When his wife died, Michael Higgs, now 80, downsized from his main family home just outside Harpenden, where he’d lived for 15 years.
“It had a soulless feel to it; I wasn’t talking to any of the neighbours. Physically it was fine, but mentally it wasn’t,” he says of his new home.
Higgs had always liked Olney in Buckinghamshire, near where his family lived, and, in 2019 a three-bedroom property 100 metres from the high street became available. “My brother and sister-in-law suggested I look at it, and it never ended up going on the market as I bought it for around £450,000,” he says.
The new house had two double rooms and a single bedroom, a small kitchen and lounge and a small dining area. While Mr Higgs liked the town, he found the new house didn’t have enough space, even though he’d decluttered when he moved out of his Harpenden home.
“It was actually a bit small. Physically it wasn’t working well and I thought: ‘I can afford to upsize, so why not?’.”
He was also mindful about what would happen when he got older: “I was thinking about buying a bigger house for when I needed a part-time or a live-in carer. A big part of the move was about the future. It costs £50,000 a year to live in a care home, and I wanted to live in my own home,” he says.
In July 2022, Higgs moved a second time, to a four-bedroom new-build, just outside Olney. His new home cost £780,000 and has a double garage, big kitchen-diner, lounge, four toilets and one main bathroom.
“The rooms are huge for a new build… And everyone who comes and uses the downstairs toilet says it’s the biggest one they’ve ever been in.”
Higgs is still working and recently wrote an autobiography. He makes use of one of the bedrooms as an office because the downstairs study is “too small”. The other bedrooms are used for guests: “I do like entertaining, and people come and stay overnight, or even for two to three weeks,” he says.
Higgs says he tends to do things without involving his family, but people thought the move was a good idea. “Older people downsize for two reasons: to release capital and because smaller houses are easy to look after”, he says – but neither of these apply to him because he isn’t under pressure to release any equity, and the house is a new build so there’s very little maintenance needed.
That said, he has found the garden more work than he anticipated, and has put money into adding a pond and grasses to encourage wildlife. He mostly does the gardening himself although he does sometimes get a couple of gardeners in.
“I love this house and the environment. I feel on top of the world and don’t regret it for one minute,” he says. “People ask me if I’ll ever move out and I say ‘Yes, horizontally’.”