Eight golden rules for downsizing

A change is as good as a rest, so they say. But downsizing your home is anything but restful – we know because we've just gone through the process.

We moved from a 270-year-old house in the Lake District, which had a large sloping garden, riverbank and woodland, to a smaller new-build bungalow between Tunbridge Wells and Paddock Wood in Kent. The distance involved proved no obstacle – moving locally is just as disruptive and stressful.

Most people are well aware of the stresses involved with the financial and legal aspects of a house move, which include dealing with estate agents, solicitors, jittery buyers and impatient sellers. In our case, it was no better or worse than most people's experience, although selling an old property with deeds and conveyances going back to the early 1800s was complicated. By comparison, buying a new-build was much simpler.

Fortunately, we had buyers who were keen and, after one false start late last year, found the property we wanted in a good location a few days after it came onto the market in February. We wanted to move south to be closer to our son.

But moving from a four-bedroom to two-bedroom house threw up a few challenges. So here are my golden rules for successful downsizing.

Don't leave it too late

We had planned to remain in our Lake District home until we reached age 70, but when we got to that age the market for character properties in a rural location was in the doldrums and it proved difficult to sell at a price that would make a move to the south feasible. But after the outbreak of Covid-19 country properties with land attached became a very attractive proposition, so our problem was solved and we could again try to downsize.

Nonetheless, aim to downsize while you still have the health and strength to cope with the process of moving, and before the physical demands of maintaining a larger house and big garden become too much. In other words, do it before you really need to. If you delay moving, you could end up being a forced seller due to bereavement or health issues.

Do it whether you live near to your children or not

Having previously lived close to London for over 30 years and with our son living in that area, a move to Kent looked like the most attractive option. It was also an area we had researched for some time. Downsizing makes sense even if you only want to move locally. Moving from a large family house to a much smaller home in the same area can release equity that can be passed on to children or grandchildren. It will also save your children the bother of dealing with a large cluttered house after you die.

Be ruthless about shrinking the amount you move

Removal firms deal in cubic feet. The more cubic feet you have to move, the more it will cost. So it is easier and cheaper to get rid of stuff before you move than to try to do so when you arrive at your new home.

Our move from a four-bedroom house with a cellar and a large shed, to a property with two fewer bedrooms and no shed, garage or other storage area and a small garden meant concentrating the mind on what we really needed to take. Old upholstered furniture is a particular problem, because it is unlikely to meet current safety requirements and will count as bulky waste, which the council or one of its agencies will remove, for a fee. Forward planning is necessary as a disposal can sometimes take weeks to arrange.

Since we were moving from a village that had one bus a week to one that had regular buses, we could dispose of our second car. We gave it to our 18-year-old grandson, and our daughter – a teacher – was happy to take our old and rather bulky office photocopier.

Use auctions in conjunction with the move

Like us, many downsizers have some valuable items that do not need to be moved, and an auction is the best way of disposing of them. You might not get top dollar for these items, but you will get something – and sometimes more than you expect. We had some potentially valuable 19th century watercolours of Lake District scenes and memorabilia related to the property we lived in until a couple of months ago. Even the most unlikely items might raise more than you think. A 50-year-old metal shelf from our cellar, valued at £5-£10 by the auction house, fetched an astonishing £30.

The easiest way to auction items like this is to consign them to an auctioneer as part of the move. Get your removal firm to take these items to the auctioneer after they leave your old property and before you move to the new one. In our case, one of the biggest local auctioneers, which included a fine art auctioneer, was based close to the M6 and items could be dropped off there before the removal van made the journey south.

Although pictures and other fragile items have to be packed carefully, disposing of items in this way is much less of a hassle than trying to sell them through the likes of eBay while simultaneously packing boxes and going through the legal complexities of a house move.

Don't buy a property with an extra bedroom just because the family might come to stay

Buy the right property for you. If your family want to come to stay, they can sleep on a sofabed or you could book them into a local B&B or hotel. Paying for that a couple of times a year is cheaper in the long run than paying the large extra amount for a house with more bedrooms. We also found that an extra bedroom is no guarantee of more space. New three-bedroom houses in the village we now live in have the same floor area as our spacious two-bedroom bungalow. Equally, new-builtd houses often have no garage or other storage areas.

Use a storage unit to house your surplus possessions until you have more space

New-builds come with brand-new kitchens and bathrooms, but rarely have built-in wardrobes or garden sheds. The lead-time for installing built-in wardrobes can be as long as three months, although fortunately ours arrived early. And the waiting time for sheds can be even longer. So if you need a place to store documents, garden furniture, tools, surplus clothing and bedding, and other personal effects in the meantime, a secure storage unit is the answer. Storage is not cheap, but providers usually offer a deeply discounted rate for the the first couple of months. We paid a fixed price on moving day for eight weeks' storage in a 50 sq foot unit around a 10-minute drive away. Six weeks after the move, we have just migrated to a unit half the size, which we expect to use until the new garden shed arrives in mid-November.

Storage units are deceptive. They have high ceilings, so although the floor area may seem small, their capacity is larger than it looks because boxes and crates can be stacked. We are paying approximately £150 a month including VAT for a 25 sq ft Big Yellow unit. It's close enough to make it a proxy for a secure, if temporary, spare room.

Budget for the costs of transferring to a new property

Moving is an expensive business. Removal costs are the least of it, with stamp duty and estate agents' fees the two single most expensive items. We purchased and sold at almost identical prices, yet our costs still came in at over £30,000. On top of this, the cost of our removal was around £4,000, but this was for a 320-mile move that had to take place over three working days. A local move would be much cheaper.

Transferring utilities and other bills such as council tax is easier than it once was because much of this can be done online. Early termination charges on phone contracts and broadband, however, can be a bugbear.

We terminated a contract for full fibre broadband with BT, but transferred to the best available comparable service at our new address. It has taken several long conversations with a BT call centre to win the argument that the early termination charges should be refunded. Other utility service switches involved some refunds of charges at our former property and fresh direct debits at the new one.

We had around £500 of refunds for the services at our old property but some unexpected expenses at the new one, including a £200 charge by the local council for a new set of bins for refuse and recycling.

Get help with the logistics of the move

One of the main reasons why we downsized was to move closer to our son. He was able to do useful things such as pick up the keys for the property on our behalf following completion, meet the removal vans at the property the following day and ensure that furniture was placed in the right position prior to our arrival. When we arrived there was very little to do other than opening boxes.

Six weeks on, the new place seems very much like home. We are not expecting to have to repeat the exercise.

[box out] The financial implications of downsizing

Each individual's circumstances are different. Our own downsizing move entailed costs of nearly £40,000, which were paid for out of the equity we released 20 years previously when we moved north. Most of this money had been invested in equities and property in the meantime, so could be released subsequently to pay for the costs of the move.

Moving from north to south is not a cheap exercise. We bought and sold at similar prices, but our new home was roughly two-thirds of the size of our old one. But we should make savings in future due to lower running costs. We moved from a large, draughty poorly insulated house with large heating bills and heavy maintenance expenses, to an extremely well-insulated home with a heat pump and underfloor heating. We also don't expect to have to redecorate it for some years to come.

Moving to a location in a village with shops and frequent buses also means that we don't need two cars. So there are associated savings on fuel, vehicle excise duty, servicing, insurance and depreciation. Moving to a smaller property on a small plot should mean savings on council tax. Even with ballooning electricity prices we reckon that our monthly overheads for utilities, council tax and other expenses could drop by as much as 30 to 35 per cent as a result.

A similar type of downsizing in the London area could release sizeable amounts of equity and result in savings on running costs. A friend who is doing that expects to release an amount of equity worth six figures, which will enable her to give money to her teenage grandchildren to help them buy properties.