Things I wish I’d known before I bought a retirement flat by Judith Brown
We’ve all seen them haven’t we? Advertisements showing happy elders laughing and clasping wine glasses, in their perfectly set retirement dwellings. “Don’t worry about a thing” is the general message. “You’ll be better off here.”
When my husband died in 2020, I left our three storey house on the top of Windmill Hill, with its long sloping garden, and one minibus every (maybe) hour, to buy a little ground floor flat with a tiny garden, near to a surgery, shops and buses in all directions. It was obvious that my knees wouldn’t last much longer, and that my failing eyesight would cause me to give up my car.
After much looking I did find such a flat, in a Churchill Lodge, and being in a bereaved state I did not take in my solicitors warning – I just wanted to move.
And it was a good move. True, away from my family, but otherwise perfect.
Until the ground rent demand landed, and here’s the thing, not only is it £600 a year for which I receive nothing, but the clause the solicitors warned me of, says they can put it up every seven years. I bought, I thought, my flat, but in actual fact I only own the building and not the land it stands on. Aware that this is unfair, the Government decided to pass a new law, but while this will help new residents of retirement homes, it will not help anyone already resident.
So I started asking why is the ground rent so high? We all already pay a considerable amount for cleaning and decorating the communal areas, a careline, a lodge manager (part time) washing windows, and our little launderette, but the ground rent gives us nothing. I was told by the management company, who manage the business for Churchill, that the money was used to pay for the communal areas in the flats. “to build them” that is. Since our lodge is 11 years old, I assumed they had long since been paid for(!) but I received no satisfactory answer.
Don’t get me wrong, I willingly pay the other charges, but the ground rent does make me see red. So, if thinking of buying a retirement flat, please check if it actually going to be yours, and if you have to pay ground rent, how much and how long for. And check what you can do in your ‘own’ flat. We have just been told that if we want to alter anything we must get permission and pay the management company for letting us do so! I wanted to put a mobility bath in, which of course I had to pay for myself, but it took me several months to get them to agree! Yes, in a Churchill Lodge you don’t have a thing to worry about – not!
Judith Brown, BOPF Ambassador