Retirement homes part-exchange - McCarthy & Stone, Churchill Retirement

johnny_mcdevitt

Hi,

I'm a journalist doing some research on retirement homes, specifically at McCarthy & Stone and Churchill Retirement apartments. i'm looking to talk to anyone who used (or knows anyone who used) the part-exchange deals offered by these companies: i.e. they value your home and give you a cash offer in exchange for one of their apartments, so that your home never goes onto the market.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Johnny

cattie

You need to take your email address and phone no. out of the post otherwise Mods will remove the post altogether.

johnny_mcdevitt

cattie wrote: »

You need to take your email address and phone no. out of the post otherwise Mods will remove the post altogether.

Thanks a lot!

GDB2222

johnny_mcdevitt wrote: »

Hi,

I'm a journalist doing some research on retirement homes, specifically at McCarthy & Stone and Churchill Retirement apartments. i'm looking to talk to anyone who used (or knows anyone who used) the part-exchange deals offered by these companies: i.e. they value your home and give you a cash offer in exchange for one of their apartments, so that your home never goes onto the market.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Johnny

There are some threads here about people who have used the part exchange schemes offered by builders of 'normal' non-retirement homes. They may give some background info that is helpful.

johnny_mcdevitt

GDB2222 wrote: »

There are some threads here about people who have used the part exchange schemes offered by builders of 'normal' non-retirement homes. They may give some background info that is helpful.

Cheers. I've been searching the site to find some, but haven't come up with anything yet: maybe not typing in the right search terms. Could you point me in the right direction?

GDB2222

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3730819

GDB2222

By the way, if you use the advanced search facility, you can restrict the search to this forum and I am sure that you can dream up some suitable key words to use.

johnny_mcdevitt

GDB2222 wrote: »

By the way, if you use the advanced search facility, you can restrict the search to this forum and I am sure that you can dream up some suitable key words to use.

That thread is really useful, thanks a lot for the help

Richard_Webster

One general point is that they seem to be able to sell the flats for a price which is way more than the values of flats built by them 20-30 years ago - in my area round about double!

OK the leases will need extending etc on the older ones, but I think that older people who are downsizing can too easily be duped into paying more than they need to for a retirement home.

For instance, suppose you have a widow whose family home is worth £300K. She isn't going to worry about paying £160K for a new retirement flat even though should could get a 25 year old one in the same general area for say £90K.

namecheck

Richard_Webster wrote: »

One general point is that they seem to be able to sell the flats for a price which is way more than the values of flats built by them 20-30 years ago - in my area round about double!

OK the leases will need extending etc on the older ones, but I think that older people who are downsizing can too easily be duped into paying more than they need to for a retirement home.

For instance, suppose you have a widow whose family home is worth £300K. She isn't going to worry about paying £160K for a new retirement flat even though should could get a 25 year old one in the same general area for say £90K.

Some older retirement developments are "nicer" - eg, bigger rooms, more spacious communal areas, a lot more outside space.

On the other hand, they can also appear more depressing eg no signs of "life"!

People buying a new flat are given help of various kinds from the developer - and everything is new.

Elderly people selling a property worth, say, twice as much as a new retirement flat, often do worry about money. They may no longer have maintenance to budget for, but they worry about service charges (which will be a new concept for most of them).