How to buy a house that isn’t on the market

There are many, mutually reinforcing causes of the property crisis: it is too easy to borrow; there are too many people; there aren’t enough houses; what houses do exist are in the wrong place; and many houses have the wrong people living in them. Solutions exist to all of these, some of which involve building and some of which don’t.

Today we are going to focus on the fifth problem. Too many people are living in houses which are too big for them. In south-east England it is not uncommon to find people living in £1 million homes who are otherwise skint. I know someone who lives on a long road of four-bedroom houses where they are the only household of more than two. This is daft.

The problem is psychological not structural. Intriguingly, one financial adviser tells me that there is an ironclad behavioural pattern among retirees: unless you downsize before the age of 72, you will never do it unless driven by highly adverse financial or medical circumstances.