Housing crisis: the empty nester's guide to downsizing

Encouraging older people to move out of large houses has been suggested as a way to free up homes for younger families. So what’s it like to sell up and go smaller?Bob Veitch and his wife Susan can see their old house from the garden of their new home in the small town of Marshfield in Gloucestershire. “We get no pangs of regret,” says Bob, even though they lived in their Edwardian farmhouse for 40 years and raised their two sons and cared for his parents there. They were, he s