Elsewhere, we also found more evidence of flats in desirable locations which have lost tens of thousands of pounds in value.<\/p>\n
One development, Goodes Court in Royston, Hertfordshire, stood out.<\/p>\n
It’s a block of 52 flats for the over-70s run by McCarthy Stone, the biggest supplier of private retirement developments in the country.<\/p>\n
It has extra facilities such as a dining room, on-site manager and cleaners.<\/p>\n
The service charge is typically \u00a310,000 per year for a one-bed flat.<\/p>\n
By analysing Land Registry records we found that of 27 flats sold since 2014, 24 fell in value, losing a total of more than a million pounds.<\/p>\n
For example, Flat 33, which first sold for \u00a3208,000, was bought two years ago for just \u00a370,000.<\/p>\n
Another, Flat 25, had an original asking price of \u00a3192,950 and resold last year again for \u00a370,000.<\/p>\n
And Flat 36, which first sold for \u00a3189,950, is now at auction with a sale price of just \u00a39,000.<\/p>\n
McCarthy Stone is building another development of flats for the over-60s, 400 metres away in the centre of Royston.<\/p>\n
The company told us many of its properties retain or go up in value but recognise that that hasn’t happened at Goodes Court.<\/p>\n
It said it had invested in “significant refurbishments” to support owners who were free to rent out flats while trying to sell them.<\/p>\n
However, it insisted across its other developments “the overwhelming majority of residents and their families are delighted with their experience”.<\/p>\n
Woods says it all “feels very inhuman\u2026 just about balance sheets and profit and loss”.<\/p>\n
And Fraser says he’d like to warn anyone looking at buying a retirement flat in a development to think very carefully.<\/p>\n
“Before, I would have said, yeah, go for it. Now I’m saying be very, very careful. It may not be as wonderful as you think it is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elsewhere, we also found more evidence of flats in desirable locations which have lost tens of thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-595875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}