There’s no singular reason why downsizing your home is the right choice.There is the obvious financial benefit but this is not always the motivation. Times change and life moves quickly. Houses can suit you down to the ground for a few years but then may become more of a burden than a home. Take a look at some of the benefits to downsizing:
More liquid capital
An opportunity to relocate
Trade old for new
Reduce the number of rooms
Decrease maintenance jobs
Find the quiet life
1. More liquid capital
Let’s get the first and most obvious benefit of downsizing your home out of the way. When you decrease the size of your home, with all other factors staying the same such as location, house age and local faculties, your new house that you’ve downsized into should cost less than your old home.
Housing prices in the UK have been on a fairly steady rise. London has had the biggest boom but overall, it is safe to say that if you’ve lived in your house for a number of years, it will be worth more than when you bought it.
Freeing up this capital (money) increase means you’ll be able to spend it on some of the finer things in life. Whatever your motivations for downsizing your home, having some more cash available to you is certainly a sweetener of the deal.
2. An Opportunity To Relocate
Downsizing doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stick to where your current home is. You can view it as an opportunity to up sticks and change your base and likely lifestyle.
Your location change can be as simple as moving closer to public transport links. Or perhaps, you wish to settle into a city where everything is a short walk away. Conversely, you might want the quieter country life where life is mosey and ticks along at your pace.
With relocation also comes the opportunity to change your lifestyle. If you’ve been a city dweller you’ll likely have had little experience of the natural beauty the world has to offer. If you seized the opportunity to move near a beach or sea front you could pick up any number of watersports. Similarly, the countryside comes with countryside walks. Relocation really does open up new opportunities.
3. Trade Old For New
A family home becomes very sentimental. Unless you’re a serial renovator, you might not have kept up all the rooms and exterior of your house up to date. It’s natural to want to make your home exactly how you want it and once you feel it's there, why change it?
But times do change and that playroom you made for your children who are now parents doesn’t seem as useful as it once was. Renovations also cost money. Something we all know is not easy to come by.
When you downsize your home, you can choose your new home to be a new build or at least slightly more up to date than your current home. You get the ease of walking into a house that has all the modern conveniences that you didn’t think was worth the investment in your old home. Potential buyers of the home you’re downsizing from get a nice passion project. It’s a win win.
4. Reduce The Number Of Rooms
This is a close second to the most obvious benefit to downsizing your home. Less rooms means less upkeep.
Sure, when you had a large family that needed space to grow and entertain themselves, having a room for everyone in the family was very practical. However, now the young ones are getting on with their own lives. It is time you had less rooms to clean. Less cleaning means more time to do what you actually enjoy.
5. Decrease Maintenance Jobs
When you have a large family home, it requires a lot of upkeep to prevent it losing value or from becoming unkempt. It is a commitment maintaining a large home and while the time is right this can feel like a very naturally enjoyable part of life.
However, it can become a repetitive task when you don’t have that same desire to be moving upwards. Downsizing your home and removing all the maintenance jobs you committed many years to will certainly free up some time.
6. Find The Quiet Life
It’s been touched on previously in this article that downsizing your home gives you the opportunity to change lifestyle, and why not choose the quiet life?
Finding your less sizable home in a rural location means that you can live a simple and fulfilled life. You can choose to have a small plot of land to do all that gardening you wish you had time for before. With some spare cash you can spend it on things that would’ve been considered excessive, such as a new set of golf clubs or some chickens.
To conclude, downsizing your home comes with many benefits and can enable you to change the way you're living by changing your location, local amenities and giving you a bit of extra spending money.
Author Bio
This article was written by Zac for Harris & Birt - Residential, Rural and Commercial Estate Agents.
