher, has suggested older homeowners are “rattling around” in their homes as
they are too big for them. He implied they are selfish and should sell up and
move to a retirement home when he spoke to a committee in the House of Lords.
He stated that many British homes are “under-occupied” and could be better used
by younger families with children.

He went on to say that the
Government will aim to persuade UK housebuilders to build more developments
suitable for OAPs, freeing up space in their existing homes, which in turn would
open up more homes for first and second-time buyers.

So why is this an issue?

The fundamental problem of the Greenwich housing
‘crisis’, is the point that the supply of Greenwich homes has not historically
met demand, thus increasing property values (and in turn rents), consequently
ensuring home ownership becomes an unattainable ambition for the twenty something’s of Greenwich.

Call me a pragmatist, but
it’s understandable that either demand needs to drop or supply needs to rise to
stop this trend getting worse for the generations to come.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire
Westminster’s plans to help first-time buyers with their ‘First Homes’
initiative to increase the supply of new homes being built just for first-time
buyers. Yet it’s targeted to deliver only 1,500 homes in around 100 locations
in the next two years.

To give you an idea of how
this a drop in the ocean, the Government sponsored the independent Barker
Review of Housing Supply Report in 2004 which was tasked at looking at
what could be done to level the playing field regarding the housing needs for
the UK. The report found that the UK needed 240,000 homes to be built each year
just to meet the demand of a growing and aging population. Since 2000, the
average number of properties built in the UK each year has only been 177,975
per year. This means we have been around 62,000 homes short per year.
Therefore, after 20 years of this annual shortfall we, as a country, have
1,240,500 too few homes – hence the massive uplift in house prices over the
last two decades.

Therefore, one option that could resolve the housing
crisis is if the Government literally looked closer to home, concentrating on
matching households with the appropriately sized home … and this is what the
government have shone a light on … people with too many spare bedrooms.

Is having a spare bedroom something that in this day
and age is particularly wasteful? Well, let’s look at the numbers for Greenwich
(SE10).

3,668 Greenwich homes
have one spare bedroom.

Well, everyone in my opinion needs a spare bedroom,
especially in the light of lockdown where many of us needed to work from home.

Ok, let’s see who has two or more spare bedrooms.

Of the 10,819
households in Greenwich 1,659

have two or more spare
bedrooms!

Of all the homes in Greenwich, be they owned,
privately rented or council house, 15.3% of Greenwich homes have two or more
spare bedrooms, compared to the national average 45.2%.

Breaking it down by ownership/tenure -

Of the 4,034 owned houses in Greenwich, 1,176 have two
or more spare bedrooms or as expressed as a percentage,

29.2% of Greenwich owned
homes have 2 or more spare bedrooms(compared to the national average
of 53.9%).

Of the 3,559 council houses in Greenwich, 272 have two
or more spare bedrooms, or as expressed as a percentage,

7.6% of Greenwich council
homes have 2 or more spare bedrooms(compared to the national average
of 11.6%).

Of the 3,226 private rented houses in Greenwich, 211
have two or more spare bedrooms or as expressed as a percentage,

6.5% of Greenwich private
rented homes have 2 or more spare bedrooms(compared to the national average
of 19.4%).

You can see there is the spare capacity in the Greenwich
housing market.

The Government hit the social housing sector with
their ‘Bedroom tax’ in 2012,(also known as under
occupancy charge or spare room subsidy) which meant that in council homes you
wouldreceive less in Housing Benefit or Housing Costs Element in a Universal Credit
claim if you lived in a housing association or council property and were deemed
to have one or more spare bedrooms.

Now it seems the Government have concentrated on the
group that makes up the bulk of homeowners with spare bedrooms, the older owner
occupiers of large properties, in their 60’s and 70’s, where the kids have flown
the nest.

However, there are many explanations why these mature
homeowners do not downsize. These people have lived in the same house for 30,
40 even 50 years, and as one matures in life, many people do not want to depart
from what they see as the family home. Much time has been invested in making
friends in their neighbourhood and it’s nice to have all those rooms in case every
grandchild decided to visit, at the same time, and they brought their friends!

But is that a selfish point of view? Are we addicted
to our spare bedrooms?

Or should the
Government keep its nose out of where people live?

I would ask if the ‘Minister ofSuperfluouslySizeableHouses’ should be kicking you out of the Greenwich
home you worked for and have spent much of your life in? And why is it assumed
that retired homeowners want to downsize to small little bungalows and
apartments? Many love their spacious living rooms and kitchens (which are typically
found in bigger houses).

This
Government is in a muddle about housing policy.

On one side of the coin,
the Government announced an increase in the tax burden on the British public with
a rise to its highest level since the early 1950’s to pay for care and the NHS,
yet on the other side of the coin, recently cancelling vote losing policies, so
that mature people going into care do not need to sell their homes (which if
you think about it, they won’t live in anyway because they are going to long-term
care). Whilst at the same time, to muddy the waters, they are suggesting to
mature homeowners they have to move out of those same large homes to free it up
for younger families? If the Government
don’t know what the answer is, who does?

The subject of downsizing is a delicate one to unravel.

We all know that mature
homeowners, if they moved to a smaller Greenwich home, would lose all the space
they take for granted and would be unable to have the grandchildren over.
Remaining in your large Greenwich home is not greedy, it’s just the accepted
human longing to enjoy a life after 50 plus years of working and paying your
dues and taxes. You could say move to a managed retirement home? Yet many are very
small and quite expensive.

I have spoken in previous
articles in my blog on the Greenwich property market that there aren’t enough
bungalows being built either. And anyway, why should you have to relocate and wave
goodbye to all your neighbours who have become friends and provide a support
network?

There is a case made by some that
mature downsizers could be given stamp duty tax breaks to get them to downsize,
yet I am not sure how this could be policed, and it doesn’t solve the problem
of increasing the overall supply of property in the UK.

The real issue isn’t spare bedrooms, it’s the need to
change the planning rules to increase the number and type of new homes being
built that will satisfy these mature homeowners with excess spare bedrooms to
move into.

Big national builders have
exploited ham-fisted planning rules since the 1980s, but no political party
seems to have the answer. Housing Minister Chris Pincher might say he wants to
persuade builders to build more suitable homes for mature people, yet his
Government’s actions don’t seem to match his words.

In the Queen’s Speech this spring,
the Government announced a proposed new planning system, which would create “simpler,
faster procedures for producing local development plans, approving major
schemes, assessing environmental impacts and negotiating affordable housing and
infrastructure contributions”, or in layman’s terms, allowing more building
to take place.

However, word coming out of
Government is those plans could be cancelled following the Conservatives’
surprise defeat in the Chesham & Amersham by-election to the Liberal Democrats
in the summer, which was blamed by some Conservative MPs on the new proposed
planning laws.

So, whilst the Government
decide what to do, what can mature Greenwich homeowners do if they feel they do
want to downsize?

The biggest fear many mature Greenwich homeowners have
is they will sell their large Greenwich home but be unable to find anything to
buy – thus making themselves homeless.

In this current Greenwich
housing market, the issue isn’t selling your Greenwich home, but ensuring you
find the right home to move into. Feel free to drop me a line to discuss how we
can potentially sell your own Greenwich property, tell the buyer to wait, then
we will go and find a home for you to move into in your chosen area of Greenwich.

Of course, all this
takes time and patience, yet this is what old school estate agents did before
the internet and the property portals. There is no extra charge for this and
even if we find you a buyer, and for whatever reason the move doesn’t go ahead,
there will be no charge.

If you are a Greenwich homeowner or landlord and think this may affect
you – feel free to drop me a line.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts about excess ‘spare bedrooms’?
Let me know in the comments.