Houses on the sand?
Legacy values are closely linked to house prices and are set for a tumble. Mark Pincher reviews the evidence
The challenge facing charities today is the maintenance of their charitable obligations in the face of adverse economic conditions. The present situation has seen banks fail, inflation levels increase, energy prices zoom out of proportion and the housing market run out of steam. All of these will have consequences on the charitable sector and, inescapably, one of them is the erosion of legacy income as house prices tumble. The importance of legacies can be measured by their worth. The top 5,000 charities in the UK (by income, expenditure or net assets) received legacies worth a total of £1,659.3m which constitutes 4.3 per cent of all income [1]. Of the top 5,000, 22 per cent (1,063) received legacies. One only has to imagine what charitable works can be accomplished over the course of one year at a cost of £1.7bn to realise the importance of this revenue stream. However the current economic climate is threatening this.
Author: Mark Pincher
Mark Pincher is data editor and development manager for Caritas Data.
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