Pensioners making £900 a month from property

Property owned by pensioners has risen in value significantly.

Retired homeowner’s property wealth rose by more than £12.5 billion in the past three months, according to the Key Retirement Pensioner Property Index. That is a climb of nearly £900 a month for the average pensioner.

Given that many pensioners own their homes outright, they are seeing the biggest gains from the buoyant housing market. Key Retirement believes that the over 65s made an average of £2,680 from rising house prices in the last three months.

Since 2010 total pensioner property wealth has increased by 12% or £93.85 billion. That’s an average of £20,000 for every pensioner homeowner.

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London comes out on top

No-one will be surprised to hear that retired homeowners in London have made the most with an average gain of £16,260 in the past three months alone. In contrast, pensioners in Wales have seen an average fall of £2,230 over the same period.

Region	Average change in value per retired homeowner (Feb - May 2015)	Combined change in value for all retired homeowner in area
London	£16,261	£5.951 billion
Scotland	£8,653	£2.434 billion
Yorkshire/Humberside	£4,063	£1.172 billion
South West	£2,415	£1.513 billion
East Midlands	£2,049	£883.528 million
South East	£2,006	£1.315 billion
East Anglia	£540	£254.88 million
North East	£400	£110 million
West Midlands	-£246	-£88.166 million
North West	-£560	-£375.76 million
Wales	-£2,231	-£590.322 million
Great Britain	+£2,680	£12.581 billion

Owning your property outright

According to Key's research, it's older homeowners in the North West who are most likely to own their home outright.

Region	Number of households in the region owned outright by people aged 65+
North West	671,100
South East	656,000
South West	626,600
East Anglia	472,000
East Midlands	431,200
London	366,000
West Midlands	358,400
Yorkshire/Humberside	288,600
Scotland	282,000
North East	275,000
Wales	264,600

Cashing in on your property

Clearly, many pensioners are sitting on increasingly valuable property assets.

As a nation we need to start considering our homes when working out our retirement income, according to Key Retirement.

“No matter what happens in the property market homeowners will always have a major asset which should be considered as part of retirement planning. Innovation in the equity release market and the launch of pension freedoms are opening up more ways for homeowners to use their property wealth," said Dean Mirfin, technical director at Key Retirement.

To find out more about equity release and whether it will help you in retirement, read The pros and cons of equity release.

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