Last time buyers

A new research study by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research, has quantified the size and shape of the UK's "Last Time Buyer" market for the first time.

It identified that there are 5.3m under-occupied homes in the UK, with 3.3m households are looking to downsize.

Furthermore, it estimates that this particular market owns 7.7m spare bedrooms and a total of £820 billion of housing wealth, set to reach £1.2 trillion in 2020.

It also found the common reasons for homeowners to consider downsizing are that a current property has become unsuitable because of stairs or a large garden (45%) and the property becoming too large for their needs (33%).

However whilst, Legal & General's research shows that almost a third of older homeowners have considered downsizing in the last five years, fewer than one in ten (7%) actually did move.