Coo! Lots of replies!
OK the position.
We're a tad old and started our family rather late. Robin, for such is his name, has just finished his Post Graduate Cert of Education and will be starting as a new science teacher in September. Pay-scales for new teachers are abysmal. He's getting married next year. We offered him £20K but that just isn't enough for a mortgage lender and there ain't no more in the bucket so we can't increase our offer. He's paying around £800 a month for his flat but that's just lost money. (Actually we're getting about the same amount for our little house.)
If I could find a way for him to pay me the £800 rent and wind up owning the house/flat then we would both be in exactly the same situation we are in now but he'd be paying towards his own ownership.
Heh. You're right. We couldn't persuade the kids to leave home so, the moment they went off to university, we poked off to Portugal! Actually they knew it was coming as we'd bought our ruin out here about seven years before. The kids helped get the place habitable and now we have a place that they can come out to visit. Seven bedrooms, swimming pool (33ºC today) and right out in the country. As an aside, we are thinking about returning to the expense and dreariness of the UK but I doubt we would want to live in Basingstoke again so that's a different 'problem'.
To answer Mosstown's questions:
1. Medical care out here is better than the UK, (at the moment). I had a heart operation four weeks ago; I waited just ten days between being diagnosed and the operation itself. (And it was free, the cost to my local hospital was over €5,000 I was told.)
2. With my dicky ticker that's likely to be me. My missus has said that she'd sell here and buy a small flat somewhere near the grandchildren. But our plan to help Robin would have no impact on that decision.
3. But it's a good time to buy!
4. Income should be the same?
Phew, that's far too long an answer, Sorry to rattle on.
Chris