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.

If you have never lived in a town full of holiday homes empty half the year and the social and community issues this creates, you won’t have realised trust jealousy has nothing to do with it.

*that

Ah yes - the old jealousy excuse….. yes I am really jealous that I no longer have neighbours throughout the winter months, just empty places all around me. I am really jealous that all that the only employment open to my kids is minimum wage seasonal jobs and no chance of being able to live here so have had to live away. And yes, I am really jealous of the shiny top boxes and SUVS. The old jealousy excuse dragged out as usual to excuse the inexcusable.

Not really!
I live in an area full of second homes and can't see the appeal. I prefer to holiday on different places and couldn't be bothered with the upkeep of a second home.
Plus many of the real hotspots - places like Polzeath and Rock are soulless and horrible. In my opinion. No community. No warmth. Character ripped from them.
So no. Not jealous. Just don't see the point. Along with the fact it skews the market and more

So if I own a residential home and want to turn it into say a pub or a hotel or even a shop then I would have to apply for planning permission for a change of use from residential to a business.

I therefore fail to see why someone buying a residential home and then using it as a holiday let or an Airbnb (both businesses) shouldn't equally have to apply for planning permission for a change of use.

In areas such as Cornwall and Devon local authorities could then decide whether to grant that permission or not depending on what proportion of the housing stock was already holiday let's / Airbnb in that locality.

Anyone failing to obtain permission and deciding to holiday let it under the radar could then be fined with a compulsory sale of the house as a residential dwelling (which presumably would be at a much lower price than they paid for it).

They are completely immoral. It's just a way for people to make as much cash as they can at the expense of the people who live in those areas.

Tourism only brings poorly paid minimum wage employment.

Holiday let's hollow out communities leaving them as empty husks full of touring hipsters.

In terms of those wanting to live in the communities they were raised in this may not be something that is a right but it should be an option. Many people have support networks, family and friends in these areas and why should they give this up so that some twatty 45 year old banker from London can pay £1000s to a 40 year old marketing executive from London for a week at the beach making local property prices unaffordable to locals. There are plenty of hotels and bed and breakfasts or campsites.

Also regarding the false argument re. starving kids etc I don't actively steal food from their mouth which would be the equivalent.

You genuinely seem unable to comprehend that not all second homes are in holiday towns.

Ours are in a big northern English city, Amsterdam, and Nice, none of which exactly suffer from a lack of jobs or facilities year-round.

Only if they are left empty.
People have to live somewhere if they can't or don't want to buy.
We allow pets in our rental.
House prices are high in lots of places not just in holiday locations and there have always been holiday cottages.
Wages and zero hour contracts are a much bigger part of the problem.

Yes, jealous is always trotted out - I guess that is how they often feel so assume others feel the same. People who care a lot about money can't seem to understand other people value community etc. more.

in march my mother had a fall, they live in a quaint village which has had most of the houses snapped up by the greedy holiday home types. Due to not having any neighbours, they phoned me - living 40 miles away - rather than being able to ask a neighbour to help. She fell at 4am, they phoned me and an ambulance at 6am. I got there at 8am and got her into bed - the ambulance arrived at 1pm. They live surrounded by houses but the only help they could get was two hours away.

Their village used to be thriving - a shop, pub, post office, bus service, school - now it’s all gone as nobody is there to keep it going. How anyone can say holiday home owners are not immoral when it is obvious that they are killing communities and making families homeless for their own greed is beyond me.

If they don’t have the ability to earn a decent living then yes, they’ll need to move, and will be replaced by people who did better at school. Sounds like someone had their soul removed at birth

You really are quite a peach aren’t you? Both of my children have degrees - one a masters - there are no year around jobs here for them - and they are not being replaced by people who did better at school - they are not being replaced by anyone - there are less and less young people to fill the vacancies for jobs to serve the holidaymakers as they can’t afford to live here and they can’t afford to commute.

You obviously lack in your critical thinking, do try harder to look at the bigger picture instead of your own self importance.

we stay in air bnbs and holiday lets, I live in an area nearly 2 hours from the sea and we like to go to the coast for a holiday. But that makes me part of the problem...
We recently stayed in a small village. It had a pub and a cafe but the shop had closed. I didn't know how many holiday lets were there (seemed to be a fair amount) and I wondered if that was part of the cause of the shop closing because it didn't get all year round trade. We used a shop in the next village but it wasn't suitable for a full shop and we had to drive to a sainsburys.

How can the issue be solved though? A hotel would provide more (low paid) employment in an area but (playing devils advocate) could that building not be repurposed as afforadable homes. Do people that live in tourist areas go on holiday elsewhere? where do they stay?

I don't think second homes per se are immoral. Rental properties are needed for certain situations - students, short term work contracts, newly moved to an area, accomodation if own house needs work/repairs etc

Obviously mumsnet agreed as they’ve removed it. Very defensive, me thinks an SUV driving top box owning holiday home owner 😆

I’ve been homeless for a longer period of my life than I have had a second home. And my homeless mother is living with us. So no, I don’t feel immoral about having a second home.

ours is an unusual place and was empty for two years before we bought it, so at least it is being used by us and by multiple people who are letting it and enjoying it now rather than it falling to bits.

It’s also remote so not destroying any communities!

ah so you are a holiday home owner. I see why you are so defensive now.

@LaFemmeNicola and you seem genuinely unable to comprehend (or perhaps don’t want to acknowledge - as you have contributed to them) the social issues that second and holiday home ownership has caused across the whole country. I bet you also claimed as many covid grants as you could for your holiday homes whilst not losing any money. Immoral.

Jealous??? Seriously!!!! Myself like many others are literally being made homeless every single day so people can have holidays

Having a safe roof over one's head isn't a luxury to be jealous of. It should be a basic human right!

I agree, the jealousy thing gets trotted out over and over again - so tedious when all we are doing is speaking up to highlight the sadness and despair that holiday homes are causing families who are being evicted from their homes because of greed.

also the sad old tripe that locals sold the holiday homes in the first place…. Lots of reasons for selling - Maybe there has been A bereavement and members of families can’t afford to buy the others out …. Because holiday homes have driven up prices so much…. Holiday homes owned selling to other holiday home owners…. Holiday home owners buying new builds and apartment conversions.

They know they are immoral - they know they are killing communities and making families homeless - the reality is - they don’t care.

I find the insideairbnb.com/london site useful to look at data on Airbnb. I wonder for those that think second and third homes are fine, where does it stop? Are 5 homes ok? 10? there are hosts/companies on here with over 400 properties under their name.

What’s the solution though? Hotels and campsites don’t cater adequately for everyone. I grew up having holidays in UK cottages and still do. Our last holiday was in a purpose built complex of holiday homes which I guess is one solution but it wasn’t walking distance to shops and pubs so although we spent money when out we didn’t eat out/spend money in local businesses as much as we had the year before when we’d walked out to various places from our cottage. And being further out we drove more, clogging up roads, causing a different problem!

I don’t think it’s right to say that no one should visit the lovely areas that we have in the uk unless you were born there though. And living in a relatively expensive part of the uk, the issue of housing being affordable for key workers (which is a problem) is definitely not limited to holiday areas!

I think that second home ownership is immoral if the second home is kept mostly empty. My family lives in one of those locations. Community is important and impossible to maintain without a stable population.

@maranella It’s a tough one, on one hand - yes totally immoral seeming given there are people who want to live and work there all year round but can’t afford it. On the other hand, property as an investment of any kind starts to be immoral for similar reasons. Most people I know can’t buy in the area they grew up in, their parents and grandparents houses can only be bought by people far richer than they were when they bought it or than their children are now.

I think property is so broken, some many vacant residential premises which could be put to good use, or commerical lots that won’t get any independent shops in because only large chains can afford to be in central locations. Any real policy reform on it though would probably lead the “on paper” wealth of the country to plummet, and no government wants to be the ones to do that. Everyone wants affordable housing until the 700k grandparents’ house inheritance becomes the 250k inheritance, minus tax, split 4 ways. That said, if the property price wasn’t so astronomical, then people wouldn’t “need” as much inheritance to get their children a good start in life.

I like to visit holiday rentals, but to be honest they are often clearly run by people who haven’t got a clue about the hospitality industry and are total amateurs trying to improvise a business out of their asset. So I would sort of just prefer to be able to rent from a properly run local holiday homes company that knew how to manage their stock and at least keep them somewhat busy year round.