Embrace the benefits of downsizing

With 41 per cent of home movers now opting to move to a property with fewer bedrooms, compared with less than a third in 2022, it’s a growing trend – and with so many points in its favour, that’s not really surprising.

There’s no doubt that downsizing puts considerable cash back into your pocket. New research from Rightmove shows that a downsizer moving from a wholly-owned five-bedroom to a three-bedroom property in Scotland would release an average of £328,510 – a lump sum that could be used to boost a pension, go on umpteen round-the-world cruises, or buy a holiday home to make use of retirement freedom. It could even be used to help children or grandchildren get a foot on the property ladder while potentially taking an estate out of inheritance tax. Meanwhile, for those coming to the end of a fixed rate mortgage and facing vastly increased monthly payments, downsizing can mean getting rid of a mortgage altogether, or massively decreasing the amount owing and the cost of paying it.

There can be significant savings in other ways too – in Edinburgh, for example, a Band H property is liable for £4,640 a year in Council Tax and water rates, while a more modest Band D means less than half of that at £1,994. And Rightmove estimates that downsizing from an older five-bedroom property with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of E to a more energy-efficient three-bedroom house with an EPC rating of C could save homeowners an average of £3,806 a year in energy costs.

But the benefits to downsizing go far beyond the financial – a large home requires a huge amount of upkeep, especially if it comes with a garden. A five-bedroom property, for example, takes around eight hours a week just to keep clean, compared with three hours for a three-bedroom and just 1.5 hours for a one-bedroom apartment. And that’s before you take into account all the repairs and maintenance. A fresh start, in a clean, comfortable new home, frees up time and energy as well as money and could even, research suggests, help you to be calmer, happier and healthier.

People in larger homes, especially where adult children have flown the nest, are often surrounded by “stuff”; with cupboards, attics and even whole rooms stuffed to the rafters with unwanted possessions and paperwork. While a sudden, forced downsize, to a care home for example, can be hugely traumatic, a planned and purposeful downsizing is a positive experience that gives people the chance to re-evaluate what they actually want to take with them into the next stage of life, with decluttering producing a raft of physical and psychological benefits.

At AMA, we have seen many downsizers putting large family homes on to the market in favour of buying a much smaller apartment in Edinburgh, sometimes combined with another property elsewhere, freeing up cash to travel or enjoy retirement. There are five-bedroom properties in the city selling for up to £1.5m, and luxury new apartments available for just over £0.5m. Now seems to be a perfect team to considering beginning a new life with half the space but twice the fun.

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