Pick of the Pundits: Home income market to grow: Experts on the different aspects of personal finance talk to Vivien Goldsmith and Maria Scott about the prospects for 1993 as signs of recovery grow firmer: Cecil Hinton

Cecil Hinton, managing director of Hinton & Wild, specialists in home income plans for the elderly says: 'There are an awful lot of people who are suffering from the reduced income from their investments - particularly people with small amounts of savings, say pounds 5,000 to pounds 10,000. Someone with pounds 10,000 in the building society has seen the income drop from around pounds 1,200 to pounds 600 a year. That is a tremendous drop.

'They have been frightened off home income schemes by the investment-based plans which have gone so horribly wrong.'

Mr Hinton recommends schemes that fix the rate of interest paid on the mortgage and the interest paid on the annuity. A 75-year-old woman who takes out the maximum viable loan of pounds 30,000 - the limit for tax relief - would get an income of pounds 1,487 after tax or pounds 1,830 for non-taxpayers.

'Roll-up or investment-based schemes are finished. But in the long term, the market for getting an income out of property for the elderly will expand because there is a demand for it.'

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