Is having a second home in this country ever justifiable?

[Zog]

Given the amount of houses that we are told needs to be built to keep up with demand? Are they a luxury that is becoming unsustainable, like cheap air travel?

you're right about the opposition to local homes cloudhopper

people buying a house in a rural area and then wanting the place to stay exactly like it was when they bought it for the next 50 years

I've met quite a few of those

but I've also met a lot of people who do all their shopping in Waitrose because they haven't actually checked to see if they can get what they need in the locality

and I mean Waitrose in their home town

I suppose it all comes down to time really. If they pick up the stuff they need in the weekly shop then it saves spending their one day off trekking round the local shops.

Mind you, I think there is room for tourists/incomers. It is the lack of affordable housing for local people that is the problem. Council housing has all but been sold off in desirable areas.

If anyone is interested, Clive Aslet of Copuntry Life magazine has the following suggestions:

Clive Aslet

I don't necessarily agree with his views, but I do think he raises some interesting points.

There are deserted villages in France which would be dead without incomers and also second homers. It is by no means a simple issue. We already charge CGT on sale of second homes so there is a tax burden you don't have on your first home for a start.

yes but Xenia capital gains tax isn't spent on services in the local area

council tax is

and it is especially needed in rural areas because the needs are different - one example is that waste collection costs more because of homes being spread out

Hate, hate HATE second homes in this country with barely enough space/accomodation for the people who live here.

I moved to the country when I was 19 to do a job I loved but which paid peanuts, as rural jobs tend to do. However, in the little village where I lived, a hefty proportion of the cottages were second homes, standing empty for a large amount of time. Every so often, you would notice a Range Rover parked in the drive of a house you thought was empty, and a thriving dinner party (catered for by bought-in M&S, no doubt) going on inside. I didn't know these people, neither did anyone else in the village, so I would cast no aspersions on their morals or their status. But I heartly object to the fact that, on the rare occasion a labourers cottage (or similar) came on the market, it would be snapped up for a vastly inflated price and then sit empty for ages. Our village housed a dairy farm, a stud farm and a racing stable which between them employed a fair few people, none of whom had the remotest chance of ever being able to afford to buy a house in that area - they all sold for 'London prices'. Once, a couple even bought 2 adjacent workers cottages, and knocked them into one 'weekend home', thus depriving the village of two homes for the sake of a bolthole. And those properties that did come on the market were usually the former home of a deceased person, whose family (living elsewhere) would sell it for a tidy sum, so the community did not benefit one little bit. Second home owners tend to bring all they need with them, so the local pub struggled (whilst they had their dinner parties at home) and ended up selling to a brewery, to become yet another soulless chain pub, the local town has all but shut down and little life left in the village. If you walked through on a wednesday evening in February you would think that there wasn't a soul in the world. I agree that taxing them to the hilt is the only fair solution. Cloudhopper explained it so explicitly.

BTW, this thread is about second homes, not incomers, necessarily. It's one thing to move lock, stock to the country, but quite another to buy a perfectly good house in a place where decent housing is at a premium and leave it standing empty for 48 weeks a year.

Cappucino - i can see why you feel strongly about this but if you as say incomers have a responsibility to think through their impact surely outgoers ( is that a word) also have a responsibility to think through their impact too? Why is it less acceptable for someone to buy a home somewhere they want to spend time, for whatever reason, than for someone to sell a home because they need the money to move elsewhere? Yes incomers should buy at the local shop - assuming it stocks what they want, is open when they need it. You can't have it all ways - market forces will win out, if locals don't provide services incomers need then they will inevitably shop with their 4x4s

(by the way all fair points re Dubai aviatrix. But doesn't mean its going to collapse (and tbh is half the picture given the investment in development of clean tech here these days).)

tax 'em more.

More mORE tax on second homes.

We could only have state ownership of property and then allocate homes to those who need them. So nationalise all land holding in the UK may be? That's never really worked very well. Some places regulate sales to outsiders I think. There are some Scottish I think or Channel Island areas where you only sell to someone everyone else approves (bit like New York apartment blocks who can keep out noisy nouveau pop stars I suppose). Or local councils could buy up all local houses that come on the market and let them out to locals only.

Never mind second home owners what about the elderly? You're trying to keep a village school open etc and yet everyone moving in full time is over 60 or anti hunting or something. perhaps we should only allow free movement of people who are approved by the locals.

xenia, you're being extreme now.

A proportion of housing should be state owned.

People can buy second homes if they want but they pay a whopping tax for the privilege.

Some villages will die out, schools will close with them and that's just how it is. We can live with that.

There.

meowmix "if locals don't provide services incomers need" - what? tbh a lot of the second homers don't even look; they see their home as a hotel room

and Grumpyoldhorsewoman's last post put it better than I ever could.

Xenia, although I suspect your remarks are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, you do make a valid point on some issues. Obviously, freedom of movement should always be paramount, but it is concerning, as a rural-dweller, when nearly everyone actually living in your village is elderly, or campaigning to get the tractors to stop driving up the lane before 7am, or writing poisonous anonymous letters to your DH telling him to 'stop his horses crapping on the road'. The countryside has every right to exist as the towns do, with schools that stay open, rather than closing because of falling attendance, thus forcing you into having to drive 7 miles to the next one (you have to drive because there is no public transport) and incomers who think of it more as 'Ye Olde Countryside theme park' rather than a working environment. Most rural people do not object to incomers, but they will object (as anyone would) to having their way of life pulled apart by people who have just arrived and think they have the right to change things to be just how they want it to be.

Sorry - haven't read all the posts but in reponse to the OP, I think that there is a difference between a second home that gets used by the owners a few weekends a year as well as maybe Christmas and Easter, and a second home that is rented out just about full-time for holidays/short-term lets as well as being an occassional bolt-hole for the owners. The first kills the local community, the second is a boost to the local economy and may provide at least temporary housing for a local family.

I agree that second homes are in general a bad thing. It is unfair that locals are being priced out of the market.

I do however rent holiday cottages in Wales and other places. For eg last year we went to Pembrokeshire, we ate out a lot, we visited many attractions run by locals and bought stuff there, we shopped locally for most things. How would the area survive without this sort of tourism? So much of it was geared up towards tourists, if everyone suddenly decided to stop renting cottage then the area would suffer again surely? The people we rented from lived on site. In fact I can't ever remember renting from someone who lived elsewhere.

The real answer to all this IMO is to introduce a system like they have in for eg Guernsey with a local market and an open market. In 2005 in Guernsey the average price of a house was £300,000 on the local market and over £900,000 on the open market (a lot of the discrepancy I should imagine comes from the fact that the incomers are usually wadded and moving for tax purposes so can afford big houses!)

How this could be effectively introduced in an United Kingdom I am not sure. Presumably in Scotland it would be easier as they have their own legal system but as Wales is lumped in with England it may be harder.

OrmIrian and CD I agree that there is a difference between a weekend retreat and a holiday home, as you rightly say. I class those of the 'holiday' variety in the tourism bracket, and they are beneficial to the community. People on holiday are actually using the area; the shops, the pubs, the restaurants etc. But the weekenders leave the house empty for the bulk of the year and seldom contribute to the local economy, and it is a dreadful waste when local housing or support for the community are so desperately needed.

ahh that's interesting aviatrix

Do you think it would ever be possible to introduce a dual market system somewhere like wales?

may i ask - supposing one rents.

they buy a seconf residence somewhere else int eh country.

as per cloudhoppers tax loop scenario - whould that still be applicable?

To be honest I think what has created the problem with second homes is simple.

1. Shortage of any new homes in desirable areas, because of bizarre planning laws and government intervention. In fact, partly because of campaigning by the CPRE, the government is fighting to keep as much housing as possible in "undesirable areas" like derelict industrial sites. Not the place for the argument here, but it illustrates why there is an increasing bottleneck of housing in nice places.

2. Increasing inequality of wealth, not only between the rich and poor, but between homeowners and non-homeowners. In the 'non-homeowners' you can place anyone who bought their home since prices doubled or trebled. I suppose it is "non-windfallers" who don't have significant equity propping up their wealth.

The combination of these two factors has led to a stranglehold on household growth in rural areas, and thereby forcing the non-rich and the non-windfall endowed to cheaper areas. This has happened to an extent not seen before.

X posted custardo.

I assume you could rent your town dwelling and still benefit from setting up your second home as a holiday home. The reason you can exploit the loophole is that your second home is held within a business 'shell' rather than as your possession.

I have done rather extensive research into planning and housing, but I am not a tax accountant, so anyone wanting to do this would be well advised to get professional advice rather than going by my anecdotal evidence!!!!

Interesting point, Custy. There would always be a loophole.

Cloudhopper, also interesting. The biggest wealth divide is, IMO, that between homeowners and non-homeowners. As I will forever be in the latter bracket despite now earning a decent salary (well, compared to what I used to earn!) it galls me to think that I have effectively been priced out of the property market in any of the areas where my job dictates I must live, and that even includes the arsehole of England where I currently reside. Sorry if I sound a bit chippy, but after 18 years of working and fast-approaching my forties it pisses me off a bit to think that I will always be at the mercy of shitty tied accomodation (and I mean leaky roof, dangerous wiring, damp, not to mention decor a la 1975) whilst a small 3-bed (little-bed) cottage in my village sells for £350,000

yeah. i was just thinking that i could afford somewhere up north. i cant afford fuck all here. so i can't leave a legacy to start my kids off on the property ladder. and i travle up there often becuase of an ailing grandparent and the logistics are complicated esp if my children want to come with. ok TMI. but i didn't know about tax loophole.