I have come across a future situation that I keep wondering about. I had a conversation at work with a recently widowed lady in her early sixties who also has two other recently widowed lady friends. She mentioned that when your husband dies you fall to the bottom of the pecking order of life (in that generation anyway) and that suddenly you are without half your pension and you have to move. These ladies are unable to buy their home/retirement unit etc and so must rent. So they are researching senior rental accomodation that is fully self contained (i.e like a studio apartment) for healthy seniors where you do your own cooking etc (to differentiate between those that provide meals and are actual retirement homes). And the closest they can find to the gold coat is caboolture!! But this is not my question.
If we are all buying up properties etc for our retirement, and the population is aging so that in twenty years time the numbers of aged will be extraordinarily high to the numbers of young working (and I couldnt find my stats but the numbers have started to rise fairly quickly) then at the end of the road surely rental properties as they are today will not be meeting the needs of the time, will not have the large rental base that we have now, may not be able to achieve anywhere near the required rental income due to the fact that a large proportion of aging will not be able to support themselves. This is something that I would like to know more about as I see this situation in my daily job. Caravan parks with mobile homes for pensioners are a thing of the past, I envision that there will be an ever increasing population that will need user specific homes – and I was wondering how the change in mean age of the popluation fits into everyones big vision of 130 properties??
Sunshine
I think you’ve got some great points and its always imporatnt to consider the long term view.
Although the population is aging th population is also increasing. So although a greater portion of the population will be over 50 there will still be just as many people who need to rent.
Also when you couple this with the large increases in property prices in the last few years there are fewer and fewer people who can afford to buy; so they move into the long term rental market.
I think there will be an increased need to properties at the lower end of the rental market due to exactly the reasons you outlined. Increased number of older people on limited incomes, increased unemployment and increasing house prices.
Though it’s mainly young singles that now share houses, I suspect that economic necessity will increasingly force (mostly) widowed older people to share 4 X 2 houses in the suburbs.
Others might be forced to take in (not necessarily young) lodgers rather than sell up, as these give sustained cashflow.
With fewer kids, 4×2 houses will be less in demand and their rents will become affordable to oldies sharing them.
One problem is that many are in suburbs a long way from local shops. But if seveal share food delivery, that could work out OK.
I can also see community services setting up in one house and them serving a whole street of 4×2 share houses for those who need some help but are still independent enough not to need other accommodation.
Peter
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