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?

I have lived in Cornwall for 30 years, not on the North coast although I know it well, and I don't think being liked or not be the locals would be the first thing on my list of things to worry about.

In the current economic climate there is no way buying a second home makes sense to me unless you are wanting to ship out lots of unwanted money. We are paying £600 a month in double council tax on a house we inherited and can't sell. House prices here seem ridiculously high and I have a feeling they will either hold or fall in the next few years.

If you are intending to come and live here just wait until you retire then buy your forever home. If you want to live somewhere that is a popular holidays destination then be aware that it will be heaving during the summer and dead in the winter.

As PPs have said if there are a lot of Airbnbs then you can get a very mixed bunch of visitors, some of whom can be disruptive.

If you are looking at somewhere like Daymer Bay (which ironically was built as a holiday/second homes resort, albeit 150 years ago) then there are quite a few permanent residents there, including several friends of mine. Quite a few of them live off the holiday home business, but you are talking about having to drive to do any shopping and it's rammed in the summer.

Stop pretending you give a shit what anyone thinks then since your response to all suggestions is "!no"

Do people really believe this tripe? Welsh speakers don’t sit in pubs speaking English. They speak Welsh.

My parents moved to Cornwall on retirement. 20 years they were there, not a holiday home. They never fitted in, were always the outsiders. My mum hated living there, my dad liked it.

They did everything right too when they moved in, invited neighbours to BBQ's, went to local church craft days, were helpful to all that asked for a hand. May be better in a busier area but all my parents had in their village was a primary school and 2 churches, of which they were not church goers which I don't think helped as that was the source of gossip and friendship.

For reasons I won't go into here, it all got quite nasty in the end.

The local council will love you.

Wait until you are ready to retire/relocate and then buy a home you can occupy all year around.

Or buy it now but rent it to a local family until you are ready to retire and move in.

Buying somewhere and leaving it empty most of the year or using it as an Air B&B won't make you popular with locals and it is understandable.

The thing my parents taught me was when you are there, spend locally, even if it costs a bit more or is inconvenient. If you want those shops to continue to exist, you have to use them.

be as much of a part of the community as you can. Go to the festivals. Use the library.

they lived there full time and we just visited, but they made us do the rounds when we were there.

They got too old for the house and don’t have it anymore. I miss it. It was their little paradise.

We’re 2nd home owners in the north west highlands, in a very remote area. There are quite a few unoccupied houses around (owners in care homes etc) and a few that the owners only visit 3-4 weeks a year as well as Airbnbs, nobody seems to bother. People in motor homes doing the north coast 500 are far more unpopular. We’re now there 2 weeks out of 4 and I volunteer for a local project so that maybe helps (DH still works). We’ve spent a lot of on the house/with local trades as the place was almost uninhabitable and I’ve never sensed any resentment from the locals at ‘incomers’ and I have asked! There are occasionally letters in the local paper or Facebook posts about young people leaving due to a shortage of housing but tbh the problem is as much the seasonable nature of many jobs, especially at entry level. Even if there are loads of houses to buy you can’t get a mortgage if you only work half the year. That said I think the problems in Cornwall are perhaps a different ball game to where we have bought.

I reckon if you don’t turn up on a Friday night with a boot full of M&S groceries but instead go in the local pubs and shops and splash a bit of cash, you’ll be good!

Some of my family (cousins) live in Cornwall, moved down there but stayed and had families down there. Most of their family stayed or visited them a lot. The two older people I knew (mum and son, lived separately) did not go into nursing homes. They’re also just as entitled to hospital care there, they paid their tax, NI and council tax. My great uncle who lived in Sennen (moved there from Walton on Thames) was very well liked locally and family friends bought his cottage built into a cliff when he died. My DM and a close family friend went down to nurse him of cancer when he was terminally ill. My other relative (disabled) lived there for years when married (she moved to France for a while) then moved back to Cornwall recently, her sons visit a lot from abroad where they both live.

That's a bold statement. I can think of plenty of places where there's entry of hostility to second home owners.

If my kids were being pushed out of the local area because of second home owners then I would really hate them. I don't like there hate but seeing kids struggle to buy homes in certain areas makes me extremely angry.

I’m only telling you what my mum said. Do you think she was lying?

I am not a rude person by nature, so it’s really upsetting as I am a friendly person, but I am angry enough now that I would tell the buyers what I thought, and no I would not want to be friendly with them.
Honestly, don’t do it, it’s such a selfish thing to do. If you like an area why contribute to its destruction ? We have someone who moved here buying two adjacent houses, now she has bought a third. She lives in one, the other two are holiday homes. If everyone moving here did this we would have no school, the community would crumble. Yet people like this buy organic food and preach about sustainability, when what they are doing renders communities unsustainable. One house close to me was sold, the buyer saying they wanted to live there, within a month of being sold it was on Airbnb. The owner comes at Christmas and once in the Summer. No I don’t talk to her.
There is a lot of anger locally, the whole community has changed. In lockdown second home owners were pitching up in the dark, which tells you how little they respect or care about us, the people who are always saying “oh I love it here”. It also prices locals out of the housing market, and leaves villages like ghost towns in the Winter.
I think it is immoral. Buy a cabin or a caravan, stay in a small hotel, rent a spare barn on a farm, there are plenty of ways to enjoy a place without contributing to its destruction.

No.
How do you think it feels to have a stream of different neighbours ? Some might be nice, some very much not . It’s not fun.

Yes. I have a sign. My friends have signs.

I think it depends where in Devon/Cornwall the bigger towns/cities wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but more rural places/right on the coast probably wouldn’t be as welcoming to second home owners.

Of course. Well in that she will be hated. St Ives has way too many second homes. The locals really are way fed up of it.

It is trotted out a lot, it seems like an urban myth!

This.

Also lol @ "they ignored her", did she expect everyone to stop their conversation and stand up and greet her?

She asked to be served.

It depends where OP.

So in reality you are not buying a holiday home you are buying your retirement home where you will live full time? That is not the same as a holiday home and probably it would have been better to discuss retirement living as these threads always go the same way.

If you are planning to live there, you really should try to spend a month or so there in the Winter. Its very different. Distances are all further than you think if you are considering distance from other family and services - especially in the Summer.

Otherwise moving to a new area will always take a while to settle and will go better if you make an effort to get involved. There are some areas which are unwelcoming, others which are welcoming to those living and contributing. A Winter there will help identify the type of community it is.

But will there be plenty of amenities in 6-10 years time if lots of the housing becomes second homes not supporting the local amenities?

I think in your situation I would probably invest the money elsewhere & just holiday there as often as we would use the house if we bought one. I know it's not the same as going to your iwn holiday home. But if you find a nice rental you can book regularly & support the local community I'd make that trade off.

if you do buy somewhere I think it's best mitigated by using it as often as possible & buying your groceries etc there & spending what you can afford to re eating out etc to support the local economy & encouraging quiet, respectful family & friends to use it as often as possible. Being clear about parking, bins etc etc

On googling it seems it is an urban myth. But I’m only going on what my mum told me (happened in 70s or 80s, visiting English friends who’d moved there).