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?

Perhaps there is a middle ground.
Sometimes coastal areas struggle to have places for the staff to rent.
Could you buy and rent out two rooms to a long term worker leaving you the rest of the house for weekends?

Could you rent to local workers during peak period?

Could you rent out but only advertize to older couples or singles?

She isn’t in UK so not impacted but no doubt over-regulation will bite her in due course!

edited for typo

Same. Nobody’s going to walk around with a sign on saying “second home owner” so OP won’t get pelted in the street, but it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.

I'm from Pembrokeshire. DH and I plan to move there once DS goes to university. DH once suggested we buy a second home there. I quickly shut him down as it's morally wrong.

In some areas second home owners are being charged 300-400% Council Tax. That seems a fair trade. By all means have a second home but compensate the area you’re taking a home for a local out of the market.

No, I think people would rather have permanent neighbours.

Second homes are bad for communities. That's why people are not welcoming. People won't be overtly hostile, that's rare, but they will rightly consider you a negative not a positive and wish you were not there.

People saying to rent it out to a local family until they are ready to move- and then what? Turf them out? To where?

My relative rented a lovely family home with her husband and two children for 12 years. It had a granny flat attached, which the owners used as a holiday home. The owners sold the whole house and my relatives had to leave. The housing situation has got so bad since Covid- lots of houses got bought up by people wanting to escape the cities. They had a very stressful time finding anywhere to live and have ended up in a 2 bed flat. Luckily the kids are teens- her 18 year son moved in with his girlfriend and her family. Daughter is 15. Where they used to live is now empty 10 months of the year. And when it is occupied, it is by two people.

There are families who want to move here who can’t find anywhere to live. The school is under threat. Just so people can have an extra house and complain about how much council tax they have to pay. The local council has a few initiatives to encourage people to move here, like discounted services. But it’s pointless when there is nowhere for them to live. The second home owners also complain that they don’t get the discounts too 🙄

I do think that lots of people commenting on the social skills post want it all and are upset that some stuff you can't buy.
When you move location you have to work hard to build a social network. There's obvious lifetime peak points of quickly meeting lots of people - school, uni, maternity leave, school gate when you become friends for a reason.
Then there's the long slow burn stuff - drinking in the same pub, using the same services together.
And hobbies - sport, clubs, activity groups.

You can buy the house and the local produce but you can't buy the time and effort it takes to build a social network, you have to put in the work.

I appreciate living in a beautiful area but it's the years of smiling and asking how's it going that has built the warmth here.

I would suggest you holiday down here in lots of different times and places and only when you are fully committed to being here full time, buy then. Then you can do the place up, work hard at connections and be the couple who have moved here rather than the ones that have had that empty place for six years.

It wasn't on my parents' watchlist!

In a side note, how are university students received in Cornwall? My son is looking at Camborne School of Mines for Engineering Geology and Geotechnics … that would be Penryn/falmouth

OP surely you don’t want to buy now? The comments from the insular and hostile types from Cornwall posting here, are saying that whatever you do, you won’t be welcome, even if you try. Just because of what you represent. You will be shunned without them even getting to know you. Even people moving there to live will be classed as ‘DFL’ and not welcomed.

There are plenty of friendly places on the coast you could move to. I would avoid Cornwall like the plague. I no longer holiday there because of their unwelcoming small-minded attitude, as evidenced here in detail by a few posters.

Absolutely fine thank goodness. They've finally realised students are valuable to the community - but don't expect to pick up a part time job easily I'm afraid, it's almost impossible.

Although when I grew up in Penzance the NIMBY councillors refused a small university campus (marine biology) just outside Newlyn even though it would create jobs, bring in year round money especially off season and bring investment in. Cornwall isn't known for its long term thinking. That campus went to Falmouth, as did the marina Pz refused. 🙄

In the main my negative experiences relate to Somerset not Cornwall.

He'll be welcomed!
They used to say if they was hole anywhere around the world there would be a cornishman at the bottom of it.
So great expertise and courses.
It's a lovely campus, have you had a visit yet? Lots of surfing, hiking, really friendly. The Cornish kids learn to drive fairly quickly but most will be living in student accom. because it's a hell of a way to most of Cornwall on top of a busy course.
There will be lots of students from the whole of the UK drawn by the niche or specialist courses but he definitely wants a few 'local' friends for the odd weekend surfing and eating Roast Dinners on the North Coast.

Except people do walk around with a sign on saying "second home owner".

Their clothes, their accents, their cars, their hair, their attitude, where they shop, where they eat, how they shop, how they behave, how they drive and park, the bag they carry, the times of day they're out and about - all instantly recognisable to a local. When there are only 300 people in your village you know them all, probably by name.

Wearing designer tweed, driving a pristine Landrover and carrying a shepherd's crook makes David Beckham stand out a mile from his neighbours in the Cotswolds. They're all pottering about in a battered Subaru wearing a caguoule and carrying a Londis bag

Any tourists and second home owners visiting a rural/coastal area who thinks they don't immediately stand out to the locals are deluding themselves.

Oh no! :(

Oh well

I think it depends on what type of second home? We have a second home - posh flat in London. But it truly is a second ‘home’. Of our family of 4, it is occupied by one of us 80% of the time - DH for work in the week, DD for uni during semesters, me for university related stuff, and multiple family members for weekends and in the ‘holidays’. Our ‘primary’ home is where I live most of the time with the dogs (garden, and local green spaces) and currently with our youngest as he is doing A Levels. Ie. Both properties are genuinely ‘home’.

I think if you were actually living there, wfh, etc and dividing your time between properties then, in fact, noone needs to know it is a second home really. I think the discontent comes when people buy property but only use it 4-6 weeks a year, let family and friends use it or Air BnB it.

Brutal, but accurate.

I live in a second home hotspot and yes, they kill communities and it’s incredibly sad. I respect the fact you’ve come on to ask the question but I wonder whether anything you read on this thread would actually change your plans anyway?

Having spent many years there and knowing many locals, I disagree. Do you know if well? This may well be the case in many areas, but not in Dartmouth.

There will probably be quiet simmering resentments however you frame it.
Frankly, think of something else to spend on or buy a lovely static on an approved site. Some of them are fabulous.

What has happened in more recent years is the visual impact of some of these second homes. The excavation of the cliffs to accommodate these massive glass windowed monstrosities - the previously modest whitewashed houses now resemble leisure centres.

The OP is interested in north Cornwall. Examples: Gordon Ramsay demolished an Art Deco house to build ... a leisure centre. Also, the extensive disruption of Cate Blanchett's 'eco friendly' leisure centre. The beautiful cliffs and harbours are becoming transformed.

Thinking about this could you buy a home with a large garden and put something in the garden, a caravan or lodge type thing?

Rent out the house to a local but have the lodge / wood cabin as your holiday home for 6 years?

I agree. Second homes are a crazy idea in a small country with a housing crisis. Also, it really matters if you get on with your neighbours or not. That's what holidays and are for: staying somewhere nice for a short period of time.

I think you're being disingenuous on the empty property front.

I speak as a second home owner who has commented further up the thread on who did and didn't hate and why, by the way.

But don't kid yourself the fact the house was empty is going to make it OK from others' perspective. The average income in north Cornwall is pretty similar to the average income in a place like Middlesbrough or Blackpool. The reason the house prices are ££££££ more and the reason your new house has sat empty with no one able to afford it locally is because of second home owners. You (we) can't pretend we aren't part of the problem because we are.

I think part of being less hate-able is accepting why people hate you and addressing it head on and trying to rectify. So for us, the main concern we heard from our neighbors was around a place sitting empty so we rent it out or share with mates to make sure it's occupied as much as possible.

It's not perfect but equally we didn't make the place too expensive for the locals and it would be whether we bought or not. But I do accept we are part of the problem and there's no point pretending we aren't.