The average over-65 homeowner in Great Britain has seen property wealth gains worth £159,000 – the equivalent of £7,000 per year in the 23 years they have owned their home, analysis from Key Retirement has showed.
The average over-65 homeowner in Great Britain has seen property wealth gains worth £159,000 – the equivalent of £7,000 per year in the 23 years they have owned their home, analysis from Key Retirement has showed.
Over-65s in London have been the biggest winners with property prices soaring by £394,944 over the 27 years they have on average owned their homes – equivalent to £14,257 a year.
Homeowners in theSouthEast (21 years) are more than £230,000 better off from buying a property,while over-65s in East Anglia (18 years) have seen gains of £206,000 during the average time they have owned their current home.
Dean Mirfin, chief product officer at Key Retirement said: “The long-term strength of the housing market is demonstrated by the fact that on average over-65s are making nearly £7,000 annually from their homes rising to more than £14,000 a year in London.
“Property wealth of more than £1trillion enables pensioners who have paid off mortgages to generate returns which are making a huge contribution to their standard of living in retirement.
“They are also helping family and friends with 26% of equity release customers saying they used some of the proceeds as financial gifts.
“That is feeding through to rapid expansion of the equity release market and underlines why thousands are using their property wealth to transform their own and their family’s’ finances.”
All areas of the country have recorded strong gains underlining the long-term investment success of homeownership and the growing importance of property wealth for retirement planning.
Total property wealth owned by over-65s who have paid off their mortgages is near a record high of £1.09 trillion, Key’s Pensioner Property Equity Index has found.
These gains are helping deliver a boost to retirement standards of living as the equity release market expands with customers releasing an average £77,380 of property wealth and nearly £134,000 in London and £91,000 in the South East.
Over-65s in the North West are most likely to own outright with 671,000 having paid off mortgages compared with 656,000 in the South East.
