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Average care home stay will cost half the value of your home

Written By:
Guest Author
Posted:
20/03/2017
Updated:
20/03/2017

Guest Author:
Christina Hoghton

If you need to enter residential care you can expect to pay total bills of between £50,000 and £93,000 depending on where you live in the country.

According to Royal London, it reckons that variations in house prices around the UK mean that this could amount to anything from 18% to 56% of the value of the average home.

For residents in the North East of England, where the average house price is just under £129,000, an average stay of 30 months in a residential home costing £554 per week in the region would eat up 56% of the value of their home.

At the other end of the scale, those living in London where the average house price is around £484,000, would find that 30 months of average residential care costs of £666 per week in the capital would only account for around 18% of the value of that property.

What if you stay longer than 30 months?

The length of time for which someone stays in a residential home can vary widely, and for those with the longest stays, the total bill can exceed the value of the typical house in several parts of the UK.

Evidence shows that 10% of residential home residents have a stay of 6.5 years or more. Royal London calculated that for residents of Wales, Northern Ireland and four English regions (North West, North East, Yorkshire and East Midlands) such long-stayers could face a total bill in excess of the value of the average home.

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Debbie Kennedy, head of protection at Royal London said: “These figures are a shocking reminder of the huge costs which growing numbers of us will face if we need residential care later in life. Even an average stay in a care home can eat up half the value of your home, depending where you live in the country.

“The whole system is a lottery and we need to find better ways of supporting people to cope with these large and unpredictable bills.”

See YourMoney.com’s Will I have to pay my own care home fees? for more information.