Downsizing your home: A practical guide for over 55s considering OPSO
Downsizing your home for Older Persons Shared Ownership
If you’ve decided to downsize to an Older Persons Shared Ownership home, you may be facing the daunting process of sorting and moving a household of belongings into a smaller space.
Downsizing has many benefits, from lower energy bills to less maintenance in your home. However, the process itself can be difficult and take a lot of time.
Looking for some tips to downsize to an Older Persons Shared Ownership home? From decluttering to organising your belongings, we’ve gathered all the help you need.
How to downsize to Older Persons Shared Ownership:
- Identify your living needs
- Get started early
- Tackle one room at a time
- Decide what to keep and what to give away
- Get help from your family
Identify your living needs
Just because you’re moving to a smaller space, doesn’t mean you have to stop prioritising your needs. Make sure your new apartment has everything you need to make your day-to-day life more convenient. For example, if you have children or grandchildren that you’d like to come and stay with you, make sure your home has multiple bedrooms or a sofa bed. You may also want to consider saving some extra space for an office desk if you are still working.
Get started early
If you’ve ever had to move house before, you’ll know it’s not something that you can just do in a day. Once you’ve got your move-in date for your new home, make sure you start the downsizing process nice and early. This way, you can reduce the likelihood of any obstacles getting in the way of you moving into your new home.
Tackle one room at a time
At first, you might feel like downsizing is an unappealing process to take on. But if you break down the workload, suddenly the job becomes a lot less challenging. Start with the smallest rooms, and you’ll build confidence to tackle the bigger ones that you were too scared to even think about at the start.
Decide what to keep and what to give away
When you are going through each room, start thinking about what belongings to keep and give away. Create a clear pile, and don’t be too sentimental – chances are if you haven’t used something in over a year, it might be time to say your goodbyes. When you have a list of things that you no longer need, you can then decide whether to donate, sell or give things to friends or family.
Get help from your family
Downsizing can be a long and arduous process. But with a little help from friends and family, you can at least avoid a bit of manual labour. Who knows, your family may even discover some old keepsakes that they forget about.
The benefits of downsizing:
A fresh start for over 55s
Few things are more exciting than embarking on a new adventure and that’s exactly what the future holds if you downsize to an OPSO apartment. You can find a clean slate, create new memories, make new friends, and become part of a vibrant new community.
Less maintenance
As you grow older, you may find that maintaining a big family home is a drain on your time and energy. But with a smaller apartment space, you can live comfortably and free of time-consuming domestic tasks. Instead, you’ll be free to enjoy a more carefree lifestyle in your later years. Having decluttered your family home beforehand, you’ll also get to enjoy a more economical and tidy living arrangement.
Financial benefits
The smaller the home, the less money needed to maintain it. While a large family home will cost more in terms of energy and electricity bills, a smaller apartment is a lot more affordable to maintain. With the money you get from selling your family home, you’ll also have some extra capital to devote to your retirement adventures. This is especially the case with Older Persons Shared Ownership, where you only need to buy a share of your home, while renting the remainder.
Looking to downsize to an Older Persons Shared Ownership home? At Share to Buy, we give you all the tools to take the next step in your home-buying journey. Using our property search tool, you can find an OPSO home catered to your lifestyle and needs, saving money in the process.