Retirement Properties are bad for your WEALTH!

New retirement properties should come with a government wealth warning:
Warning by HM Government:
Retirement developments can seriously damage your WEALTH!

Not only do the come with exortionate management/service fees of around £7,000 a year, each year, every year.

Not only are they overpriced and the most expensive new home you can buy on a price per square foot basis

Not only do they try and persuade you into highly-questionable part-exchange "deals"

But they are very difficult to sell.
When you eventually do, you have to pay the developer an "transfer fee"

As TV's Apprentice Star Nick Hewer said:
"When my mother died my father insisted on moving into a retirement property, even though we tried to talk him out of it. He sold the familly home he had lived in for 70 years and moved into a £165,000 one-bedroom flat. When he died ten years later, we sold it for £80,000."
His father was one of "the only people in the western world to half his property investment over ten property boom years."

So whilst the builders say it is "your life" "your choice" it is also YOUR MONEY and you worked hard for it!

Don't waste what you have on one of these money pits!

Re: Retirement Properties are bad for your WEALTH!

Some of the adverts do make retirement properties seem attractive, but I don't think I would want to live in one (not just yet anyway). Friends of ours moved into a complex some while ago though and they are very pleased with the change. The maintenance costs do seem high, but then they say it is trouble free and secure living and there is always company around.

Re: Retirement Properties are bad for your WEALTH!

If you buy a retirement home it will actually depreciate in value like a new car! Flats can take as long as 5 years to sell even with a reduction of 46% of the price paid 7 years ago.

Age UK has a factsheet here