March 18, 2024

Your Housing Group shared equity retirement flat that sold for £38,000 on ITV

A family who bought a shared equity retirement flat and lost £50,000 on its re-sale will feature on ITV tonight.

Housing Crisis: What Next For The Elderly? Tonight

Housing Crisis: What next for the Elderly? Tonight Most experts agree we are in the midst of a housing crisis but much of the focus has been on building more homes for first time buyers. Now reporter Adrian Goldberg finds that there are also housing shortages for elderly people when he tries to find suitable accommodation for his 92-year-old mum Kitty.

Cath White’s mother bought 75% of the property at Your Housing Group’s Heyeswood Retirement Village, in Haydock, Merseyside in August 2015.

It sold three years later– after three years on the market – for £70,000, but additional fees amounted to more than £50,000.

They broke down as follows:

Service charges: £23,370.57
Sinking fund contribution: £5855.07
0.75% Administration Cost: £525
1% Reassignment fees: £700
Legal admin fees: £420

These leave the total proceeds of the sale at £39,129.26p.

No subletting is allowed at the 92-flat Heyeswood Retirement Village by the Your Housing Group, a housing association, so the family has had to pay out the £6,600 a year service charges on an empty flat.

ITV is carrying its report a week after the Elderly Accommodation Counsel, a charity, produced a complex and date restricted analysis of recent retirement re-sales – and found property prices rose.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership / Better Retirement Housing deprecate this report, which includes unverifiable supposed “discount” data provided by retirement house builders. It urged non-publication on the grounds that the EAC was acting as a lobbyist for the house builders.

There is abundant evidence on the Land Registry of the appalling re-sale figures achieved when retirement properties are re-sold.

Better Retirement Housing has reported these at length:

Abysmal retirement housing values revealed on the Land Registry – Better Retirement Housing

Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation examines official re-sale prices for McCarthy and Stone, Churchill Retirement Living, Audley Retirement, Retirement Villages, Retirement Security, Anchor and Pegasus A dismal picture of retirement housing values on re-sales is revealed by Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation from figures in the Land Registry.