3. Buy a big house and rent bits out to your friends. This is my ultimate fantasy, that we could magically buy a huge house and rent sets of rooms out to our friends at an advantageous rate so they'd all want to move in.
3. This is convenient, my wife and I may need a base in the UK in the next few years. Can we get the friend's rate?
Absolutely! As soon as we magically buy our fifteen-bedroom mansion with en-suite bathrooms that isn't in the Outer Hebrides.
ETA: The way I see this working so it's a pleasant experience for all concerned is as follows:
1. Each person or couple gets a bedroom and a small private sitting room. Ideally one bathroom per person/couple but I think up to four people could share a bathroom if they each had a washbaisin in their sitting room.
2. The ground floor has a big communal kitchen, a dining room, a sitting room, maybe a second sitting room/games room/library/whatever.
3. Rent is approximately half that of a one-bedroom flat in the local area. It goes into a communal fund which pays for...
i. A cleaner to come in an clean the whole house once a week. (Sanity money.)
ii. A gardener to mow the lawn. (Ditto.)
iii. Repairs/maintenance on the house and garden.
iv. Decoration and furnishing of the ground floor/communal areas.
v. Bills. (Electricity, gas, water, internet.)
Since I bought the house with my magical house-buying money, I would administer this fund. But since the money appeared by magic to let us buy this house, all the rent would go to the central fund and not to me. This would be a non-profit enterprise! Furnishing and decoration of the individual bedrooms and sitting rooms are the individual's responsibility.