The CML said despite recent national coverage of comments made by the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) mortgage sector manager Lynda Woodall at last week’s IMLA debate, there was in fact a great deal of consensus among homeowners and industry stakeholders.
Writing in a blog post, the CML’s Sue Anderson highlighted that many older homeowners would like to trade down to a smaller property, but felt that various barriers made this impossible.
However, she added that while recent coverage could make the main debate appear that older borrowers were being coerced to downsize, there were a number of challenges holding homeowners back.
Anderson named the biggest challenges as the lack of available and suitable homes for the last-time buyer market and the transaction costs involved in moving which could act as a significant disincentive to trading down.
She wrote: “The real debate is about how to address the current lack of (perceived) choice for older home-owners who would like to move, but feel they can’t. No-one, as far as we know, is suggesting that older home-owners should be forced or guilt-tripped into doing anything they don’t want to.
“Getting anywhere with this big issue is unlikely to come from any focus on division and conflict. It’s going to come from having a calm, rational debate about housing supply and use, and perhaps from some “nudge economics” to tip the balance of behaviour in ways that help to widen choice, not narrow it.”
The CML is currently working on creating solutions following on from its lending into retirement project, which it said it hopes will contribute to removing the barriers to choice for older people and their housing.
