Why no tradition of owning holiday / country homes in the UK?

[rickyrickygrimes]

We’re currently on holiday in Iceland, out on a tour and passing lots of rural areas where there are loads of little holiday cottages - just simple wooden huts mostly with a little garden area and trees all around so pretty private and secluded without being really remote. We live in France, and there too it’s really common for a family to have a country house - usually owned by an older family member and available to younger generations to use at weekend and holidays. We used to live in NZ and again there’s a really strong tradition of families having a ‘bach’ - again usually a fairly simple wooden structure out in the bush or alongside a coast / lake (though a lot if these are not so simple anymore - nor cheap).

it just made me wonder why there’s no tradition like this in the UK? I knew one person growing up whose family had a ‘cabin’ in the west of Scotland, but they were pretty wealthy.

Yes of course there is OP - static caravans 😂

Smaller country so not as much space?

It’s also common in Russia but that’s another country that’s not short of space

Mainly because they would risk the wrath of all the do gooder MNs who think owning a second home is akin to being the devil.

it just made me wonder why there’s no tradition like this in the UK?

Depending on where your holiday home is, paying triple council tax on it is pretty off putting.

Space and cost I think. I have a few Italian friends and there are family holiday homes they share. I can’t imagine people sharing so nicely here.

There aren’t enough houses in the UK for everyone to have a home. Let alone a second home.

the cost of property is prohibitive.

It’s not quite the same thing but we do have a tradition of beach huts

So many people in my home village have caravans at Skegness or in Norfolk. My colleagues all seem to own them !

I think we as a nation feel entitled to hate anyone who owns more than the property they live in. I would feel very uncomfortable buying another property (not that I want one anyway).

I have been thinking about this too, comparing NZ to UK, obviously it’s quite hard to get anywhere once you’re in NZ, so it makes sense for a family to have a bach for holidays as going overseas is very expensive and time consuming. In comparison, in the UK it’s easier to get to the rest of Europe for a holiday so people do that instead. The other difference is that in NZ the summer weather is genuinely lovely and lots of beaches so maybe a beach bach more is appealing in NZ vs UK… where would you go with guaranteed good weather in the UK?

The other aspect is that perhaps in places like NZ and Iceland, you have vast areas without towns or villages that are easy to adapt to be holiday destinations, whereas in the UK you have had a much longer history and are more built up so there just aren’t the wild but still appealing areas that lend themselves to being prime holiday cottage/bach areas - all of those places have established towns with local populations and don’t have the space for holiday cottage life?

Eh?!!! I know numerous people with static caravans, second homes (mostly tiny cottages in seaside towns with an affordable housing shortage) that they both use and let out on air Bnb. It is a tradition but not one that many of us ( or society as a whole really) can afford

This.

not just the cost of houses though the cost of land is prohibitive. I have Norwegian family and this is really common there too. But Norway is far far less densely populated than the UK so there isn’t anywhere near as much pressure on space.

I was tempted to name change as I expect I'll get a pasting for this, but we have a second home. We are a very average family and it's a struggle, but it's a long (not that long now I guess) term plan for us. DH found it in the place that we have family connections in and plan to retire there, probably in around 5 years time. We didn't plan to buy it when we did (last year) but it was exactly what we wanted and it's such a small place that we knew that the opportunity was unlikely to come up again. It's perfect and exactly what we wanted. As it is, because DH works from home, he is there a couple of times a month for a week or so at a time and family members borrow it too.

The plan for us is to sell our 'main' home in about 5 years and retire there.

My relatives in Canada had a cottage at a lake. They drove about 300 miles to get to it every Friday and came back on Sundays. My family (we lived in Scotland) were utterly astonished by this. For us, about 20 miles was our max at the weekend. They did use it at holidays as well which made more sense. But we had lots of commitments at the weekend - we could never understand how they could just up and go every weekend. We had the grandparents and they didnt.

😂😂 probably because most people struggle to afford one house, not two!

I wasn't born in the UK and have no history/culture of this as a child from my own country either. My parents were members of a ski lodge (not club med) so we'd go annually, but it was used by other people, not our own 2nd home.

I have friends and work colleagues from Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia and all of them say their parents own a 2nd home/cabin, mainly in the mountains away from the 'city'.

My English in laws had a club med property in Florida- again, not their own 2nd home. As others have said, many people do have static caravans as holiday homes, but I assume its cost that prevents people have an actual 2nd house.

I don't think it's house prices. Even back when house prices were reasonable, this wasn't a thing.

Static caravans on a site isn’t really the same 😂.

I guess both Iceland and NZ had periods where unused land was basically up for grabs? And people just cleared a but of bush and built a hut, then used it for hunting, etc and gradually for holidays. by the time the value of the land increased, they’d already staked their claim, so to speak. The Uk - all the land was basically owned and someone’s property from a much earlier stage in history.

I don’t know about other European countries, but France had a legal system that allows family homes to stay in the family rather than being sold for care.

In some coastal areas in the UK there are beach huts. Small wooden shacks close to the seafront and these can be in high demand with a long waiting list.
A caravan either statis based on one site or one that you tow around is more common in the UK.

Population density. I doubt many people have second homes in the Netherlands or Hong Kong either.

My Canadian relatives all have country or beach holiday houses, as do Swedish friends. Most are not bigger than a static caravan.
UK holiday resorts have been round for 100s of years though, so I think B&B in Blackpool was more traditional. Especially as thr UK has shorter school holidays. Mummy decamping with the kids to the holiday home for 2 months each year makes it more cost effective. Daddy's only appeared at weekends mainly.

The UK is (and always has been) much more densely populated than most other European countries and other places where the family cabin, dacha etc is a common thing, so there is just less (cheap) land available.

Also there is a strong preference in the UK to live in houses (with gardens) even in cities, so far more people here have a little patch of green space attached to their main home where they can sit outside, or grow flowers and veg, compared with people in most European cities, where apartment living is the norm, even for families.

I did a language exchange as a teenager with a family in a European city, with normal middle-class jobs, who lived in a modest city centre apartment during the week, and spent most weekends at their cottage just outside the city, which had a big garden. It seemed a fairly standard set-up over there.

Small country, high population, terrible traffic and trains often don’t run properly at the weekend.

I just remembered reading about Italy too - that even when families moved into cities for work they would keep a garden I’m the mountains for growing veggies, and it often had a little hut attached. While lots have fallen into ruin, others have been extended and used as summer cottage’s. And they stay in the family.

I immediately thought of what @yonemmentions: beach huts.