Later living isn't ageing as planned

If you go down to your nearest later living or retirement housing development today, you might be in for a surprise: a lot of empty homes and plenty of advertising attempting to reassure buyers about service charges and hidden fees. Both are small but revealing clues to the deeper issues currently facing the sector, which - with roughly one in five people in the UK now aged over 65 – ought to be flourishing. The reality on the ground suggests otherwise though, at a time when stalled delivery of new homes requires later living to play a much bigger role in reducing the UK’s housing shortage. But because available homes are often listed quietly on developers’ websites rather than estate‑agent windows, and without ‘For Sale’ signs outside every front door, the scale of the issue is easy to miss.

In theory, later living plays a vital role in the housing market, helping older homeowners downsize and, in doing so, freeing up family homes and easing pressure elsewhere in the system. In practice, however, it risks falling short of that potential unless some uncomfortable realities are addressed. This is where clearer thinking, better policy and more honest communications all have an important part to play.

While the sector often looks healthy at first glance, the reality is far more fragile. I’m seeing this first‑hand through my family’s experience of trying to sell my late Granddad’s apartment in a retirement community in Tunbridge Wells (do email me if you’re interested, it has a lovely balcony), where almost a quarter of the homes in the development are currently on the market and interest has been slow to materialise. On paper, this should be a popular place to retire to, yet sales interest is thin to say the least.

At the other end of the country, and in a newly built scheme, I’m also struck by the lack of visible occupancy in retirement housing opposite my home in Cumbria, despite the best efforts of the sales team. While anecdotal, this difficulty shifting both second‑hand and new retirement homes is increasingly common nationwide, with many developments struggling to build momentum despite favourable demographics.

A major factor weighing on confidence is service charges. Already a sensitive issue, they have increasingly become both a deterrent for buyers and a millstone for those trying to sell. Charges have risen sharply in recent years, driven by energy costs, insurance, staffing and regulatory requirements, but the deeper problem lies less in the headline number than in the cycle of anxiety it creates. Prospective residents and their families worry not only about how charges might rise over time and how little control they appear to have, but also about what happens at the other end; whether the home will be difficult to sell, quietly racking up costs and becoming a burden for loved ones later on. That fear suppresses demand in the present, which in turn makes resale slower and harder, reinforcing exactly the concern that put buyers off in the first place. Once that loop takes hold, even well‑designed schemes in strong locations can quickly lose momentum.

It is against this backdrop that later living rental models are beginning to look less like an alternative tenure and more like a pragmatic response to the confidence problem itself. Renting sidesteps many of the issues that define this vicious circle, from fears around depreciation and exit fees to open‑ended exposure to future costs. It also offers flexibility at a stage of life when circumstances can change, while giving operators greater visibility of income and faster leasing, rather than relying entirely on confidence in future resale. Rental will not suit everyone and will not fix the sector alone, but it does neutralise some of the structural risks currently suppressing demand.

More broadly, the solutions do not need to be abstract or radical, but they do need to be clearer and more consistent. Better disclosure of service charges and the assumptions behind them at the point of sale, firmer guardrails around how costs can rise, simpler and more predictable resale mechanisms, and schemes that genuinely offer a mix of rental and ownership options would all help rebuild trust. Communications has a role here too, not in glossing over concerns, but in addressing them directly and explaining plainly how later living homes work, what they cost over time, and where the risks do, and do not, sit.

Later living has the potential to perform a genuinely important function in a housing system that is struggling to move, with ambitions for delivering 1.5 million new homes looking increasingly detached from reality. But unless the sector tackles the practical barriers that are keeping homes empty and confidence low, later living’s potential risks remaining unrealised, even as the demographics suggest it should be coming of age.