Maintenance is the second advantage, and it tends to matter more than people expect before they move. A smaller home with a smaller garden means less time spent on jobs that used to eat into a weekend, and less worry about who will manage the guttering or the lawn if health changes. Communal grounds within a residential park are generally looked after by the park operator, which takes a further layer of upkeep off an individual homeowner's plate.

It is not the right fit for everyone, and it is worth taking time to understand how it compares with the alternatives before deciding. Tingdene's own residential parks are a reasonable starting point for seeing what park home living looks like in practice, with details on individual parks and homes available directly through the Tingdene website for anyone wanting to look further into a specific location.

The practical consequence of this distinction is significant. Someone planning to downsize and move somewhere full time needs a residential park, not a holiday park, however similar the two might look from the outside or however similar the language used to describe them. Getting this wrong at the research stage can lead to a lot of wasted time looking at properties that were never going to suit a genuine, permanent move in the first place.

This is one of the areas where residential park living tends to compare well. Many of Tingdene's parks are set up to welcome dogs and other pets, recognising that for a lot of later living communities-life movers, a pet is not an accessory to home life, it is a settled companion who has usually been part of the household for years and whose comfort matters just as much as the owner's. A move that means parting with a dog or cat is, for many people, simply not a move worth making, however sensible it looks on paper.

Martlesham Heath, on the edge of Ipswich in Suffolk, is better known to most people as a settled, established community than as a retirement destination, which is precisely part of its appeal for a residential park. Falcon Park sits within that wider setting, one of Tingdene's residential parks built for year-round living, and it benefits directly from being part of an area that already has its own shops, green space and sense of place rather than existing in isolation.

It is worth remembering that a park home purchase still involves other costs that a house sale would not, including the ongoing pitch fee payable to the park operator and the usual costs of moving itself. Removing one particular tax from the equation does not mean removing every cost associated with the move, and anyone comparing the two routes should look at the whole picture rather than a single line item in isolation.