At 58, and with her three children having now each reached adulthood, Susan Bonner might have expected to be downsizing from her five-bedroom home in Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire.

Instead, the entrepreneur is actually extending her home further.

Susan says the move is a “legacy of Covid”.

“During that time, we all loved our homes a bit more. We’ve been looking for a bigger one for a few years – I really wanted to have a bigger kitchen space at the back going out on to the garden,” she says.

The family had initially looked at moving homes before settling on extending their current one.

They are in the process of extending the back of the house, having it open on to the garden, and putting in a new dining area.

Then, they are splitting the existing dining room into two, and making half into a music room, and half into an office for Susan’s husband.

“The reason we didn’t move in the end is that we love our location. It’s five minutes from the beach and near a park,” she explains.

The whole project will likely cost around £100,000, but they believe it will add value, and that moving could potentially cost more once charges like stamp duty and legal costs are taken into account.

Work on the property is ongoing

Of Susan’s chldren, one is at university, one is working in London half the week, and one is living at home full-time.

She doesn’t expect they will each live there long-term, so why upsize, rather than downsize?

“We want to have a house they can come back to. My in laws downsized and had a two bed bungalow which meant whenever we went to visit it was quite difficult,” she says.

“It’ll be our children’s home for as long as they want it to be,” she adds.

Susan’s extension at the back of her house

Although downsizing is a common move by empty nesters, a significant portion of homeowners shun it.

Experts said that incentives for homeowners to do it would be a way of boosting its popularity, which would in turn free up bigger homes for families.

Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank estate agency said: “There will be a variety of reasons why people opt not to downsize, ranging from an emotional connection to the property or neighbourhood to the size of the stamp duty bill.

“That’s why some form of incentive, such as scrapping stamp duty for downsizers, could result in a better use of the country’s housing stock by freeing up larger homes for younger families.”

Stamp duty is a tax paid when you buy a home, and means that some people can paying more money for a smaller home than they get from the sale of their larger one.

However, there are pros of doing it as well as downsides. Property expert Jonathan Rolande runs through some of them below.

The pros and cons of downsizing

Pros

• Maintenance can be a key one. “Reduced cleaning and fewer gardening worries than running a larger house,” Rolande says.
• Freeing up equity, as your smaller home will likely cost less than than your previous one, giving you cash to spend on other things.

• More things taken care of for you, if the property is a flat. “Building insurance, repairs, and so on,” are generally sorted by someone else in a leasehold or share of freehold property, according to Rolande, though of course ongoing costs to come with this.

Cons

• Decluttering is needed. “Because the other property will be smaller, sellers may have to offload precious or sentimental possessions that simply won’t fit,” Rolande adds.

• Maintenance costs in flats can be high. “Flats, particularly warden-assisted flats, can have maintenance costs of £3,000 to £5,000 a year quite easily, which is more than many would have been used to paying on a freehold house. This is because they have communal facilities, a warden, lifts, and so on, which all have to be maintained.”

• Issues having guests. “There can also be issues when relatives come to stay if, for example, a three-bed semi has been sold to buy a one-bed flat,” Rolande explains.