PENSIONERS OFFERED RENT-BACK HOME DEAL

[Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2006]: Elderly people are being encouraged to sell their homes below value and then rent them back as the pensions crisis deepens.

A company called National Homebuyers said yesterday that it had launched a "Sell and Rent Back plan" aimed at pensioners.

Unlike an equity release plan, the pensioner no longer owns any of the home, but is able to rent it indefinitely.

David Harber, the firm's communications director, said the move offered "a lifeline" to pensioners abandoned by the Government.

"It is impossible to think that in this day and age, people who have saved as advised are now facing an uncertain future in poverty," he said.

Many pensioners have already used equity release products, in which they sell a proportion of their home and continue to live in it.