smaller text
bigger textCould your home buy you a better life? - Woman's Weekly 18th March 2008
With the Lifetime Lease, you sell your home and find one you want to live in; the lifetime lease company buys it, and sells you the right to live in it for the rest of your life, for a one-off payment that's considerably less than the price of the property. You can transfer the lease if you move, but you'll need extra cash if the new property's more expensive, and you don't get anything back if you move to a cheaper one.
Pros: Because you pay less than market price, you may be able to move to a home or area where you couldn't afford to buy, as well as having money left over from selling your home.
Cons: You won't own the new home, so you won't benefit from any rises in its value, and you can't leave it to your heirs. Nor will you have a property to sell if you ever need to go into full-time care. Unlike home reversion plans and lifetime mortgages, lifetime leases aren't regulated by the Financial Services Authority, so there's less protection against mis-selling. Lifetime Leases aren't available in Scotland.
‘We've moved to the house of our dreams'
Beverley Dyke, 67, and her husband, Mike, moved to their home in Leicester on a Lifetime lease
We hadn't intended to move, but we saw this house and fell in love with it. The house had just been done up, and we knew that we wouldn't have to do a thing to it. We could have bought it, but as we've got no children, we wanted to release some money. The lifetime lease scheme from Homewise meant we'd have £30,000 left from the sale of our own house. Having owned our own home for all these years, I was worried about it but the adviser from Homewise spent a long time going through it with us, and our solicitor checked everything. We can live here for the rest of our lives- or if we need to move, we can. I never thought I'd live in a beautiful home like this, and the money we released is a bonus. That extra bit of money gives you security.
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