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?

I can imagine grumpyhorsewoman. I speak to people like you all the time. It is very very depressing. I am not in the same boat, but I have every sympathy with you.

I have only recently managed to detach my life aspirations from ever owning a decent home for my family in a nice place. Who knows, if it is still this bad in 10 years, I will probably emigrate.

I can't change the world, but I can at least change my path through it.

This is such a complex subject. Where would it all end? Turfing single people or couples out of large houses once all the kids have left because they don't need the space and families are the waiting list for more room?

Apparently that is what happens in Europe Joolstoo.

I suppose if there were a financial incentive to have an appropriate sized house, then maybe that is one option.

I know older people always used to downsize when they retired, because they didn't want the upkeep and maintenance of a bigger home, not to mention the fuel bills and council tax.

It sounds harsh, but is it worse than the million families waiting on a list for housing?

its what happens in high demand areas in social housing.

its not really ever your home. when the kids leave you can get turfed out into a one bed shithole.

Hey my parents have three houses in the UK - one in London, one in South East and one in Scotland.

I think it STINKS, they are never around for babysitting and I have to remember three telephone numbers. But it has its advantages as I type it I am sitting in one of their houses which I have temporarily moved in whilst our floors are sanded and they are not here

But no they do not need three houses and particularly the one in Scotland is in a village where locals are being priced out of the market.

My dad had a holiday home on the isle of Mull until about 3 years ago. We all used it for about 5/6 weeks a year but the rest of the time it was rented for holidays and for quite a few years they rented it out for 7 months winter lets. All together it was probably only empty for about a month a year. When he finally sold it he informed the agent that he would accept an offer 20k lower from a local person than an incomer. He did sell it to a local in the end. Still wish he hadn't sold it at all though.

But the other side of the coin is Exmoor - you can drive round a place like Dulverton in the winter and half the houses are dark and empty. Crazy.

The question is, if you have a second home in the country, does that justify you driving a 4x4 in town?

I had a holiday in the Lake District recently (in a hotel!) and thought that the number of houses standing empty was very sad. They all seemed to have adverts on the gates for renting out, or postcards or brochures for people to take. I guess a number of those houses are lived in for a quite a few weeks of the year but I wonder who actually owns them?

I don't like the idea of stopping people from spending money on what they want but I also dislike the idea of some people have two homes when others have none.

A very good friend startled me last year when she bought a holiday home. It will be used a fair bit in summer but I'm facing a moral dilemma as to whether I should go to stay with her (assuming I'm asked, of course!) when I feel unease at the thought of second homes.

For some reason this thread puts me in mind of the hilarious episode of orange faced Kilroy I had the misfortune of seeing. There was an audience made up of bigots complaining about foreigners stealing their jobs, houses ect. And to illustrate her point one bigot said that and I quote 'I was on the housing list for so long that in the end I had to buy my own house'. She fully believed that she was entitled to a cheap house from the state even though she could afford to buy her own. I was ed

I was being very tongue in cheek actually as I believe in free markets. There are lots of different issues from the men living in London in the week so they can ease their opoortunities to sleep with their mistress whilst their wife is packed away safely in the country with the children , to the families who split their existence between town and country every week and commute down a motorway every Friday night; from those who rent a country place which is I think increasingly done to those who buy to let.

But I think we're doing the right thing in in filling in cities which is where most demand for housing is anyway and surely most people today have hugely better housing than in say the 1880s, 1920s or even 1960s.

Ah, inequality, jealousy etc

Surely it's only when we manage genetically to engineer that we are all clones will be have true equality. Until then some will be prettier, taller, cleverer and kinder etc than others. With genetic engineering you can't achieve equality other than equality of opportunity and even then those with particular difficulties cannot take up those opportunities

Well yes, some feelings of inequality are touched by jealousy. But there really are deeper feelings at play, feelings of consideration and community, a feeling of the threaded grace on which our lives depend.

And I don't care it if's outmoded and naive.

But I thought the countryside was more socially divided than town life, with more social divisions and inequalities than you get in our cosmopolitan cities and that always there you would have the richer country houses where people come and go, the empty cottages on estates and the like, riddled with inequities and lots of poverty and a history of people coming and going and moving around depending on the issues of the day from villages emptied by the black death to the effect of the clearances etc.

Xenia, I don't see why it isn't understandable that young people and non-homeowners feel a sense of discontent when opportunities offered to every recent generation are denied to them.

It is only 5 years since an ordinary person could aspire to live in a decent home. That has changed radically, and in some areas seems to be a permanent change.

I don't think it is jealousy that even someone in the top 10% of incomes would question why in the current market they would struggle to buy an average home.

I don't think that questioning the huge transfer of wealth away from younger families towards older people, just by virtue of the overheating housing market is envy.

Bad luck, yes. Envy, yes in a way - but the rich don't need any help keeping their way of life. It's the people with fewer options that need to lobby for some kind of change.

yeah, no country idyll - maybe we're talking at cross purposes. I wasn't just talking country.

We have the luxury of a home in the country because we are in the fortunate position of being able to afford it -

and would you be against a big hefty tax on second homes, coolmama?

We already pay a hefty income tax bill, a full council tax bill and all the other local taxes that are incurred, but if the need for more tax could be justified, then yes, we would pay for the luxury of having a second home (which BTW I understand is a luxury and not a right)

sorry - should have added that yes, would pay the tax, but I don't really see why we should have to.

Could people not move to areas where housing is cheaper though? There is street after street of houses available in the North East with cheap houses. People have always moved due to market forces whether it's the potato famine or the need to move where the jobs are. it's just how this planet has operated ever since we emerged as hunter gatherers. No one has a God given right to live in the prettiest villages in England just because their grandparents did.