If your children have grown up and left home, at some stage it may hit you that:

• Your home is now too big for you and is costly to maintain and run – so downsizing may give you a more comfortable lifestyle by reducing bills and maintenance costs.
• Now you are free of responsibilities, you can follow your dreams and retire abroad.
• While you love your home and don’t want to move, is there some way you can bring in an income from it.

What are your options?

Making any big life decision needs lots of consideration to make sure it really is the best thing for you to do. Here at My Online Estate Agent we have put some tips together for all of you empty nesters out there about on what you need to know about selling, renting and moving. We hope this will help you to make an informed decision as to the next and the right step.

Downsizing or moving abroad

Earlier this year, the Daily Mail reported how downsizing your property can generate a £100,000 windfall. This is due to the current high demand for family-sized homes which means sellers can charge a premium.

Obviously this is case dependant but with that sort of potential profit, you could have a healthy lump sum to put towards a smaller home, or towards your Spanish villa / Florida beach house etc.

If you are selling your home via a traditional high street estate agent, the commission fees could seriously eat in to a chunk of your profit. Here’s why:

• The average three-bedroom semi-detached house in England and Wales is now worth £181,619.
• Estate agency fees range from 75% up to 3.5% of the agreed selling price for your home depending on the type of contract you choose.
• Sell your home at the average England and Wales asking price, and you could pay up to £6,356 in estate agency fees.
• Sell your London home (where the average property value is £481,820) and you could face estate agency fees of nearly £17,000!

We recently spoke to Tony Clarke about why he chose against this method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfIk0skQxE4

Sell your home privately

Alternatively, you may wish to sell your home privately. There are a number of different services you can choose, from those where you do everything yourself (such as taking photos, writing up the details and providing floor plans, organising viewings and negotiating with prospective buyers and so on). This can save you a substantial amount of money, giving you more to put towards your new home, whether it is a bungalow in Broadstairs or a Finca in Fuerteventura! If you go down this route, make sure that the website you use will advertise your property on all the major portals, otherwise you may not get the viewing interest that you want.

Fill your nest!

If you want to stay in your home, then there is an old but still very relevant article in The Guardian that provides some great ideas about renting out your home. From taking in full time lodgers (via the Rent a Room scheme) to foreign students during the holidays, there are lots of options.

You can even do holiday house swaps with like-minded people in different countries so you get to keep your home and enjoy foreign travel and free accommodation for several weeks at a time!

What next?

Being an empty nester doesn’t mean you have to downsize – unless you want to of course! It generally comes down to what is right for you but with all of these options on offer, whether you want to sell, rent or swap; it really is a great position to be in when starting your new chapter.