Should people be allowed second homes?

[Soubriquet]

I’m not talking about those who have second homes to rent out, I mean ones who leave the house empty 90% of the year and visit maybe once or twice as a holiday home.

Surely it’s bad for the area to have so many empty houses that can’t be used as they are holiday homes especially if they live abroad and only visit once every few years. If ever

I’m also concerned that there is so much homelessness in this country that could easily solved by reducing the second home movement and allowing people to rent cheaply

So. What do you think?

No. Or alternatively if they do, increase council tax on second home tenfold and use to provide council housing in local community.

I live in NW Wales and it's a huge problem here. House prices are out of reach of young local people and not in proportion to local wages. Estate agents are receiving offers from people who haven't even seen the houses. Some towns and villages are dead in the winter and it feels like our area is seen as a playground for rich people.

I agree that it is a big issue that needs looking at.
It’s causing schools and GP’s in those areas to close because they don’t have the permanent residents needed. That means the few local people who do live there have to travel far for GP and schools.
It also means the local shops etc. don’t have the regular custom needed to remain profitable.
It’s turning lovely, little communities into deserted holiday villages.
It’s selfish and short sighted.

It's very naive to believe homelessness can be solved through making homes available. (How about better provision for mental health and social care for a start.)
But I also disagree with you. If I'm ever in a position to be wealthy enough to afford a second home then why shouldn't I own one? Whether someone spends one day or every day in a home is irrelevant. If they own it they can do what they like with it.

I’d rather second holiday homes weren’t allowed if it meant swathes of new houses weren’t being built on green fields.

There should be charges involved in having more than one property and leaving it vacant for significant periods of time. .might encourage things like time shares which would reduce the amount of time its vacant and the amount of second homes owned by individuals in general

@AnUnoriginalUsername I have worked in housing and homelessness for over 20 years - rough sleeping/chronic street homelessness is, you are right, is much harder to solve than giving people a home - which is why Housing First is having such an amazing impact. However for the over 100,000 children and families in temporary accommodation (often bed & breakfasts, hostels or other inadequate & expensive options) it isn’t any more hard to solve than good quality affordable housing and saying it is just obscures the issue.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02110/

It can be curbed. For example, Bakewell is attempting to put a stop to this by only allowing people with tangible links to the area to buy property there.
They have to already live in the area or have employment in the area or prove in some way that it will be their permanent residence.

It is selfish. Why do you NEED two homes? You don't. You could easily just rent a holiday home that is actually used all year round by tourists, or stay in a hotel

How would you rent a holiday home if no one owned more than one home?
I completely see how second homes and holiday homes that are rented out to tourists can be really detrimental to an area, especially when schools, shops, hospitals, GPs are closing because too few people reside there permanently.
However I dont know what the balance is. A lot of the areas and the business and industries there do need a certain degree of tourism and visitors to survive.
On the cornwall thread second home owners were seen as the evil but hotels and camping was just about ok.
Playing devils advocate, why is a hotel ok? Could that not be turned into affordable flats? Why is a campsite or caravan site not as bad? Would the land be suitable for building permanent houses for residents of the town (or people priced out?)

If there were no tourists at all, would there be different, better paid jobs that were viable all year round?

I dont have a second home btw although I do sometimes stay in holiday cottages

Essentially yes, people should be able too.
However there is a well known beauty spot around here, and on the river side, prominent spot a beautiful old house was demolished for an Arab family, rebuilt, rather gouache and its been in a state of decay for decades and rumour has it, never lived in nor visited.

So that should be banned yes because its an eye sore and is dragging down a very popular spot.

@Vikingintraining

It's very naive to believe homelessness can be solved through making homes available. (How about better provision for mental health and social care for a start.) But I also disagree with you. If I'm ever in a position to be wealthy enough to afford a second home then why shouldn't I own one? Whether someone spends one day or every day in a home is irrelevant. If they own it they can do what they like with it.

Because you owning a second home is contributing to the destruction of local communities. You would actively be damaging the area you apparently love enough to want a second house in.

I think that after one home, all other homes should have some kind of heavy tax attached to them. There is a massive problem with people using homes as sources of investment and income. It’s morally wrong.

Plus - look at how Finland solved homelessness www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness

They should not be allowed.

This is the effect on the area I grew up in: www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/19235489.pembrokeshire-second-homes-creating-almost-social-purging-locals-coastal-areas/

@Mistlewoeandwhine

I think that after one home, all other homes should have some kind of heavy tax attached to them. There is a massive problem with people using homes as sources of investment and income. It’s morally wrong.

There is. Have you seen the stamp duty assigned to second homes?? It’s extortionate and partly the reason why DH decided to sell his house when we bought together.

However, if we were wealthy enough to have been able to take that hit, then we absolutely would have kept the other house

@Vikingintraining

It's very naive to believe homelessness can be solved through making homes available. (How about better provision for mental health and social care for a start.) But I also disagree with you. If I'm ever in a position to be wealthy enough to afford a second home then why shouldn't I own one? Whether someone spends one day or every day in a home is irrelevant. If they own it they can do what they like with it.

“Can” doesn’t mean the same as “should”. The effect of holiday homes on the local community of these places is catastrophic. I think that’s more important to consider than “I have the money, why shouldn’t I do what I want”

@Anonmousse

It is selfish. Why do you NEED two homes? You don't. You could easily just rent a holiday home that is actually used all year round by tourists, or stay in a hotel

How would you rent a holiday home if no one owned more than one home?
I completely see how second homes and holiday homes that are rented out to tourists can be really detrimental to an area, especially when schools, shops, hospitals, GPs are closing because too few people reside there permanently.
However I dont know what the balance is. A lot of the areas and the business and industries there do need a certain degree of tourism and visitors to survive.
On the cornwall thread second home owners were seen as the evil but hotels and camping was just about ok.
Playing devils advocate, why is a hotel ok? Could that not be turned into affordable flats? Why is a campsite or caravan site not as bad? Would the land be suitable for building permanent houses for residents of the town (or people priced out?)

If there were no tourists at all, would there be different, better paid jobs that were viable all year round?

I dont have a second home btw although I do sometimes stay in holiday cottages

I've said it before, but mass tourism is the death knell for an area. It hollows out communities, overwhelms whatever local industries remained, and makes those living there utterly reliant on it. It's like a bad drug you can't stop taking.

The balance is to slowly move back to a sustainable tourism model and at the same time allow and assist diverse industries to recover in former tourist areas. Remove the reliance on tourism. Then you can have a balance of a thriving local community and tourists.

Unfortunately that will mean that holidays are much more expensive and less frequent for all of us, and people are inherently selfish buggers who want their cheap week in the sun so without some fairly extreme cultural shifts it's not going to happen.

Homelessness won't be solved by removing the opportunity to own a second home.

How far would you be happy for tbe government to control you? Second home ownership suits you as I'm guessing you don't have one, but I don't like people owning animals because its cruel and bad for the environment should the government control that? Tbe money people save from owni has pets can pay for hostels for homeless people cant it?

People driven out of their community as unable to compete with the inflated house prices, towns with no people in them for half the year or more, leading to school and shop closures for those left, more house building needed , more concrete, to create more homes for people, second homes are a blight

Any free choice has to be balanced with the impact on our society

@Anonmousse

It is selfish. Why do you NEED two homes? You don't. You could easily just rent a holiday home that is actually used all year round by tourists, or stay in a hotel

How would you rent a holiday home if no one owned more than one home?
I completely see how second homes and holiday homes that are rented out to tourists can be really detrimental to an area, especially when schools, shops, hospitals, GPs are closing because too few people reside there permanently.
However I dont know what the balance is. A lot of the areas and the business and industries there do need a certain degree of tourism and visitors to survive.
On the cornwall thread second home owners were seen as the evil but hotels and camping was just about ok.
Playing devils advocate, why is a hotel ok? Could that not be turned into affordable flats? Why is a campsite or caravan site not as bad? Would the land be suitable for building permanent houses for residents of the town (or people priced out?)

If there were no tourists at all, would there be different, better paid jobs that were viable all year round?

I dont have a second home btw although I do sometimes stay in holiday cottages

The difference between a second home and a holiday home is that the holiday home us rented by tourists for most of the year. That brings business to the area. The second homes lie empty most of the year as the owners don't want strangers staying in it. They go down maybe once or twice a year to visit. Otherwise, it's empty.

A hotel, holiday home, camping etc is something that tourists use. It provides jobs (staff in the hotel, cleaners for the holiday homes and camping) and the tourists spend money in the shops. The second home owners don't spend as much.

The areas with few tourists basically die. They become derelict areas, no funding going towards them, become run down and then the second home owners no doubt fuck off to a 'prettier' location.

@HotToddyColdSauvignon

Why?

(I don’t own a second property as it happens) but if I did, why should someone tax me more heavily because I choose what to do with my property?

Do you want to come round and charge me extra because I bulk bought a load of pasta last week and I’m not using it?

Christ, we may as well go live in Russia in the 1930’s and get allotted our daily allowances

The pasta example is an interesting analogy. Do we need to prevent people from bulk buying pasta? No, because there's plenty to go round. But during the first lockdown, pasta was one of the things people bought excessive amounts of and it quickly went out of stock. So shops had to limit the amounts people could buy so there was enough for everyone.

Now apply this principle to houses.

@Soubriquet

There was someone on here the other day posting about their town in Cornwall. Those who are born locally are struggling to find a house because so many are actually owned. In reality, they are empty 95% of the year as they are just used as holiday homes

It means the people who want to stay in the area can’t, because no houses are available for them to buy.

Boo fucking hoo- sorry but it pisses me off as a Londoner to hear people moan about not being able to afford where they come from but London is a free for all.

I actually agree with you OP, one home per person (family) however in reality you will just find richer people putting one home in each spouses name.

I think it does depend on the area.

A friend lives in a lovely village in Northumberland, his house is the only one on his street that isn’t a holiday rental, on other streets in the village the picture is fairly similar. This has caused multiple problems, october to march the village is essentially empty, this means the local shop and pub didn’t survive, locals are priced out of the housing market. My friend lives in a small two bed terraced back to back and he couldn’t afford to buy it today.

I think it might be best to have a cap on how many homes in a certain area are second homes. But in some cases the second home might have been in the family for several generations and they’re an established part of the community.

I'm interested how this works, and how it is policed. I know certain towns do have policies that favour local buyers or permanent residents but I dont know how it works. Who decides which homes are available to anyone (for any purpose - permanent residence, second home for private use, or holiday let) and which ones are for local people, or those with links to the area? The EA? Or the council? Also is there a cap on pricing? A house available for anyone to buy (including foreign investors or people who havent even viewed it) might potentially fetch a greater price than one only marketed to local permanent residents....?

I think second homes should be banned because of the damage they do to communities by pushing up prices and being empty most of the year. Many people are either completely oblivious to the damage they do to local areas or are too selfish to care, as shown by some of the responses on this thread, so banning them is the only solution.