Ask old people to give up their big houses if you want to free up housing stock, experts warn Tories
More reaction on the Conservative manifesto and housing from Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at Oxford University and highly regarded critic of the UK housing market. You can see him set out his views to Paul Mason last year here.
Today, Professor Dorling says one of the key issues in Britain’s housing crisis which politicians don’t like to talk about is the need to encourage older people to downsize.
“Our housing stock is mostly based on an era when people died at age 70 or earlier. Now people are living into their 80s or 90s. That’s great, but they are usually staying on for some time in family homes when it might be better to move to smaller properties.
“The question is how you help them to do that. Often those smaller properties have yet to be built. Even if they are built one of the issues with the recently proposed Conservative reforms of inheritance tax is that it could further discourage people moving out of their big family home.”