At an event today (1st December), four experts on later living discussed the state of the market, the challenges facing the sector, and the opportunities for growth going into 2024.
Shelagh Grant, Chief Executive of The Housing Forum, began the event with a welcome to attendees, before the presentations began:
Senior Living, Growth & Evolution of the Seniors Housing Sector – Peter Youngs, Head of Advisory in the Senior Living team at Knight Frank
Various changes are underway in the sector, as older persons have greater wealth and can expect to live longer. What’s more, current stock is ageing, with only 12% of later living accommodation having been built since 2010, and the construction sector is currently building proportionally less later living accommodation. To respond to these needs, the government has appointed an Older Person’s Housing Taskforce to look at options for housing for older people.
There is a particular need to champion bespoke later living accommodation. Research by Extra Care Charitable Trust shows that living in bespoke accommodation results in significant improvements for healthcare including reduced hospital visits, GPs appointment, improved quality of life and lower levels of depressions.
The biggest challenges for the sector include current build costs, inflation of operating costs, and the challenging housing market. However, putting more high quality data into the public domain as Knight Frank is doing, can help to manage market difficulties.
58% of units for delivered were Integrated Retirement Communities (IRC), which typically have larger schemes, more diverse tenure, and better quality management. A wide range of providers are building IRCs, from charitable trusts to for-profit developers.
Mid-market communities are important, with larger communities which promote independent living and wellbeing. This is the largest addressable market in the UK. Multi-generational communities can be built under amended residential consents, freeing up underutilised local housing and bringing sites forward while addressing challenges in the residential sales environment.
The Mayhew review shows that the government must build 50,000 homes each year to meet social care and later living challenges, compared to the 8,000 built in the last financial year. With the market in this state, not only is there an urgent need to grow the later living sector, but an opportunity for the housing sector as a whole.
Peter then answered questions about how affordable long term care is, and how affordable buying and renting such units are.
The trials and tribulations of trying to buy a retirement property – Debbie Harris, Founder and Managing Director at Autumna
Finding a property can be one of the most difficult steps for consumers to take, particularly with so many different terms and categories in the retirement living sector. The sector needs common language to support consumers to find the developments they are looking for.
Understanding what retirement living offers is also a challenge, again with a patchwork of different models, payment plans, and services on offer.
To tackle this problem, Autumna has taken a different approach to advertising property – not just filtering by price and other typical concerns, but promoting the whole development, features and USPs to provide information by what consumers are interested in. The consumer also faces another set of challenges, including:
- Location: 19% of Autumna’s clients provide more than one county to research, and 35% will consider 20 miles or more from their search point.
- Care: 58% have no care needs, 35% have minimal care needs, and 7% have personal care needs.
- Purchase or rent: 36% would only rent, 36% would only buy, 20% have no preference and 6% would part-buy/part-rent
- Shortlists: 43% ask to shortlist 6 or more developments.
The main barriers include finding the right development, support, suitable property, selling existing property, managing the move, and resale. Solutions include resale, support to sell, communication.
Debbie answered questions including on best practice on engagement.
Later Life – The Need, Opportunity & Challenges – Mark Porter, Head of SO Resi Partnerships
Mark spoke about his personal experience of finding accommodation for his relatives, and the difficulties of finding suitable accommodation. Affordability can be one of the biggest barriers, leading to long-term vacancies within later living communities. Mark advocated for flexibility in tenures between different types of property.
Mark presented his review of the latest research, including from the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People and the National Housing Federation, both advocating more homes and greater affordability. Ongoing calls are present to the government to provide more grant subsidy, which would help to stabilise the market. More consumer protections will also help to help those entering later living accommodation and to provide stability and clarity within the market.
What’s more, a healthier later living sector would have downstream benefits for the overall housing market. 70% of households have more bedrooms than they require, and 3 million older people want to downsize, but currently cannot. Enabling them to do so would free up 2 million spare bedrooms and help to address the housing crisis.
Mark finished with a call for everybody in the housing sector to support later living, for homes for older people to be included in local plans, and to simplify the products available.
Mark then answered questions were on what more can be done, how wording for Section 106 agreements could encourage later living accommodation, and what can be done around shared ownership sales to make it easier for consumers.
Later Living – the future of place – Patrick Devlin, Partner at Pollard Thomas Edwards
Patrick spoke about the future of place in the context of an increased demand for later living. Patrick explained that older people belong at the centre of life, not at the edge, challenging a long-term culture of building older people’s accommodation at the edge of community on cheaper land.
IRCs will not just benefit older people but all people, but depends on the invitation IRCs extend to the wider community. Build to Rent also has lessons for later living, and a few things to learn from IRCs.
Residential design for later living emphasises the social side of architecture, Patrick referred to the HAPPI report which identified 10 principles for design for later living, such as the importance of daylight, limiting isolation, and energy sustainability.
Patrick also provided the example of Colby Lodge in Walthamstow which used passive means of temperature control such as deck access housing and cross ventilation to cool flats during heat waves and promote wellbeing and comfort.
The other important aspect of design is sociability, counterbalanced with ensuring that homes are private and secure.
However, the public currently does not understand later living, but the categorisation of IRC is a helpful step, although the term of IRCs has issues, as retirement should not be associated with a particular age.
Pemberley Place also provides a good example of a successful IRC, whose shaded garden & café also serves as the main community hub. This design successfully integrates the older persons living there with the wider community. Woodside Square on Muswell Hill provides a similar service, with a greater mix of tenures and a shared landscape, which has since become the shared social space of the scheme.
There are two important lessons for the Build to Rent sector: first the flexibility of having a lifetime investment cycle can be attractive. However, service charges need to be predictable to allow residents to plan their finances. Second is the integration of progressive privacy with smaller buildings to allow for better design.
Patrick then answered questions about the importance of future proofing such schemes.
Finally, the panel answered questions on a range of questions including the challenges facing the later living, integration of communities, and the “bungalow mindset”.
Thank you to all four of our speakers, and to everybody who attended the event! The Housing Forum’s next spotlight on later living will take place on on Monday 15 April 2024.
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