Are second homes and short-term rental properties immoral?

[maranella]

We have a huge shortage of housing in this country and there and more and more stories about seaside towns and pretty villages being hollowed out by homes that stand empty half the year.

So I'm just wondering how other people feel about second homes and ones bought specifically to be holiday rentals? I really feel for people in places like Cornwall, Devon, north Norfolk, parts of Wales and the Lake District, who can't find affordable homes in the towns and villages where they've always lived and worked.

On what public transport are you proposing people commute? These areas aren't London, you know. Some villages are lucky to get one bus a day.

One part of my family has all moved away from the village they grew up in. Some did minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs in hospitality and the local shop. None commute back for this work. It is not worth their while to make complex bus journeys for low wages. They have all easily got other jobs where they have moved to.
And the village businesses now complain about not being able to get staff.
The idea that people make complex journeys for minimum wage jobs is laughable. Have you not noticed a shortage of workers?

If the villages are only getting one bus a day they aren’t using it to commute are they. Or are we now suggesting that people are all working in their own villages and no one travels by car to work. IME of small village life, virtually no one worked in the village, everyone travelled to work by car except the very elderly where there was a community driving service that covered the local area for hospital appt etc

an awful lot of the shortage of workers is down to brexit which certainly Cornwall voters thought was a jolly good idea!

I know of one parish on the Llŷn Peninsula where the ratio of second homes to occupied homes is 50%.

There is a huge shortage of social care workers in the SE and that is one result of Brexit. We also have incredibly heavy traffic, frequently (my ‘lived experience’) 😀This could be quite an interesting debate but as a PP indicated, there is too little objectivity. Maybe the topic is just too inflammatory.

That's not a second home. You live in your main home, your child lives in their main home, neither of you have an extra home for weekend use. You are a landlord who is renting it to a tenant. The fact that the tenant happens to be related to you is irrelevant.

Who is forcing them to live in a village with one bus a day? I would never want to live in such a backwater myself, but if I did I would have to have a car

I'm sure that low-paid workers struggle to live in some of the same parts of London as their employers are located. That doesn't pose an issue for the employer though, it is possible to move around London cheaply and easily so it doesn't matter that the employee lives in the next borough. In the Lake District (and elsewhere), businesses are on short hours because they cannot recruit enough staff because no one can afford to live in the area on the wages the businesses can afford to pay. Especially given that most of the work available may be seasonal and you have to make seven months' pay see you through all year.

It does pose a problem for employers in London, they are struggling to recruit enough staff in many areas including hospitality, social care, healthcare etc. The price of rents and mortgages is a huge problem in London but some of you are fixated on your own little areas becoming more expensive as if that is a unique rather than widespread problem.

The answer to areas becoming too expensive for locals is the same all around the country - move to a cheaper area. Preferably one with a better job prospects for you & your children than seasonal work that only provides an income for 7 months a year

Well they can't use it to commute, can they? The point is that travelling across London for work is easy. Travelling across a rural area for work is less so which means that the job will need to pay enough for the extra overheads, otherwise staff will leave and the business will close.

It really is not a debate though. Allow villages and surrounding areas to become virtually all holiday accommodation and the businesses will struggle to get staff or will have to pay way over the going rate to get staff to travel.
That is not the staff problem. It is the business's problem.
I know this is happening in some places. Tourist will either have to pay more to cover inflated staff pay, or will have to accept they have to travel for cafes, shops and pubs.

You mean that it isn't so easy to exploit people any more?

😂😂😂 ah yes Brexit has been a real panacea for British workers.

I’m chortling at the assertion that tourism leads to low wage jobs.

my holiday let cleaner charges £45 p/h

thats quite a lot more than I get paid

are You suggesting that the majority of people living in small villages work within the villages?

At no point has anyone said that second home ownership, empty properties and Airbnbs were a unique problem to Cornwall/the Lakes/wherever. The premise of the OP is that such things are immoral. Given that places like Edinburgh have also been hollowed out, and that London's housing market has been distorted by absentee overseas investors perhaps you can see your way clear to agreeing that yes, keeping multiple properties (which would otherwise be suitable accommodation for families) not in full time residential use is indeed immoral, wherever it is in the country.

I think that we've established that no one actually lives in some of these small villages at all now. Which means that the staff serving you your scones in the tea rooms there have to travel in from from elsewhere, something that may not be economically viable any more and leads to them handing in their notice. The business then closes because it can't recruit.

No we haven’t established that at all. People are complaining that people are being priced out of these villages and can’t possibly move to cheaper areas as they will be too far from work and their local community.

There are many things that I judge negatively, having a second home isn’t one of them. You feel differently and that’s fine.

But second home owners….

everyine knows that there’s been roadworks at Chivvy Cross for ages. Those roadworks are horrendous and you do just crawl.

m it’s because they are turning it into a dual carriageway, which will improve matters hugely.

many years ago I had to commute daily up the M6 while a viaduct was being widened. It was crap.

m that’s a bit like Chivvy cross

Oh come on, you’re always hearing people from small places with small town mentality complaining about their children not being able to afford to live in the same village they were “born and bred” in - like that makes any difference to market forces.
I don’t have a problem with anyone owning a second home, though I don’t have one myself. A friend of mine does in Dorset and I wouldn’t describe her as an immoral person. Yes it could be a home for a local family but no one can stop people with spare money buying second homes. I just don’t accept that people have the “right” to live anywhere, you live where you can afford.
I don’t like overseas absentee investors in London but I don’t see it as a moral issue. Not to mention as other posters have noted, very few of us are completely altruistic in our own lives so why expect it of second home owners? Instead of getting angry about a trend that won’t be reversed, I think it would be better for individuals to accept without bitterness that the area they grew up in has become too expensive for them now.

Immoral. 😬 Lots of things are immoral. Does anyone do only moral things?

We have a lovely second home in Cornwall. In total we probably spend a few months each year there and have someone who keeps an eye on it when we’re not there. There’s certainly worse things we could be doing.

The problem is lack of homes being built.

the government prefer people to blame second home owners.

look at Morfa Nefyn on Rightmove and youll
see all of those holiday lets ln
thw market since Mark Drakeford brought in new occupancy rules - basically if you have a holiday let or second home in wales, it has to be let for at least 182 nights a year, otherwise you’ll potentially pay 300% council tax.

I have a holiday property and the profit margins are getting smaller all the time. The only reason we need to make a profit is because we need to pay it off, the house is owned by a business and operated as a business.

many owners in wales are selling up because they can’t make the 182 night rule. Wales is not a year round destination, it rains a lot.

I don’t see the price of properties falling to the point that locals can buy them,
so who is buying them? Retirees? Wealthy people who want a second home?

Certainly neither of those will help
the local tourist industry in the way a holiday let would have done.

@Maltester71 in our parish when new homes are built they are bought for holiday lets or second homes, very very few are primary residential properties.

You operate as a business so you don't have to pay local taxes, how lovely for you.