Downsizing homes: beware the apartment service charges

Sir, – Further to “More than two-thirds of people are living in homes too big for their needs, says ESRI report” (News, March 27th), the one glaring thing missing from the reporting of the ESRI’s view that older people should downsize from houses to apartments is the running sore of multi-unit service charges. Having owned a maisonette from 2005 to 2022, the moving target of charges in a development without lifts or internal common areas was a four-figure annual amount that I could barely afford. I will never buy a property in a multi-unit development again.

It is remarkable how both the ESRI and The Irish Times blithely assume that having lived in our own houses and with full control over our home’s upkeep, we will trade our privacy and our retirement money for the perceived greater good. Some reality is needed in this conversation. – Yours, etc,

CORNELIUS LOGUE,

Quigleys Point,