Millions of older homeowners are sitting on a retirement lifeline worth hundreds of thousands of pounds — but as Andrew Palmer reports the research shows those in the North are far less likely than southerners to ever consider using it

It sounds like a story about poverty. It is actually a story about wealth — vast, largely untapped, and sitting quietly behind millions of front doors from Cumbria to the Humber.

A major new report published today reveals that fifteen million people across the UK are under-saving for retirement, with one in ten working-age adults on course for a later life in poverty. Yet many of those same households are homeowners sitting on six-figure sums of equity they have never seriously considered using.

The Retirement Compass, published by independent consumer group Fairer Finance, was launched at a Westminster briefing attended by Lucy Rigby, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, with warnings that ministers must act now to bring housing wealth into the mainstream of retirement planning.

For the North, the findings carry a particular sting. Homeowners in the region face a retirement income shortfall every bit as severe as those in the South — but they are markedly less likely to do anything about it. Just 29% of Northern homeowners with a shortfall said they would consider downsizing, against 43% in the South and 36% in the Midlands. Only 11% would consider equity release, and barely one in ten had ever previously thought about it, compared with 17% in the South.

The gap is not explained by need. It is explained by habit.

Single women emerge as the report's most striking figures nationally. They accounted for 32% of all new equity release plans taken out in the second half of 2025 — a far higher share than their 29% presence among homeowner households aged 55 to 79 would suggest. Of the 1.4 million single female homeowners in that age bracket earning below the Pensions UK moderate standard, some 700,000 hold housing wealth of £200,000 to £400,000, and a further 200,000 sit on homes worth £400,000 or more.

Nationally, 65% of single female homeowners aged 55–79 will fall short of the £31,700-a-year moderate living standard, against 44% of single men — despite both groups holding almost identical average housing wealth of £225,000. A third of women in this age group said they felt insecure about their family's economic security in retirement, compared with a fifth of men.

James Daley, Managing Director of Fairer Finance, said growing numbers of people were approaching retirement without adequate pension savings while sitting on assets that could transform their later years. "Single women in particular often have the biggest income gap in retirement — but our data shows that on average, they have no less housing wealth than single male households," he said. Structural and behavioural barriers were still holding people back, he added, and government, regulators and the Money & Pensions Service needed to work together to remove them.

Jim Boyd, Chief Executive of the Equity Release Council, put it more bluntly: it is "simply not true" to assume that people with poor pensions also lack other resources to secure a comfortable retirement. For many, he said, the home is the most significant financial asset a person owns, and folding it into mainstream retirement planning could mean the difference between merely getting by and a genuinely secure old age.

Care costs, the report found, are now among the leading reasons homeowners would consider releasing equity, level with topping up pension income — each cited by around a quarter of those surveyed. A further 16% would use the money for home adaptations such as stairlifts or walk-in showers, and 16% for care home fees. Researchers identified a new generation of what they termed "Working Pragmatists" — typically aged 60, still working, worried about retirement finances, and convinced that people like them will eventually turn to equity release, even though they haven't yet looked into it themselves. It is a profile that upends the old assumption that releasing equity is something only the very elderly do.

Fairer Finance is renewing five recommendations first made in 2025: a bigger supply of retirement housing where older people actually want to live, lower stamp duty for those downsizing in later life, a cultural shift that normalises using housing wealth in retirement, a single joined-up view of pension and property assets, and reform of FCA rules to break down the advice silos that currently keep pensions and property planning apart.

The Treasury has heard the figures. Whether the North starts making the calls remains to be seen.



For more information on Fairer Finance and to read the report in full, please visit www.fairerfinance.com.