Richard Williams, a well-known businessman and charity campaigner, is leaving the Melbourne home he and his wife Sandra have lived in for 27 years for one just 120 metres away.

They haven’t fallen on hard times and they’re not looking to make a killing on a booming property market. It’s just that, like so many other seniors, they’ve reached a stage in life where downsizing makes a lot of sense.

They’re definitely not alone in their reasoning. Indeed, Professor Bruce Judd, Australia’s leading researcher of retiree downsizers, says the Williams’ reasons for downsizing are increasingly common.

His most recent study, published in October, found that lifestyle preference is the most common reason people downsize, followed by inability to maintain a large house or garden. Children leaving home, retirement, relationship breakdown, illness and the death of a partner are also important motivations.

The Williams decision to downsize followed Mr Williams’ recent surgeries and ongoing chemotherapy to treat tumours in his liver.

• How boomers will change the property market
• ‘Granny flats’ are in demand for new retirees
• Stricter loans to hit ‘retirees and first home buyers’
• Rise of the Super Boomers: is it fact or fiction?

“We have loved living in this house, but now it is time to move to a smaller place,” says Mr Williams, 68, who was honoured with a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2012 for his extensive charity work.

He adds: “If I’m not around, Sandra’s comfortable with the area. I think downsizing is a good thing.”

Their new home in Doncaster East, which won’t be finished until March next year, is slightly smaller, with one less bedroom.

Professor Judd says that despite perceptions, only about nine per cent of Australians aged 50 and over downsize into smaller homes. And for those who do, money is not the reason.

“Financial difficulties were given as reasons by only a few,” Prof Judd says.

Real estate agent Michael Webb, who is selling Mr Williams’ home, tells The New Daily that he sees “a high number” of baby boomers who want to maintain their independence, but in a smaller property, with lifestyle not money the “biggest” motivation.

Baby boomers still want to entertain, have space to look after grandchildren and a small garden area, but also want to remain close to the amenities they have grown used to and the social groups they have formed over many years, says Mr Webb of real estate agency Philip Webb, Victoria’s largest non-franchise firm.

“Once they get past 50 and get to retirement age they no longer want to maintain a larger home and garden, but they are also not wanting to go into retirement homes either, which leads them to look for smaller homes on more manageable block sizes,” he says.

But many downsizers are forced to wait up to six months for the right property in the right area to become available because developers prefer to build double-storey homes that are unsuitable for retirees, Mr Webb says.

Mr Williams and his wife had the same difficulty.

“Ideally, we would’ve liked a little bit smaller house on a flat block with not a lot of garden around it, but they’re just not available,” says Mr Williams, who passed on a single-storey unit because its rooms were “unnecessarily small”.

“Anything that’s a flat block that’s of a reasonable size, developers get in and are building two, usually three, townhouses on a block,” he says.

A retiree advocacy group has previously told The New Daily that downsizing is not a financially viable option for many older Australians.

COTA WA Seniors Housing Centre information officer John Millar says many Australians could save money by moving to a “completely new” area on the edge of the city or in a rural area, but that their lifestyle would probably suffer.

“[T]hey can make some money, but they suffer because they are away from loved ones, away from friends, and possibly even away from amenities,” Mr Millar says.

Coming out square, as Mr Williams hopes to do, with no great financial windfall for dropping a room and several square metres for the sake of convenience, seems common.

“The newer properties they are thinking of buying are almost the same price, or in some cases as much as, the property they are selling,” Mr Millar says.