by the time we reach retirement most of us hope to own our own homesand be mortgage-free in reality this often means people findthemselves living in homes that have become too big for them. in england alone sixty-eight percentof older homeowners live in a property that has at least twospare bedrooms. for many it's the right time to thinkabout downsizing to a home that suits your changing needs and to release some of the equity to useit and enjoy it,
doing the things you've always wanted todo. bungalows, purpose-built developments, retirement villages. there are many options. charlie bartonis the managing director of barton park homes a company that managesresidential and holiday park homes so he's witnessedfirsthand how the market has changed. park homes originally was built and made for cheap accommodation somewhere for people to move into who have a smallbudget and live. but over the years that hasdramatically changed
now park home living these days is a luxury lifestyle way of life park homes are becoming more popular every year and they have beendoing for the last 25 years and most people are turning to park home living not just because of the downsize and the idea ofliving in an like-minded community but the idea of a lifestyle thatcomes along with it i originally come from the states
and i've been here about 15 years in england living and we moved to willowgrove park about seven yearsago from cornwall area is where we came from we had a b&b and it just got too much my husband andi at our age we just want to enjoy life i've been on here 11 years now and we just decided to sell up and downsize and make abetter life for ourselves my profession before i retired was
an engineer with the local authoritywhich involved all the engineering aspects of running theconference and exhibition centre in harrogate the last six years before ifinally retired i worked as a customer relations officerin harrogate for social services the current situation i'm in is that i'm retired yet not retired. i'mretired from my professional career but i still have a role in the communityat a local district councillor i was a pharmacy technician and i loved the job but at some point you have to realise thatmaybe you need to move on
and let other people come into yourprofession who need to you know learn the skills and so give way to theyounger generation retirement living is when acouple reaches a certain point in their life where they are looking forchange looking to sell their family home they're looking to downsize to a moremanageable low-maintenance property. they wantto release some equity out of their bricks and mortar and they want to start enjoying life youknow doing activities that they've alwayswanted to do
and go and explore the world and being free to do that i was very fortunate for 32 years i lived in a listed building which meanti had a house like nobody elses very very fortunate to live there andbig house and lovely big garden and it was the house of my dreams it's something i'd dreamt of living in from being an eightyear old when i first saw the house i eventually managedto live there
very very happy for thirty two years so we came to a point in our liveswhere we had got a daughter expecting a thirdchild and they lived in a two-bedroom house they were searching around for aproperty couldn't find it within the harrogate district in their price range so we said looklet's solve the problem we have now got to where we are of an age where we need to move on and thehouse is too large the gardens too large
for us, we need to rethink our future and so this is a good opportunity if wecan find somewhere else for you to sell your house, you moveinto ours and allowing you a part of your inheritance now so that you're enabledto buy outr property as it were and then we canfind somewhere nice to downsize to was not an easy move itwas a move that i was dragged into, i have to say, very very reluctantly. i wanted to do it for the daughter, didn't want to move out to the house i
certainly didn't want to downsize, ithought that would bring major problems yeah we had a fairly generous size house with threebedrooms, two bathrooms double bedrooms which was a typicalfamily house and we decided that to downsize and release the equity fromthat house which also released to family home and for mum dad and two point fourchildren our daughter came live here
and she said "it's lovely up here, janet" so she said there are some lovely caravan parks, have a ride round and we came here and we loved it we did consider moving into an apartment but the trouble with the apartment is you've got neighbours either next door or above and as you know aspeople get older the hearing goes and you quite oftenannoyed by loud television. here we have a detachedhouse and although our neighbours are close
there's no interference from noisyneighbours because we are detached i feel park home living is suitable forretired people for the reason where they wantto live in the community with people the sameage with no children in the communitywhere they can relax in small property where they can enjoy their retirement and they can also release equity byselling the bricks-and-mortar
where they can start enjoying thelife and doing things that have always wanted to do such as holidays and go see the family and traveling so that's why park home livingis great for retirement i found down-sizing first was quite daunting, i just thought where do we get rid of all this stuff how do you choose and i just startedgoing through everything picking out things that i really want to take with me and justlooking at everything else and just
thinking they're just things. i found it quite easy downsizing in i just fetch with mewhat i wanted and the other bits i didn't need if thechildren wanted them, they had them and if not i just got rid of them when we moved from our house, a three bedrooms loads of extra furniture clothes, everything and that was the biggest problem inmoving was downsizing
to live in a caravan once that downsizing was done it was perfect we thought we downsized but when we got here, we hadn't! we had loads of stuff so we've given it to our kids bit by bit like. you know so that was it really in order to downsize it was quite adramatic change because we had to get rid of quite a bitof furniture and unfortunately for my wife who had alot of nice artifacts she had to get rid of
quite a lot of those because it just isnot the same amount of space and room in this house so we did sell quite a bit and we had a great biggarage sale to get rid of a lot the items which we just couldn't accommodate in thishouse downsizing is never going to be easy and i wouldn't say it was hard, it was very very difficult you have to make choices you have to make choices about what youno longer need but suddenly when you're trying to doit you need everything
we did it within two weeks at the time i had a broken arm and foot which was never going to be an easy task but you just have to very disciplinedeach room at a time look at it is any this going to make sense in your new lifestyle. if it isn't make sure that family and friends arealerted to it. is there anything you would like and if not charity
customer who wants to buy a park homehave quite a wide range have choices they can go to the manufacture where the home is made and have a home fully bespoke made to their liking forinstance they can choose the style of the home and even choose the dimensions of eachroom style of the kitchen, the colour in the kitchen the colour of the carpets, curtains
very very wide range of choices even down to the specific tile that youwant in the kitchen for instance these days park homes re built to the latest standard of thebritish standard energy efficiency so they're incredibly warm they retain heat marvelously well andthat's why the energy bills are very low because they hold the heat so well i felt very financially secured when i moved here
i just the same as cynthia said its you don't have the high cost of bricks-and-mortar that they say here and it's like we always have more money to enjoy ourselves too because youhave less going out like if your roof needs to be done withthe house or you always have something that's goingwrong i know that with our park home we have certain things that we have to keep up
and keep updated and not everythinglasts forever like washing machine or your dryer and stufflike that those are normal things that happened but i think the cost of live in here is far lessthan it was when we had the cottage i do feel more independent and much more secure. i feel secure in the fact that now i don't have toworry about the large property i feel secure in the way i know my future's mapped out. i've got
you know i think as you retired youplanning for time and shouldn't start at sixty, it starts at 20. the factthat there's so little maintenance to do, it's reasonably easy to look after, it's not expensive toheat and the environment where we live we close to a park close to the riverwhich has a lovely riverside walk we can walk into the townwithout the need to use the car or bus to go to the bank to go shopping
to market so all in all it's theenvironment in which we live join us after the break for more onretirement party living are you looking for the perfect place toretire thinking about downsizing barton park homes invite you to join thecommunity of friendly like-minded independent people who enjoy the traditional british way of life all year round we can offer you up to 100 percent ofthe value of your house in part exchange for a luxurious andstylish park home to begin a better way of life
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friendly like-minded independent peoplewho enjoy the traditional british way of life all year round we can over you up to 100 percent of the value of your house in part exchangefor a luxurious and stylish park home. to begin a betterway of life visit bartonparkhomes.com welcome back in if you're thinking of downsizing inretirement it's never too early to startresearching. for many people
retirement parks presents an affordablealternative to traditional houses economical accessible and easy to run ascharlie barton explains park homes are very similar to livein a bricks-and-mortar bungalow and youhave your own independence you have your own garden, your own space and it would just be you and your wife living in a home just like you would inbricks-and-mortar retirement villages are more like kind of living in an apartment orflat which takes away some of your independence and also
retirement living sometimes have largesteps and flights of steps. with park home living, they're all on a flat area and you have your ownindependence your own space your own living area and so that's where i would say the differenceis. big house brings big problems. old house being biggerproblems big garden as well and when you're in the sixties you don'tspend all your life just doing gardening maintaining a house outside for domestic reasons cleaning a largerhouse
so it actually frees you up and the issue when you moving into somewhere like this it gives you the freedom the cleaning i can clean through this house in about anhour and perhaps not even that and it's done thoroughly. that wasn't thecase obviously with the three bedroom two floors, but here it takes next tono time so that is a big saving on
both time and my back i moved here 11 years ago and thenmary moved here seven years ago -- and i met when i move to the park i met cynthiaright away and it just it was like we've known eachother for years which was amazing and i got along with joe and then she got loulou which i loved to death she has a little pug really cute she'sreally cute
we we've met instantly most people here when you do move its it's amazing, they'll just come out to me,introduce themselves so you be walking around and ask you where you came from and it'sjust a real nice it's a nice feeling nice warm feeling having people your same age you have subjects totalk on where with younger people you perhaps don't have the same subject to talk about we mix, you go bowling
they have little parties trips out to local pub love christmas things like that got around me a wonderful community, it's small it's intimate we all know each other but we don't livein each other's pockets so i need help i know where help is. we arevery fortunate to have on-site two ladies who look after the site as a whole they are there for whatever problem we ever have, it is absolutely brilliant and if i need my neighbours i know where they are
if someone is feeling unwell on one ofour parks absolutely there are doctors surgeries and hospitalsvery nearby also there are other amenities verynearby such as most of our parks have a bus stop at the entrance to take them to the nearest village or the nearest town or also walkingdistance there are shops and greengrocers local newsagents and many others stores nearby within easy walkingdistance also. since we've been here for seven years a lot of things have
kind have gone wrong with his health and here he feels really comfortable. greatmedical he likes to get out. jo and cynthia take us for lovely rides around here they also have the added benefit ofsecurity living on the park with like mindedpeople most parks have aneighborhood watch you know and everyone looks out for eachother everyone comes together as acommunity
and help each other. theyeven go off and have coffee mornings together and the gents go off playing golf togetherit's it's a real community and yeah absolutely control of when they come and go yes this is a very safe environment we have cctv coverage of the whole site we have the securitybarriers for people coming in and out by vehicleswhenever we choose to go away whether it's on holidayor just for a few days
the people in the office areinformed so we always know that somebody is keeping an eye on on the house while we're away. living ona residential park is a secure life you know worrying about things everything is taken care of andfinancially networks are just fine. there are threesteps to buying a park home step one is choosing the location at thecountry where you want to live as the most important deciding way waywhere you want to live
step 2 is choosing the style of park home you want to live in. there are manydifferent styles of park homes. there's traditional modern, contemporary, cottage, soonce you've chosen the home you want to live in, that would bring us on to stage 3 which is making it all happen and that's where we get involved in helping you making that happen indisposing of your bricks and mortar property
and moving into your dream home the view from our kitchen window is beautiful because it's straight across farmland and we do see quite a lot of wildlife we've been watching the rabbits whichare quite entertaining pheasant, we've had some dear fox. it's a lovely outlook at theback of the house here i had everything it offered everything you could possiblythink of. it had beautiful walks
we're on the sea again. we're a mile from the sea where we lived before. it had a fantastic village, restaurant, your surgery four major hospitals that are within a couple of miles which is really important for ron but it was just thepark itself we just liked it everybody seemed reallyfriendly and we decided that's what we're going to do we just said this is it and that's how we made the move. the thing that attracted me, life-style wise was
it's so easy you know there's nohustle and bustle you take everything at your own pace and just work as you want to work you not rushed with anything it's so perfect for us, its adequate size no maintenance, from moving in everything is here with appliances, the carpets you move in on day 1 and everything's adequate for our needs
i've no reason to ever think of a change because we're so pleased with exactly as it is by living here, coming here we've learned a lot fromeach other i used to do some painting with some other people and we use to meet up at the house we got into cross stitch cynthia got me into knitting and we would do that. bird-watching really going into bird watching and walks.
the appeal of the lifestyle, i can just go out the door and have a walk round, even ifit's dark, i'm not frightened back at home i wouldn't walk down the streets on my own here i just feel so secure i moved in reluctantly stayed for several months. very reluctant. i didn't really want to be here but circumstances change and unfortunately i lost my husband about six months ago and suddenly irealised his wisdom in his wisdom he brought us to a placethat made it
safe secure ideally situated home that i could never have had anywhere else it was his wisdom. i didn't realise that and unfortunately until i lost him his wisdom brought me to the right place my advice for people approaching their retirement is start planning. the planning is everything start looking well in advance and decide which part of the country you want tolive my advice for anybody who's coming up to retired, i always my husband always had a saying, 'long time dead'
i hated that when he said that, but it's true and you really have to think very seriously what you want out of life so there is this totalimbalance so if people could think about howthey the situation they're in could they benefit not only themselvesdownsizing but the fact that a family could move inyou know that would enjoy that space would grow up in that space so i think it's it's about thinking not just what youwanna do for yourself but what you
actually contributing to society as well byshe saying well move out, there are other places wecould move to and park homes like this, they are one of the ways forward they have to be one of the ways forwardbecause traditional building cost costs environmentally let aloneanything else park homes don't quite have that carbon footprintthat a bricks-and-mortar house would have they're easily put up easily for peopleto
to move in they, have all the standards that a normal bricks-and-mortar home would have so this is probably one of the ways that wecan look at expanding our housing stock is byallowing tasteful developments like this and thensaying to people that sitting in these larger family houses look come and live like thisthis is the way forward and the advantage you have, as you getolder you get less tolerant and you don't like other people'spets or children
and the advantage of living on a sitelike this for me has been the restriction on on both those, i love my grandchild, they can come here, they can stay with me for weekends etc. but i've not got lots of children runningaround. i haven't got pets hanging around causing problems, so there is a plus side as well planning for retirement means asking yourself not just what youwant to do but how you want to live and where. stairs that need climbing
extra rooms that want cleaning andgardens that demand constant attention may not be best suited to your newlifestyle. perhaps a property laid out on one floor somewhere close to a town or withamenities right on the doorstep or maybe living in a community orvillage setting surrounded by like-minded people where you can forge new friendships and pursue pastimes old and new. retirement park homes tick all those boxes although they're not have course theonly possibility. what matters most
is that you choose the place and theproperty that's right for you