To Suggest Highland Clearances 2.0?

[buddhasbelly]

I live in a part of rural Scotland that has experienced a huge rise in demand and a huge rise in house prices since about 6 months in to Covid.

Properties have been sold for 50% over asking price. New build prices are up an additional £20-30k on pre-pandemic prices. Yes the costs of timber rose but have since plummeted again. Homes are being advertised as "ideal Airbnb opportunity." 2nd homes are lying empty and those that are relocating are able to pay well over asking price.

But wages haven't risen in the area. Average saleries for the area are ~£22-£26k.

I don't blame people relocating, it helps the regional economy and they've worked hard to save and buy what could well be out of their reach in eg SE England.

But this isn't sustainable. Developers stating they are building more houses to ease the problem are just inflating their prices.

Communities are dying off in tourist hotspots where holiday homes are now the norm. Long term rentals in such areas are few and far between with houses being switched to holiday lets.

It doesn't look set to stop. Prices are predicted to rise 9% again this year.

Huge swathes of land are being bought up to be "rewilded" by companies looking to offset their carbon tax. One such company who spouts the UK prime minister's dad as investor has stated that sustainable property will be built on the land bought and they forsee 40% of their income being derived from this. Except it's property in the form of hunting lodges and high end Real Estate.

Employers in the area cannot find accommodation for their staff.

We have tried to buy but have accepted that this may no longer be an option. Wages don't keep up with the rise in house prices.

AIBU to suggest this is the Highland Clearances 2.0?

IMO, the really excessive visitor numbers of last couple years won’t be sustained in rural Scotland - people are looking for wild places, empty beaches, traditional architecture, not shit-strewn sand, NC500 traffic etc. In cities, crowds are different, more part of the experience. We dont have the weather of Cornwall, nor the proximity to London.

I honestly can’t see how the tourism surge in properly rural areas will continue at the same rate, which will mean airBnB etc will be less profitable so more will be sold as housing. If you’re within an hour of Glasgow / Edinburgh or on the NC 500, you’re probably going to still see huge visitor numbers, otherwise I don’t thing so.

my cousins who are scraping along trying to make a living on their place in Ayrshire. Have you suggested rewilding to them?

I read the book Wilding about the rewilding of a vast estate in England but no where did it explain financing of the project.
At the start she said the farm was breaking even because of the costs of fertiliser, seeds etc but then the rest of the book was the successful rewilding but what they were using to maintain their stately pile I've no idea.
Frustrating.

www.realwildestates.com/about/ this is the rewilding firm we have up here... I see the photo of Boris Johnson's dad seems to have disappeared from their site...

A diverse team I'm sure you'll agree of luxury property tycoons and investment portfolio folk...

They previously had a business plan available which stated about increasing employment by up skilling gamekeepers... It was, erm... interesting... And got slaughtered on twitter.

Between rewilding and 2nd homes it's a difficult time to be in the Highlands. Alas @Saz12 on the Nc500 route here so no slow down in demand for airbnbs any time soon.

@YourenutsmiLord

I just read that one too - it's exactly what I mean by saying that 'farmers' are not a homogenous group. IIRC they applied successfully for a number of public grants and funding for their project. Knepp is a country estate that now produces wildlife and 'nature' and serves tourists (camping and wildlife safaris). They aren't farmers any more.

Knepp’s income comes from government grants for environmental services such as floodplain management and from its solar farm, which generates electricity for the national grid. They also rent out 130,000 square feet of post-agricultural building space to small local businesses, which not only generate income for the estate but also employ 200 people. In 2020, Knepp sold 75 tonnes of live-weight organic wild venison, beef and pork. While there are no plans to increase these volumes — it would mean stocking more animals, to the detriment of the habitat — they have launched a range to sell online directly to the consumer and invested £700,000 in a state-of-the-art butchery, processing and packing facility, with hopes of soon adding an abattoir.

Isabella is at pains to point out that all this is an offshoot of the conservation project, as is their ecotourism business, which took off after conservation groups like the Wildlife Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds beat a path to the estate to see the purple emperor butterflies, the nightingales and turtle doves. So while the estate’s bountiful wildlife and biodiversity are the real markers of its success, the former farmland now earns double the gross margin of a typical farm on quality arable land, according to the Savills benchmark. “We really are a viable business, having gone from being totally unviable,” Isabella says. “When we opened the calendar for 2021, it was like Glastonbury — the site crashed.”

To be honest OP, what you are describing is just a MN inevitable process that has, or will happen everywhere. Economic factors have always driven migratory trends. Look at London - much of the property has been purchased by overseas investors, driving up prices across the board in a way that may seem unsustainable. Places change and no community is static - nor should it be. If you resist change, there is there risk you will be left behind in a globalising world. The Highlands are no different to anywhere else and nobody ‘owns’ anywhere.

not ‘MN inevitable’ - just ‘inevitable’ that was meant to say!

They aren't farmers any more. Rubbish

Yanbu
My mother lives in the highlands and the young people are having to move to the cities to afford to live due to rising house prices. Communities are breaking up and the landlords, goodlifers and second homers are changing the dynamic of the area. Many permanent residents do settle in and participate in community life but many do not and it’s so sad to see how in the past 30 years life has changed so much.

“ Living in rural places these days, especially picturesque ones, is a lifestyle choice made by those who can afford it.”

1000% this. Expat Scot living down South now. The house prices in the picturesque village I grew up in are astronomical - not all of that due to incomers to the area but it certainly doesn’t help. I don’t know anyone I grew up with who lives in the village now. It’s just not realistic if you’re earning an average wage.

Parts of the country have been bought up by second homeowners for decades now pushing prices up for local people. It's just reached Scotland then. I imagine the WFH means no longer need to stay in the SE and can sell home for mega bucks and buy a mansion in Scotland with lots of land or a bigger property in many areas in the SW or Wales etc. The locals sell to the incomers so there you go.

@an0ther0ther I understand and agree with what you're saying but when this was previously an affordable area for the stagnant wages and our wages are suppressed in comparison to cities, where can people priced out move to? Lower wages went with lower property prices but now it's no longer the case.

Indeed places change and no community is static but the communities themselves are being eroded and being replaced with empty holiday homes.

@User1isnotavailable very true. Any gov intervention would mean sellers not getting the highest price for their house which wouldnt be popular with many. It just feels like a generation will be lost to rural areas when they can't afford to buy and no long term rentals available, in turn imcreasing an elderly populatiom percentage with fewer NHS resources in the area.

Christ I've gone on a bit in this thread

@GrannyBattleaxe

Yes, yabvu. The Highland Clearances was genocide - the systematic attempted wipeout of a language, a culture and people. Please don’t belittle it. I live on the West Coast, in our region we have seen no more of what you list than any other rural location now working from home is so much more widely available.

This is hyperbole. The clearances were not "genocide". You can argue that, in the long term, they were to Scotland's benefit.

@garlictwist

Sorry yes. No one owns an area. People can move where they like.

People are not moving there- that is the point. They are buying 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th homes as businesses and letting them out

My father was born in a wee stone gatekeeper's cottage. It had no running water (or loo) until he was a teenager. He and both his brothers shared one bed. The floors were stone slabs laid straight on the earth. Part of the terms of my grandparents renting the cottage was that they had to drop everything and hurry to open the gates of the drive leading to 'big house' whenever required.

I'm very, very fortunate. Decades ago, I was able to buy a small property in a different Scottish village. But today, there's no way in which I or any of my father's brothers' children could afford to buy the house where our parents grew up. And most of us are people with professional 'educated'-level jobs.

Recent research - read Tom Devine - has shown that the Clearances - Lowland as well as Highland - were not ideological genocide, but rather the deliberate policies of landlords - of any culture - wanting to make money from their land. Their effects still devastating, however. And, as OP suggests, we should still learn from them.

The 500 route was appalling planning. Whoever organised it really should be held responsible for very serious errors.

DerAlteMann You say "to Scotland's benefit". Please explain what you mean. Properly, academically, with references/facts and figures.

@scottishnames

DerAlteMann You say "to Scotland's benefit". Please explain what you mean. Properly, academically, with references/facts and figures.

Your response is much politer than mine, thank you.

Surely it's up to the locals to decide to sell their desirable rural properties either to locals at a low market rate or to sell at inflated prices to incomers and 2nd home owners. I'm sure most vendors will sell to the highest bidder so even the "local occupants" aren't going to assist here. It's market forces I'm afraid!

Whilst I think you are right OP to highlight what is happening and the impact on local people, I do not agree that it is comparable to the Highland Clearances. Bad as it is.

saleorbuy But part of the problem is that 'locals' who OWN property have, historically speaking, been big estates. They are out for what they can get, on the whole. Once a tenant/other dependant goes, it's a free for all. And quite a few other rural homes are probate properties where the executors have a legal duty to get the best price. So it's just not that simple. And when it comes to crofting tenancies, the rules can - and have been - horribly exploited. In my opinion, the Crofting Commission has really been unfit for purpose here...