Second Home owners doing sad faces in the press about council tax increase

[CornishTickler]

Just read an article online about the second home council tax increase and there are couples with sad faces saying it was without warning and is against their human rights! It wasn't, its been in the press and talked about by councils for over a year. It wasn't a surprise, areas with high levels of second homes knew it was coming.

I for one am glad about the tax. Our village has been destroyed by second home owners for years. A lot are badly maintained and empty for 80% of the year.

The argument that they bring extra income is also misleading. Most true second home owners who only visit a couple of times a year don't contribute much to the economy but are very vocal in interfering in local issues to the detriment of actual residents. One example (I'm not joking on this) was to oppose the planning of a local business that would benefit the community with jobs and tax revenue because of the endangered newts! luckily common sense prevailed but honestly they got very vocal and aggressive about it. It was mainly because they didn't want it to impact their second home.

Holiday makers bring revenue. Absentee second home owners do not.

Hopefully the second home tax increase will increase council tax revenue and help to support our community and vulnerable people.

Please can I have a link to their sad faces

Yes. That's a better example than the newts.

Aside of Cornwall for which someone said tourism only brings 18% of revenues to the local economy or areas similar to that - areas who obviously have strong businesses / industries that brings the rest of the recenues.

forget those areas for a sec, there other areas with high tourism values in the uk or even in the rest of world but NO economy and no jobs for the local residents if it wasnt for the seasonal tourists in summer and winter. I m not sure about thr UK but in France, in the Alps it is very true. If it wasnt for holiday makers there would be no economy and therefore all the youth, young families, etc would have left.

so whats the answer for those areas. They need hotels, campsites, guest houses AND empty homes to rent

I don't really agree with having a second home at all, so I certainly don't care about the sad faces of rich people who not only own a home they live in (an unaffordable dream to many hardworking people, who aren't even poor) but own a second one too. Diddums.

It's pretty immoral in the best of times, let alone during a housing crisis with many people homeless, to own a second home that you just pop to whenever you fancy it. A caravan on a site somewhere as a bolthole maybe, but a whole flat or house? come on!

um, no. Tenants pay their own council tax; that isn’t counted as a second home. Tenants are not going to suddenly have to pay double council tax. That would essentially end the rental economy overnight. No more landlords, anywhere.

I fucking hate the 'politics of envy' accusation whenever wealthy people are required to pay a bit more. These are people with two homes, when loads of people don't even have one. I'm sure the wealthy second home owners in OP's village can just about afford to pay double council tax.

This was introduced to discourage people leaving homes empty for long periods and to encourage them to either sell or rent it out. It's called an Empty House Premium and people can apply for an exemption if they put the property up for sale or rent.

I want to retire or semi retire and live across two areas. DSs also live in our house. I want to buy a house near my family, three hours away. Eventually we’ll be there full time.
We can’t sell up yet, as we’d have nowhere to stay when we come back to see our kids- they won’t be able to buy anywhere big enough for years yet, even if they were sure where they want to stay longer term.

It would be ridiculously expensive now.

I fucking hate the 'politics of envy' accusation

Exactly & a young person today has a completely different landscape trying to get housing security. Of course they should be angry.

But you have to realise that is a luxury most people don't have and many don't have an affordable home at all. It's a luxury and you should have to pay for it.

In my nearest village there are 86 properties that are second homes.

The school is probably going to have to make redundancies in the next few years as pupil numbers have dropped. There are three families that I know of with 8 children between them who have been trying to buy in the village and have had to give up and move to the nearest town where the schools are becoming overcrowded because of all the new builds that have gone up there in recent years.

When you drive through the village in the evenings there are lovely family sized cottages that sit in darkness for 45 weeks of the year.

Everyone always has a reason why their second home is justified/needed. Well - pay the extra council tax then. The damage to popular areas from having unoccupied houses is huge.

@CornishTickler I hope so but it's probably quite a hard loophole to close.

Yet if you were to buy a second home, you'd be contributing to a set of circumstances that meant other people's kids were unable to afford their own home close to their parents...

I agree, but there are plenty of alternatives for "holiday homes" such as railway carriages, farm barn conversions (which don't have planning permission for year round residential use), canal boats, etc. They should be the ones for holiday lets. There should be an absolute ban on "normal" homes being used for holiday lets, i.e. in housing estates, blocks of flats, etc.

We've just stayed in a railway station in a converted old station building on a live railway line - no way would that be suitable for normal residential use - no outdoor space, literally on the platform, so passengers looking in the windows, noise of trains and station announcements from 6am to 11pm. That's the kind of thing that should be for holidays as it's unsuitable for family residential - the planning permission stipulated it was for short term accommodation only - that's fair enough and the kind of thing to be encouraged rather than penalised.

But if they can't ban holiday lets in housing estates and blocks of flats, then they need to penalise the owners - something like ten times normal council tax would be a start so that the area actually benefits from them, rather than all the benefit going to the rich owners.

Lots of second homes where I grew up, always been an issue but covid meant numbers ramped up. At one point when my friend was trying to buy, she had just got divorced the Estate Agent said around 80% of people trying to buy were Londoners looking for second homes with a few actually relocating. We have just bought a Motorhome, budgeted for sites and lots of cream teas. Having grown up in such a tourist filled area I get entirely about why they do not bring much to the local economy. I would have liked a home by the sea and could have bought one but realise how destructive they and how hated those owners are so this seemed a better option.

This is exactly what happens when second homers take over the pretty places. No community, no school, no post office, no shop so life becomes impossible for the locals who still live there and many can't afford to stay where they grew up.

We don't even own a first home. Maybe this will make it possible for us to return to DP's home village where we'd be able to provide care for his mother, father and aunt as they age instead of only being able to visit when one of them's in hospital - and then walking through a ghost village of empty homes and old shops now converted into Air BnBs and second homes because nobody lives in them for more than a few weeks in summer.

Is it really envy to want to go home?

Not really.

Very easy in fact.

Make it a max 6 month tax deduction (back to the original amount of CT) on your self assessment form once the property has been sold and the sale application submitted to the Land Registry. It can offset capital gains tax.

So the person would pay it until the sale and then reclaim when they pay CG.

well it will be interesting if they do it...

I agree. My son had to move cities for his first proper job after leaving Uni. It's both a Uni and tourist city and is an absolute nightmare to try to find anywhere to live. Some of his peers were living in hostels for the first few months which is way out of order for young professionals! Our son had to offer 10% over asking price and pay a years' rent in advance to get his first flat there - there were 10 people all wanting it so he had to do something to stand out - that was the only viewing he got after looking and chasing estate agents for six months!

Older people just don't realise how bad it is these days and just how much things have changed since their day.

I think it’s easy to assume second home owners are going to visit occasional weekends, in addition to their foreign holidays.
Those ones will almost certainly cough up the cash.

People who are borderline, having a ‘second home’ for a limited time due to circumstances, are the ones who won’t be able to manage it.

It’s only a specific personal circumstance, obviously. I was hoping to get on with retiring without making my kids homeless until they were ready to go.

Why would you think they give a second thought to a few grand a year?

A lot of second home owners leave their homes empty for huge swathed of the year. Our village feels like an eerie ghost town in the winter

Exactly, they wouldn't even notice as they'll have personal assistants who do mundane things like pay bills.

We have this too, we had no idea if we would be included as part of planning conditions our property cannot be used as a permanent home, it has to be empty for so many weeks of the year. We use it as a holiday home, but we mainly provided it for free to enable LAC children to have a holiday.

Cornwall doesnt really have an economy of its own that can sustain itself, like many/most areas of the country its propped up by London