Why the best bungalows don’t come cheap

SIR – Fed up with the neighbours’ noise and a lack of parking while living in a three-bedroom Victorian semi, I invested in a two-bedroom detached bungalow in a quiet close (Letters, May 9).

It is a financial strain, but it was the most economical way of getting myself some peace, privacy and parking.

Helen Webster

Woking, Surrey

SIR – Jenny Ragg (Letters, May 9), like me, is perhaps fortunate to be sufficiently healthy and financially secure to find the idea of downsizing to a small bungalow “quite abhorrent”.

What she seems not to realise is that many people aspire to live in a small bungalow, as they are trapped in old two-storey or three-storey houses that often have insufficient heating, high maintenance costs and inefficient insulation.

Not everyone can afford to improve or even maintain their properties effectively with a basic pension income.

One of the constant sorrows of my 40 or so years as an estate agent in a provincial city was valuing

longstanding homes of elderly owner-occupants – who often had poor mobility or suffered ill health – and informing them that the value came nowhere near the price of a small bungalow. The dream ended there and this was reflected in their faces.

More affordable bungalows would meet a frustrated demand that does exist even if it isn’t always evident to us luckier over-sixties.

Ian Simpson

Kenilworth, Warwickshire

SIR – Why does Jenny Ragg assume that all bungalows are small?

On retiring 16 years ago, we moved from a town to a village. We have a two-bedroom bungalow with five other rooms and a conservatory – plus an extremely large front garden, a mini orchard at the back and two fish ponds.

Maggie Thorne

Beverley, East Yorkshire

SIR – Not only are stairs good exercise for the heart, they are an essential aid for doing up shoelaces.

John Bristow

Winchester, Hampshire