How hated will we be?

[SecondH]

DH and I are looking at buying a second home by the coast. I would love to hear from other second home owners and people who live in areas where there are lots of second home owners. How hated by the locals would we be? Do neighbours ignore you etc?

@SecondH OP we may be able to give a bit more feedback if we know the area of Cornwall you would like to buy in - you don't have to give an address! It is a different vibe in certain areas, more cut off, etc.

You could always buy when you retire rather than inflating prices, not contributing to the local economy and leaving it empty.
Incomers are never welcome if they don’t make any effort to integrate and prevent local families from buying a home.

I live in a small seaside village and 30% of the homes on my street are holiday homes. I do hear locals complaining as there are very little flats or apartments available for youngsters to get on the property market etc and school roll is dropping but it doesn't personally bother me. They are mostly occupied at the weekend and less so in the winter so we have the benefit of extra parking and we have never had any issues with bad behaviour etc. They are expensive and smaller so we don't tend to see groups in them.

You won't be hated at all, you will be contributing to the area.

We had one. Don’t think we were ultra popular with the neighbours (we were the only second home in the immediate area) but no one was awful. We spent at least 2-3 nights a week there though, usually more, plus holidays, shopped locally, employed locally (window cleaner, gardener etc). We didn’t rent it out, but occasionally family and friends used it. Overall we had a great time, and don’t regret a minute of it. We sold it (to someone as a full time home) when we moved too far away in our main home.

The OP is planning to live there permanently - it would be a second home for the gap between buying and retiring/selling up which is in the forseeable future.

In the areas I know best the main owners of holiday homes are local families - landowners whose former tied cottages are now holiday lets and families whose great aunty Nell’s place is now a holiday let.

AirBnBs are also mostly locally owned, often being an integral part of a primary dwelling, or let by families bunking up with Grandma for the Summer months to cash in on the tourist season.

I just don't think I could be bothered with you. You obviously don't have good social skills because why would you move away from a lifetimes worth of friends.

We've had a building team in. One lad, I know his parents, the plaster walks his dogs in the next field we've been waving at each other for years. The foreman knows everyone that I know and more. Everyday we find more connections between each other.

I know which check out lady lives for her dogs, which one can't wait to get in the garden. I'm sure they will both politely take the trouble to ask if you want any help packing your bags.

What would you bring that we don't have? One friend owns some holiday lodges but otherwise the tourist economy mostly keeps our teens in holiday jobs. The rest of us are busy working in design led businesses, professionals - surveyors, vets, publishers, lots of tv. Our technical trades are all off around the world on mining, satellite dishes, airport furniture projects. The postie and the delivery drivers have had previous trades or adventures. We tend to talk about what we like to do rather than our big important jobs but most of all we like to build the connections that bind us together.
That's not something you do overnight by going to the fete once.

And I don't look out my window to check your house for storm damage or rescue your bin. And I will mow my lawn whenever I want and not give a shit if you've just driven 6 hours for peace and quiet. You aren't here to help me peg down the trampoline or watch the kids when I had to rush off to hospital in a panic. So I don't see how being friendly on a six year promise really works for me.

This has been a very interesting post.
The most interesting thing is that it has confirmed, yet again, that the sort of tribal suspicion and general unfriendliness toward incomers isn't indigenous to Cornwall, or parts of Wales or many other places in the UK.
A very good friend of my DF relocated 20 years ago from a large city to a small island surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean.
This friend is very people smart, very outgoing, very friendly, generous and very shrewd. He and his wife have lived there ever since.
From what he has said they are the exception.
In 20 years his friend has seen newcomers come and go, disillusioned, bitterly disappointed, and out of pocket.
This because they never fit in, no matter what they did, no matter how friendly they tried to be, no matter that they joined the local church, school activities etc, they were always considered outsiders, they never felt welcome and part of the community, and that is the way it is so often in tightly woven small communities.

Cornwall is being completely ruined by second/holiday homes.
Why buy now, before retirement, if it's to be empty for months on end?

It may be a good time to get a bargain with the COL crisis and landlords selling up too. Prices are certainly falling and properties failing to sell in the desirable coastal towns of East Anglia

Crikey! Never lose that colourful imagination.

I didn't mean from purely a financial point; I meant why now, to leave empty.
Cornwall has only one main hospital, Treliske. West Cornwall is closed at night, so I doubt you're closer to emergency care than you are now.

That poster has described exactly the kind of things I've heard in conversation for years here in Cornwall. All of it.

I'm kind of accepted here as a non-local because I grew up here, married a Cornishman and now have a very Cornish name instead of a Scottish one. But growing up here as a kid was a dreadful experience filled with bullying.

Like most of my generation, I left to get an education and start a career then try to come home. I only managed to afford to come back permanently because DH had bought a house whilst I was off building my career in another county. Many of my peers have been unable to return because the cost of living grossly outweighs the salaries and opportunities here.

My mum also found it very hard to assimilate, my dad found it slightly easier - and they were a teacher and nurse! They moved back up north years ago.

they also to fail to consider what a huge pressure it puts on local healthcare provision having so many old people migrating to rural locations. They move just at the age their healthcare needs start go up but they drive the house prices up so much that no care professionals can live nearby.

Im from a place that has been absolutely destroyed by Air BnB and second home-ism. Move if you want OP but you will be part of the problem and you’ll just have to accept that some people will openly dislike you for that.

Or perhaps you should lose your rose tinted glasses and listen to an honest answer from someone who clearly has more experience than you.

Just because it is blunt and to the point doesnt mean that that post isnt true.

You dont want to hear it because that isnt the fantasy is it? The fantasy of the dream home in the dream location is just that though......a dream. And dreams can so easily turn into nightmares. But hey, you crack on if you are so sure that you are right.

You asked a question and got answers. Do with that what you will....although I suspect you never had any intention of rethinking so it rather begs the question of what you were looking for when you started this thread.

My Dad was Cornish as am I but my mum isn't. She describes the years after moving to Cornwall as the loneliest of her life. She was a nurse with 2 young children and married to a Cornish teacher but acceptance as an outsider can be hard.

Coming in as someone who has stolen a local house and wasted it will be very hard.

Locals don't tend to be friendly or welcoming and yes you will have some openly hostile and rude.

Also be aware that a lot of St Ives closes in the winter. You will not have most of the cafés/ art galleries etc outside of tourist season.

I didn't want this to be outing so I haven't said the exact place but it is on the North coast.

"The thing is, there's a narrative that these would be thriving communities full of families and children and it's just the mean nasty second homers that is stopping that. "
Yes, usually used by people who want to promote the "Not enough Houses!" narrative.

it would be a second home for the gap between buying and retiring/selling up which is in the forseeable future.

6 years.

If she wants to move there permanently, she can do so in 6 years time.

In the areas I know best the main owners of holiday homes are local families - landowners whose former tied cottages are now holiday lets and families whose great aunty Nell’s place is now a holiday let.

Selfish selfish people.

Good news.

I do take on board some of her finer points, but prophesising that I'm going die alone and my family won't visit me got a tad flamboyant.

My experience is not of Cornwall but of a very similar coastal area. Where my relative lived she and her next door neighbour were the only full time residents in their road. When I was a child every house was occupied by people who were part of the community now just one house is occupied through the year. Another village that our family had connection with is now reduced to 4% full time residents, 96% seasonal lets.

I'm afraid I would judge you and judge anyone willing to sell to a second home owner. Houses are out of the reach of ordinary families so the number of children drops, the schools close, the shops and hospitality industry can't afford to employ staff.

However if you want to move and join the community you will be welcomed with open arms.

Or is something that she has seen/experienced that you cant face as being a possibility.

I have a large family and more than one has chased the dream only for it to be a nightmare. Only two out of more than a dozen have stayed where they moved to, and only then because they worked extremely hard to make it work because they went into it with their eyes open to the reality (my cousin who I mentioned above was one, her sister who moved abroad was another. No coincidence there I think as their father dragged them and my Aunt all over the world in his search to fulfil his "dream" and it never worked out). All the rest went back to where they started because all of their "Escape to the Country" fantasies didnt become reality, reality was that they were isolated and lonely.

Cornwall is well known to be anti incomers, second home owners are deeply unpopular there and you already know how the infrastructure is struggling unless you have lived under a rock for 30 years, and thats where you want to go.......good luck with that!

You might need to form a support group with the other traumatised second homers. You can sit in a circle, hold hands and cry while recounting tales of bullying by the nasty, bitter, jealous locals.