How do people find the time to use a second home?

[LivesinLondon2000]

So DHs parents have a second home in the Cotswolds which they no longer use as they are getting elderly and don’t like travelling anymore. They want to sell to free up the money and would like us to buy it. We could potentially just about afford it but just wonder realistically how often we would use it.
We work in London Monday -Friday, our DC are at school here and have loads of sports/social things most weekends and would be very reluctant to come with us I think.
But yet I hear of so many people - both friends and celebs/people on Instagram - who pack up every Friday night after school and head to their second home in the countryside. They make it sound so idyllic (e.g. Marina Fogle’s second home in Oxfordshire where her kids have ponies etc but live in London during the week for school).
How on Earth do people with kids enjoy this or make it work?
I just keep thinking of maintenance on another house (can’t even manage one 😂) and whinging kids who don’t want to come and also the terrible traffic on a Friday night and Sunday evenings.
And that’s before we even get into the ethics of having a second home

@SD25 you presume wrong. We're retired so we are constantly backwards and forwards, with other holidays in between. Family and friends use it but no we don't Airbnb, partly out of respect for the neighbours.

Our biggest challenge is rubbish - and being in the right place for the emptying of the right bin. The timetables of both locations are hard to keep up with.

I totally understand the anger when second homes price locals out of the community. Sadly being priced out of living where you grew up happens here in London too. DHs’ siblings can’t afford to buy in the area of London they grew up in (zone 3 so not the super posh central areas) either and live quite far out with very long commutes into work every day.
Quite a few houses on our street in London are owned by people from outside the UK and were bought purely as investments. They are at least mostly rented out though and not empty all year. I do think it’s wrong to have a second home you never use - hence all the deliberation on my part as to whether to go ahead with the purchase! Whether it’s wrong to own a second home as an investment that you rent out full-time is another thing though - there is always a genuine need for some holiday rentals/long term rentals etc. I think the solution is probably to control the rental market better, make rents affordable for families etc - the way it is in lots of parts of Europe where tenants do often rent long term but rents are better linked to earnings and generally affordable.

Sorry - getting off my main point! Reading all these responses, it does seem that only the quite wealthy or semi-retired can make the best use of a second home (well one that’s not a caravan or similarly low maintenance anyway). And I agree that even if you have the money it’s not always that easy to find reliable cleaners/housekeepers either.

it does seem that only the quite wealthy or semi-retired can make the best use of a second home (well one that’s not a caravan or similarly low maintenance anyway)

Slightly off the point, but if it's a static caravan in a rented spot in a caravan park, they too can require a lot of maintenance/head-space too, as well as being a money pit. CP owners tend to be quite dictatorial as to what they will and won't allow, with extremely strict rules and their hands out for more money wherever possible.

If you could find a nice farmer willing to let you pay a fair rent to leave your van in a corner of their field and then let you get on with your life, using it whenever you want, just remembering to close the gate behind you, it would be different; but there aren't too many opportunities like that out there.

You have no fucking clue.

Wow dolphins. What a hero.

Of course I do. Pricing out people with your attitude to outsiders is no bad thing. It’s right and proper.

We have a cabin on a lake that we bought from my SIL a few months ago, so we are gearing up for our first summer. It's a 3-hour drive from our home in the city and due to flexible work schedules in the summer we are able to drive up Thursday evening and stay until Sunday. Our kids do their activities in the week mainly, and we tend to travel on holiday more in the spring and autumn so summer is a good time for us to use our bolthole.

Will be get enough use out if it to justify the expense? Honestly I don't know. Ask me in 12 months. It's a lovely lakeside property with gazebo, pontoon boat, etc. so it won't be hard to sell if we need to.

That sounds similar to our setup. We were also fortunate to buy from family so we got it fully furnished, down to the pillow cases and cheese grater!

This sounds like the in laws seeking to have their cake and eat it: get cash from the sale (at the expense of their family) and keep the property ‘in the family’.

high costs and few benefits in it for you. DH pleasing his family and not feeling guilty are not benefits.

If you can afford and would like to own a second home solely for your own use, or splash cash on leisure and travel, there will be many much better options!

I think they're great if they're near enough to get to on an impulse, or for just a day or two. Ours (shared family holiday house) is a long haul flight away and costs a lot to get there so we only make it every other year or so. I'd love to have something closer.

I think it can work when kids are of primary age
After that they want to stay close to home or host friends - which may mean you need a larger property
It's very dull doing DIY/gardening/fixing stuff on every visit

Hope you love it @alanabennett I can't wait for summer to start ( although I'm the only person who will still need to travel to the city)

Thank you! I'm in the Midwest so our summers are short. Need to make the most of them!

Snap!!

My parents had a second home when we were small children and we used it all the time. It was in Whitby. However it was only 90 mins drive from home so we could nip over after school, we didn't really have weekend activités to miss and the house already had all our stuff in it so no packing needed.

I have very fond memories of it and our trips there. Whatever people's feelings about second homes (and I do understand them), for me it was a very positive experience.

I agree, with PP’s, depends what stage of life you are at, to get the most out of a second home, pre kids we had a static caravan on a very small private site, located rurally. We loved it there every weekend. Kept stuff there so it wasn’t an effort to go. When babies started to arrive, much easier to be at home. Now we are again buying a second home, a cottage near to the sea. We live in a city, which we love, so having two different options will be great, kids grown up, I doubt they will be bothered or want to come with us. We intend to rent it out at peak times. Happy days.

We're coastal Cornwall, but not dominated by tourism. Most of us run our businesses, WFH or I travel for project work.

Talking to friends and there's certainly been a sea change. Nearby Holiday homes have changed hands recently and a few of us have decided to harden our hearts so my teens will not be mowing their lawns and we won't be taking in deliveries or holding keys. After Storm Eustice we had phone calls, propped up sheds, retrieved bins and emptied freezers for grateful thanks and a house not available to people who want to live next to us full time.
Not anymore.

Personally I love ,

Personally I love seeing different places, views, kitchens, cafes, etc

That needn’t be an issue at all though, if you can afford a second home, you can afford a second toothbrush 😏

I don’t understand this. People were grateful after an unusual event. Why does that change your willingness to help?
Were you previously accepting your teens not getting paid for mowing? That’s taking the piss!

We have a second home and use it a lot. When the kids were younger, we just made sure the kids did their activities after school, not on weekends so weekends were mostly free.

Now they’re older, sometimes our oldest child stays at our main home whilst we go to our second home or he’ll use our second home with friends on weekends when we’re not using it. Our kids have always enjoyed it and have never moaned about going.

I know there’s some people that don’t like others having second homes but we’ve never had an issue with the locals and it’s better for the planet than flying all over the world. You can’t please everyone.

Typical lovely Cornish attitudes

We have clothes and toiletries at each home so very little packing required.

Second home owners, air bnb and rich Londoners have made the little market town that I live in unaffordable for most locals. Your standard family home that would cost £300k in a town elsewhere in the region that hasn’t yet caught on with the London ya ya brigade costs over £600k. I’m lucky that we bought before our town was published as one of the most desirable places to live by the likes of Muddy Stilettos and The Guardian.

They are all into veganism, free-range and ethical clothing etc. but in reality they are directly contributing towards the gentrification of rural towns and villages and making it impossible for local people to buy or even to afford to rent anything here.

They probably vote Green/ Lib Dem/ Labour but in reality they may as well vote Tory because they aren’t any better. Completely deluded to how hard life is for people on the other end of the scale. Second home ownership is pure and utter greed and should be heavily taxed. I hope that when the Tory party get voted out at the next Election (which they will) Labour will address this issue because it cannot be allowed to continue.