In Britain, more and more elderly people choose to “find a time and move into the village”. The elderly are moved by the old people’s village not only because the village has complete facilities, but also because there are more friends of the same age. They can communicate with each other and accompany each other, so as to make their lives happier.
In Surrey, England, “mayford Grange village” was launched in 2009, which is one of more than 50 elderly care villages established in Britain in recent years. It is 45 kilometers away from central London, close to a golf course and a farm full of wild interests. When you walk into the Grange village of meford, you will find that it is no different from the ordinary living quarters in other parts of the UK. The 45 apartments here are all two-story buildings. According to the size of the houses, there are two bedrooms and one bedroom. The apartment is located in a zigzag shape, while the central area is a green garden. The developer told the reporter that less than a year after the completion of the community, all 45 apartments in the old-age village were sold out. In addition to a good living environment, it also provides residents with 24-hour emergency services, organic food and car transfers. If the elderly have requirements, such as special personal care and elderly companionship, they can be provided by a third party.
What is more important is the detailed design of the community, which embodies care for the life of the elderly everywhere: except that the apartment building is two floors, there are few steps here and many ramps for wheelchair access. All the doors and windows are designed with three layers of glass, which not only effectively sound insulation, but also plays an important role in keeping warm in winter. Although each apartment room is equipped with at least one toilet, there are still many public toilets available 24 hours a day in the public area, and the personnel on duty are waiting all day long to provide necessary assistance. In addition to these, there are club style restaurants, cafes and libraries in the community, which are enough to meet the needs of the elderly.
Of course, high-quality service also makes such “pension villages” expensive. The minimum starting price of an apartment in Grange village, meford, is 400000 pounds. In addition, you need to pay a service fee of 100 pounds per week. At this price, you can even buy an ordinary residential house with a larger area nearby. However, there are still many old people who are so excited that they decide to sell or rent their original houses and move here because they feel that they will be more comfortable and happy here.
In fact, there are standards for “moving into the village”. For example, the resident must be over 65 years old, which is precisely an important reason why the elderly are willing to move in. Elderly people in their 60s and even 70s gather here, and when they eat together in the restaurant, read books in the library, or go out for a walk and chat, they will feel more common topics. Philip, a 70 year old man living in the Grange village of meford, said that he felt more peaceful after he moved here last year. There are no people coming and going in the busy streets. The old people around him not only have a similar pace of life to their own, but also often find that everyone has many similarities in their views on society. Such a living environment will not make him feel like before. After visiting his family, the house will become dull. In the “pension village”, you can hear laughter at any time and chat with friends and drink tea at any time.
Therefore, the biggest selling point of “pension village” is not to take care of or care for the elderly, but to let the elderly find a social group environment they prefer to live in. The office for Statistics estimates that in the next 25 years, the proportion of the elderly population in the UK will rise from 16% to 23%. This means a huge increase in pension and medical insurance expenditures. In the face of possible shrinking pensions and declining health care, the elderly in Britain need to reconsider their retirement life.
There are “retirement villages” such as meford Grange village in Lincolnshire, Cornwall and Oxfordshire in the UK, and their scale and service level are roughly the same. The project manager of grange village in mayford explained that many elderly people in Britain are “high assets and low income”. Many people have their own houses, and the value of assets is very high. Therefore, this mode, that is, they buy an apartment and pay relatively low maintenance fees during their stay. Therefore, operators in the UK market are more inclined to this “building for sale” mode, that is, to sell in the form of long-term lease rather than short-term lease. According to the statistics of the British Mortgage Association, the elderly families in Britain own half of the national housing assets. If they choose to sell their original apartments and live in the “pension village”, they will bring more housing sources and transaction volume to the housing market. Once the market has formed good expectations, it will bring strong development momentum to “pension real estate”.
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