The truth about downsizing (from the couples who did it)

When Avril and Barry Gowers bought their family house, set in six-and-a-half acres of bluebell woods, they truly believed the property would be their forever home.

They remodelled the original bungalow, adding an extra storey to create a 7,500 sq ft, four-bedroom house to be proud of.

But, once their two children had grown up, forever started to feel like rather a long time to spend tending the garden and cleaning and maintaining such a substantial property.

“A problem was that we like to travel,” says Barry. “But whenever we tried to book something it was always a case of: ‘we can’t go on that date because we need to mow the lawns or plant the asparagus’. There was always something that needed doing.”

For Avril, long hours spent in the garden was becoming more of a chore and less of a pleasure, and she was keenly aware that they would not be able to do this kind of manual work forever.

And so the couple, both 67, made the decision to move on.

Downsizing has long been a touchy subject for owners reluctant to bid farewell to the place they have called home for decades – and who are often simply determined to show they can manage.

It is also a vexed issue for younger buyers who see this hesitance as a form of “bed blocking”, preventing them from moving up the ladder.

Advocates of downsizing talk about the potential financial windfall – estate agent Jackson-Stops calculates that moving from a detached to a semi-detached home in the same area will typically release £205,157. 

And the cost of living crisis means that the running costs of a large house has become an increasing push factor.

For Avril and Barry the cost of running their house and garden was one issue. But they also wanted to be closer to family, and were fed up with living in the small village of Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, and having to drive everywhere.

The couple had sold their advertising and branding agency and retired almost a decade ago, so they had no ties to an office. They decided to relocate to Winchester, Hampshire, 75 miles away, where their daughter – and three of their five grandchildren – live.

“We started with the notion that we wanted something quaint, but we also realised that with stairs and a garden something like that was not really future proofed,” says Avril. “Then some friends bought an apartment in Edinburgh, and we started looking at them too.”

In April 2022 the couple sold their house for £1.55m, and spent £1.1m on a three-bedroom penthouse at Knights Quarter in Winchester.

A year on and the couple are finding their reduced living space more than acceptable. Thanks to hikes in energy prices their bills are much the same as they used to pay at their house – although they are glad they didn’t stick around to see those bills spiral.

Barry gave up his motorbike when they moved, but they still run a car, and also pay around £4,400 a year in service charges.

The couple considers this money well spent because it frees them from costly and time consuming gardening and maintenance, time they now spend on weekly trips to London, holidays, and visits from friends and family. 

“We are really practical people,” says Avril. “It was a wrench to give up my garden, but I needed to do it. And I grew vegetables for 40 years and I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to buy them from the shop.”

With capital to spend, the couple were able to gift some money to their children, furnished the penthouse, and invested the rest in a mixture of savings accounts and Premium Bonds, recommended by their financial adviser as a way of keeping their money easily accessible and with decent returns (though still well under inflation).

Downsizing was less a decision and more an inevitability for Janet Malt when she separated from her husband. But she has embraced the process and is now delighted to be mortgage free and semi-retired at the age of 58.

Janet’s former home was a three-bedroom bungalow in Langford, on the northern fringe of the New Forest. 

She and her husband agreed to sell the house and split the proceeds last year. Janet, keen to stay local, went on to buy a new two-bedroom house ten miles west, at Forest Edge in Fordingbridge. The house cost £320,000 and she moved in in April 2023.

“I think I have struck gold,” she says.

Before the move Malt had already given up her full time role working for her husband’s building company in order to care for her elderly father. 

After his death she decided she would prefer not to return to full-time work and, after her move, found a new job running the estates department at a local GP practice. “It is a lot less stressful than running your own business,” she says.

Her salary, plus a pension and savings, will be enough for Malt to live comfortably and although she has not yet received any utility bills she suspects her new house will be much cheaper to run than the old place. “It is very well insulated and efficiently heated,” she says.

Since she has not moved far, keeping in touch with friends and family (she has two grown-up sons) is not an issue, and she has thrown herself into Fordingbridge life, joining a running club and making new friends.

“Leaving the old house was not a wrench at all,” she says.

While Malt chose to stick with the New Forest, some downsizers take the opportunity for a real change of scene.

When Paula and John Dempsey downsized they also moved 500 miles from the Highlands of Scotland to north Wales.

Cutting their day-to-day costs and setting themselves up for retirement was the big driving force behind this move. Rising living costs means that they are not quite as comfortably set up as they had originally hoped to be, but they have found other benefits in downsizing.

At the start of the pandemic John and Paula, who have three children and four grandchildren, owned a five-bedroom detached Edwardian villa, with a one-bedroom annexe and an acre of garden, in the remote, coastal village of Dunbleath, some 90 miles from Inverness.

John, 74, had already retired from his job as a health and safety specialist in the nuclear industry, and Paula, 67, was close to retiring from her role as an ambulance paramedic.

The couple knew that if they moved further south it would be easier to see family. 

Running the house, which they had bought in 2004, was going to be expensive for two retirees, and on a practical note finding workmen to come so far north was tricky which meant John had been doing most of the DIY himself. “I was getting too old to be up a ladder,” he says.

Although they cast their property search net widely, they ended up buying a £290,000 three-bedroom detached house in Deeside, north Wales, around 15 miles away from Wirral, where they are originally from.

They wanted a turnkey property that was energy efficient, which is why they opted for a £290,000 home at Countryside’s Dutton Fields development.

They sold their house in Scotland for £360,000 in April 2022 and, with time to kill until their new house would be ready, they set off on a long post-retirement gap year break, camping and caravanning in France.

Finally, in September, they moved into their new house.

In Dunbleath the couple spent around £2,000 a year on gas, and around £650 on electricity.

In Deeside they spent part of the equity they released from the sale on adding solar panels to their house and hope electricity bills will be minimal – although as yet, says John, British Gas has not presented them with a bill so they can’t be sure. 

They also bought an electric car, and the remainder of the money will be saved in fixed-rate bonds to provide a nest egg.

The couple have settled easily into their new life, enjoying exploring the local area and reconnecting with old friends. Paula admits bursts of nostalgia for the friends and colleagues left behind in Scotland, but she doesn’t miss all the gardening and housework. “It is a completely different lifestyle,” she says.

Financially the couple say they feel safer than they did when in Scotland although Paula says the inflationary crisis has eaten into their disposable income. “We are feeling what everyone is feeling,” she says. “I do feel we are more secure now, but not as secure as we had hoped.”

This article was first published on June 11 2023, and has since been updated.

Have you downsized? We want to hear your experiences, from the good and bad to the downright ugly. Email money@telegraph.co.uk or comment below