Buying a purpose built home for your retirement

Earlier this year property agents Knight Frank published a report on ‘retirement housing’, covering everything from age-restricted over-55 housing to ‘housing with care’. Their key finding was that homes purpose built for retirement account for less than 3% of overall housing stock, yet almost one in five of over 55’s believe it is ‘likely’ they will spend their later years in a purpose-built retirement community. Add in the demographic pressure of large numbers of baby boomers born in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s retiring now and set to retire over the next decade, then demand for purpose built retirement complexes and developments may well outstrip supply by a considerable margin.

Obviously developers are responding to this demand and, our part of the world, a wide variety of purpose built retirement housing has been or is being constructed – particularly in market towns such as Thirsk and Pocklington. Typically, in additional to dedicated parking, these developments have high quality, shared leisure and garden facilities that make them very attractive to their target market but this can also mean potential legal complexity – so it is important to instruct a conveyancer who has experience of the local market and of appraising the legal rights and obligations of the purchaser and the developer/site manager. Usually the proposed legal arrangements are sensible but, as they say, the ‘the devil is in the detail’ so professional input is key.