If you own a second home how do you get treated by locals?

If you want London boroughs to start taxing second homes and regulating AirBnBs, you'll hear no objection from me.

"Less xenophobic"? Have you seen how racist Australians can be?

The reason that there may be less hostility to second home owners possibly has something to do with Australia being a massive country with plenty of land to build on. I doubt that there are many places in Australia (other than those purpose built for holidays) which have less than half of their properties in permanent occupation. In Abersoch (which is situated in a part of the world which is otherwise as Welsh as it gets) Welsh people are a small minority. We're losing a language and culture. The school closed in 2021, the village is a ghost town in winter.

In our village 'locals' sold their old, cold, damp and drafty sea front cottages to 'óutsiders' wearing rose tinted glasses about living next to the sea, aand all the constant maintenance and hard work it involved. The rose tinted outsiders though these houses were worth a fortune, and the locals were only too happy that the outsiders bid up the value among themselves.

The locals move to the near by town, where all the jobs are and where prices were normal for the area, but there were many many new cars and holidays at the same time. Old cold money pits were swapped for cost efficient new builds, close to the amenities that the village never had. In the end the old Victorian primary school had to close, but with outsiders buying it for a small fortune, the council built a brand new school in the new town, with all brand new classrooms, sports facilities etc. The same happened to the doctors. All those who used to drive to an old doctors in the next village now walk to a brand new health centre in town.

The outsiders soon found out what it's like in these old houses and set about renovating them. The local builder has never had it so good and now employs more trades than ever before.

The old shop got replaced by a posh boutique for the outsiders and the pub became a 1* restaurant. The old village really busy in summer, but there no shortage of summer jobs for the DDs and their friends. Out of season it's nice to go to those places. Places that never existed before the outsiders came. Don't tell anyone, but they all have 'locals' discounts out of season.

Overall everyone seems to be a winner, but if you listened to one of two 'hard of thinking' types, this is now how it's all reported/seen

We sold a rambling family 4 bed home 209 years old with a couple of acres in the village to a builder. Who proceeded to build a massive garage with rooms above. He ripped out many trees with no tpo on them, moved into the garage. Ripped apart the old house putting in sauna, steam room, managing to squeeze out two more bedrooms and two more bathrooms. Outside, BBQ, hot tubs, surround sound for music.

It's now a holiday let for ten at 2k a week.

It's become party central apparently. The whole village can hear the partying. It's a Jilly Cooper knocking shop the locals are saying.

The owner is living in the (cough) garage now a 2 bedroom cottage.

I feel so bad that we sold to them.

My small village is slowly being bought up by Londoners wanting second homes. Small two up, two down cottages with a tiny garden and no parking are £1.5m+. There are also two big landowners scooping up farmland as it comes available ( one owns a multinational company, the other a huge import company) and buying cottages as weekend homes for their employees (who contribute absolutely sweet fa to the local economy but complain ad infinitum about the lanes being too narrow for their massive SUVs and that there’s no parking)
Locals don’t stand a chance of living here, the cheapest house for sale here at the moment is £750k, a tiny two bed bungalow with planning permission for demolition and rebuild.
It’s a miserable future for so many places.

Thankfully I'm neither! ;) Most MPs I've seen just recycle populist talking points. There is a reluctance to engage the public in a grownup discussion about things like tradeoffs and difficult choices (and to be fair, the general public shows little interest in talking about this kind of stuff either).

@GreenTeaLikesMe your points are so salient I'm wondering if you're either an MP or local councillor ;)

But yes - the issues are far far more complex than just 'urgh I don't like second homes it's greedy'. The consequences are almost impossible to roll-back too - which is where I think we're already at in parts of Cornwall, I'm not sure there's any way to fix it.

We do ! 🙄 Still learning though ..

She does.

Why don't you speak any French?

Entitlement level gold reached.

"so that the place does end up a ghost town other than July and August"

I think many of the areas being spoken about in this thread have moved on from only being busy in the summer, certainly where I am from it is busy all year round and that includes second homes being occupied.

It may be a tad quieter in certain months and on a personal level I far prefer it when it is not school holidays, but it is then many of the visitors who do visit their second homes, or holiday here outside of school holidays who continue to support the local businesses so they can continue to remain open all year round.

Pembrokeshire County Council (responsible for Tenby) has recently voted to reduce second home council tax premium from 200% to 150% from next April.

I think the "extra demand on GPs" thing is not talking so much about elderly second-home-owners, but talking more about people who retire to "pretty villages" full time.

In some Welsh villages like Tenby, the council has put a big tax on second home ownership, but one unintended side effect is that this has greatly increased the number of retirees who have moved to these villages full-time, meaning that suddenly the local GP is under a lot of pressure. And they don't spend anywhere near as much as holidaymakers do!

There is a need for a national conversation about what to do with these pretty rural areas. My own suggestion would be, build more housing (and if "not building on green areas" is a priority, maybe have a conversation about taller and denser housing - things like mid-rise, pretty flats with decorative touches that would blend in with the old local buildings could work?), require second-homes to be occupied most of the year (ie, if you own a second home, you will need to get it registered and licensed as a BnB and get it let out year-round) and build some facilities which ensure year-round usage of the areas - indoor swimming pools and spas, cultural facilities and so on, so that the place does end up a ghost town other than July and August.

One thing we need to think about is the enormously increased cost of providing services in rural areas.

Even things like bin collection cost far more in the countryside. Things like adult social care, hospital services and public transport for those who age out of driving, become horribly, horribly expensive to provide in the countryside - bankruptcy-inducing for local governments, actually. Rural buses are massively loss-making and cost a fortune. Care workers have to spend long periods of time dragging around to this place and that, meaning that you require huge workforces to deal with a relatively small population (whereas when elderly people live in, say, retirement flats in time, you can use warden control system to keep people independent for longer, and a careworker can nip round and help a whole bunch of people in the same flat very quickly).

Holiday home owners don't make much call on these services, for obvious reasons. Long-term "generationally rural" communities do make some call on these services of course, but it really helps that younger members of communities/extended families can help the elders out; for example, it matters less if the bus service isn't great if the younger members of the community can give lifts to the elders and pick up their shopping for them etc.

The real danger point comes when communities become hollowed out by retirees who have moved in from outside,or when nearly all the homes get bought up by second-home owners, leaving a rump of "local" elderly people who are now alone with no younger "locals" to support them. These people will make substantial demands on local services (especially social care and needing things like lots of buses) which will be all the greater if they do not have local extended family or strong local networks to help them. This is going to become a serious issue going forward if we are not careful.

I can already hear the whinging of elderly voters who have retired to the countryside for lifestyle reasons: "I can't drive any more! The council needs to run more buses! Why aren't they providing more buses?" Because there is no fucking money, Susan. Did you not think about this before retiring to a pretty village?

This kind of thing is why we should be cautious about laissez-faire attitudes towards relocation and demographics - "Everyone has the right to live where they want to! Nobody owns a village in the Lake District!" Yes, but, do we want people living full-time in the Lake District villages at all? If so, it's in everyone's interest to ensure that there are communities with people of many different ages (including the young) and strong social/family networks, to ensure that people have the community spirit and physical ability to help each other out and manage the challenges of rural life together. Otherwise, we are going to paying eye-popping costs for this in the near future.

You can register as a temporary patient. Depends on the practice how long they'll have you for.

I'm registered near my work as temporary but have used them for years.

Not registered where our home is as we're only there at weekends.

How does the GP thing work? I thought you could only register where you live, not where you go on holiday.

@Freysimo West Wales. Much higher Welsh speaking and schools are Welsh speaking too.

Lots of the council tax rises just mean houses will be sold. If they have to be reduced substantially I’m sure some will be happy but this will lead to all houses vastly reducing in price. Inevitably negative equity will follow for locals who have bought.

Im also interested that people call themselves local after 40 years. I’m local in my area. Many many generations of my family on both sides come from here. Local from 1984 is not local.

I get that holiday homes don’t use schools but surely everyone would rather GPs were not overwhelmed? Or hospitals? Apart from
this, holiday makers spend money. Someone said why not use hotels? Good question. I do. All around the world. Other people like to stay in my house. From what I can see the school is bouyant and so is the village with lots going on.

We had a problem a few years ago with a very long standing friend. He joined a “stay away from Cornwall” group on Facebook and was very vocal about second homes . He is Irish. Been in Cornwall for 15 years and they inherited their house. My DH helped him through a very complex building project. We stayed in our house and DH helped him with structural engineering designs. In return we were vilified for being there. DH was very upset and we had to end the friendship.

I certainly wouldn't be taking in parcels for a neighbour who used it as a second home! They could do one. I can barely afford the one I have. Call it jealousy, I don't care but I would not be 'keeping and eye' on your second home for you.

We have a place In a little village in France everyone is lovely, we’ll we think they? are we hardly speak any French 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

I haven't got a second home but if I could afford it and wanted it then I would without a second thought.

Who cares what neighbours think? This whole idea of disgruntled locals also irritates me. No one is forcing them to sell their homes to Londoners for ££££; why don't they sell it to a young local couple for £? Funnily enough, they don't.

Ridiculous hypocrisy. You don't own Cornwall or The Lake District just because you happened to be born there.

I own a second home, which has been in our family for over 200 years, I would never air b n b it, or let it out as a holiday home. Lots of family live in the same area and many have stayed in the property as a bridge to buying there own place. My Grandma and great grandma and great great grandma were born there and it can never be left to a male, so will go to my niece when I pop off this mortal coil. We have no hostility from neighbours, mind you its on a substantial piece of land, but mainly because they know the family and I have been visiting since a baby.
It has so many clauses on it, so hopefully will be safe for many years to come.

What part of Wales, North? I live in Pembrokeshire and have never seen any nastiness to second home owners. And you really don't need to speak Welsh, it's rarely spoken where I live.

Yes, second home ownership can be a problem anywhere. The higher the proportion of second homes the worse the problem.