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.

The population has grown by 10 million since 1970 -that’s like adding another London - so less chance of empty cottages

Having moved away from both families we already had the same places to regularly visit anyway. When DH's mum died we had a "second home" until we could sell it. The hassle and expense of owning a second home isn't worth it IMO. We prefer to not have the responsibility and the boredom of aways going back to the same place all the time.

I know people who own cottages in Northumberland and Wales, and the fact that second homes in Wales, Cornwall and Devon have been in the news a lot because they have priced out the locals show that a lot of people do own second homes to holiday in.

It’s different tradition. We tend to plough our resources into our main home, ideally not apartments, and don’t share a family bolt hole in the countryside or by the seaside. I think these shared family homes can cause lots of trouble as there are more and more co-owners down the generations

Have you ever been to the Isle of Wight??

The county council charges double council tax rate on a second home owned there to put off second home owners. There are just not enough homes.

It would be cute to just buy a garden shed and pop it up in the wilderness, decorate it with furs and stag horns, like they also do in the States, but the UK would end up looking like the summerhouse/garden department in B&Q!

Thank goodness there isn't, the countryside would be overwhelmed

I live in France and am a French civil servant (secure job, not especially well paid). Like many of my colleagues I have a very small second home - it was not expensive, quite literally cost less than a decent new car.
I think it has a lot to do with availability and culture - big country, much lower prices and no snarking over second home ownership because so many people have one.
I think also that maybe we build second homes differently to main properties - they are more basic and not necessarily somewhere you could live all year round.

I hear you. I’m not in the highlands but rural Perthshire. Many of the farms are gone, land is leased out and farmhouses sold to lawyers / judges / uni lectures / surgeons, and many many retirees from down south. Prices are insane even for modest former estate workers cottages 🙄.

The weather in the UK is way better than Iceland. The point is that you see that the weekend is going to be nice and so you go to your summer house. People who own summer houses also go abroad.

Council tax hikes, small country so experiencing the same weather as you do at home, property costs, upkeep and maintenance, scarcity of property and CF’s who take advantage when you do offer to lend anything out!

Iceland has a population roughly the same as Bristol, in a country about the same size as England. So the cost of land is obviously going to be way lower.

I think I'd rather stay at home!

The holiday cottages in other countries are often purely for that purpose - they are not for normal living. I don't know if it's still the case but the ones in Finland had compost toilets. They were glorified huts really and often out in the sticks by lakes.

Very different from using houses as holiday homes which can be used for full time residential use.

And Finland is huge with a small population.

Yes, undoubtedly for a summer house plot. But it's a different thing because you can't live there.

Most of Iceland is uninhabitable, but of course yes the population density is still much lower in the inhabited areas.

I think the chalet on an allotment type thing in Germany or the Netherlands are a bit like Park Homes, but used for holidays, weekends etc. A friend of mine bought one a couple of years ago. I think it was about £25K so they are a very different prospect to a holiday home icosting upwards of £300k!

Edited: mind you these look more sophisticated than a hut! https://www.schwoererhaus.de/en-en/flyingspaces/references/

They sound similar to static caravans that look chalet like but not on site.

Yes, there would be literally nowhere to put the shooting ranges/deer parks/alpaca petting zoos/birds of prey centres and the like.

Danish in laws have a summer house, I think in Zealand? We’ve been once and I found it very boring and no desire to go back but they grew up in a flat in the centre of Copenhagen so I can see why it would appeal more.

My family all had apartments in the same complex in Spain, as well as family friends. We’d all decamp over there in the summer and it was great- seeing familiar faces at the pool and being allowed to go off playing with the other kids.

Our summer place in Italy has no heating installed, and this is the norm for a lot of summer places by the sea. Nothing to stop us living there legally in winter, but it's incredibly humid and would be freezing in winter. We can't keep clothes or bedding there unless they're totally sealed tight.

Presumably there are less options in Iceland though? I mean you can be in a much warmer country within a couple of hours at relatively low cost in the UK, whereas I would imagine it is both quite a long flight anda lot more expensive to visit say the Med from Iceland? Hence the culture regarding holidays is likely to be different?
Obviously people do own second homes in the UK - there are loads where I live - but most people who have them are wealthy enough to also have one or more holidays abroad as well. That's out of reach for most of the population, so if it's got to be one or the other I think most people opt to holiday abroad where the weather is (more or less) guaranteed to be better.

No, I wouldn't say it's a different holiday culture at all really. I bet a higher proportion of Icelanders go abroad at least once a year than British people.

People don't really go 'on holiday' to their summer houses (or their parents' summer houses). They pop up for the weekend or for longer periods in the summer but it's not their summer holiday. It tends to be the better off people who own summer houses in the first place and they definitely also have their trips to Tenerife.

You can also apply to cheaply rent out a summer house owned by your union (a lot of summer houses are union owned) and if you're doing that, you might not also go abroad every year but I think that's also comparable to people who holiday in the UK by renting a caravan or something.

Summerhouses aren't a thing here so people really won't get the culture around it.

The closest thing is a caravan in a caravan park but that's quite low status in a lot of people's minds and not the same thing at all so it's really not comparable to the Scandinavian/Nordic models.

British people like going abroad and if you want to holiday here there are holiday cottages. I think we are not as tied to the land as in other countries - the industrial revolution was fiercest here. There isn't the family back in the country for most people. So why restrict yourself to always going to the same place?

There's loads of static caravan parks. My parents have one. It has 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms and central heating but the site is only open 9 months a year. I think it's to avoid tax. I live in a village by the sea in Northern Ireland and most of the houses are now holiday homes or air BnBs. But if I'm honest, it doesn't feel like a holiday unless I'm flying somewhere warmer. It's so easy to fly to Europe here in the UK and it's a lot cheaper then owning another home. My parents only have a caravan as they can't travel any ore due to disabilities.

Sadly, even static caravan owners are falling prey to huge rip-offs now, with sites taking full advantage of all the leasehold/freehold bollocks around English/Welsh land law and inserting all manner onerous clauses into their transfer documents.

I'm in Finland which has a strong tradition of summer cottages, and families moving to them for the summer. We don't have one. I kinda would like one but I also hear that the traditional mökki holiday is basically a working holiday, doing all the maintenance the cottage needs. My uncle has one (my grandad's house in Lapland) and we go on holiday there sometimes and he's always having to do so much work there but it is an absolutely glorious place.

In the UK my mum was on the waiting list for a beach hut for over a decade before she got one - they are very popular!