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

@VickyGervais At what age did you start letting DC stay at your main home or go to your second home without you? DS is always talking about this but is too young at the moment.

We started leaving him at our main home when he was 16 and then he stayed at our second home for couple of nights at 16, after GCSEs with friends to celebrate and we built up from there. By 17 he was spending a couple of weeks at our second home with friends in the holidays. We were a bit nervous at first but he’s always been pretty sensible and we’ve never had any problems. He’s 18 now so he obviously comes and goes as he pleases.

@VickyGervais That is very helpful, thank you.

@Testina and @dolphinsarentcommon why should we help second home owners? They are never there for us. If my car breaks down, they don't offer us a lift to the garage, they are on holiday. If I need someone to watch a toddler while I rush to hospital with a baby, the second home owners can't be relied on to pick up the phone and rush around.
After the storm, they didn't help us sort out the tree down along the track. 'grateful thanks' doesn't work together.
So stop moaning about communities not wanting to welcome and run around after visitors. We don't owe you anything. We don't know you.
Both my kids work part time in cafes and restaurants, the local customers tend to be better behaved because someone who knows them will spot them if they kick off. The visitors are entitled and for every £1 they spend in a local small business, they've spent £25 in a major supermarket.

Just a heads up to those letting teens holiday in remote places, we've helped out two lots last year, I doubt their parents ever found out.

What a sad world we would live in if we only help to be helped in return.

Second home owners, air bnb and rich Londoners have made the little market town that I live in unaffordable for most locals.

Where I am in London, every single community apart from those based around social housing blocks (now too costly for right to buy) has been replaced by people buying developer shoe box hotel rooms over the last 30 or so years. Their owners don't live in them. Nobody cared and nobody cares. Where do you think displaced people go? It's like people saying their town centres have become crime-infested wastelands when they themselves have been shopping out of town and online for years and are the direct cause.

Market forces are the result of what individuals choose to do. By all means wallow in denial and blame it on Londoners and furriners, however nobody forced anyone to sell out to these furriners rather than to locals, so we get the world we deserve.

We have always helped anyone who is obviously in need or who asks. What sort of people wouldn't? Even on holiday when local people break down, we have always offered and provided help. They're human beings, not transactional robots. Of course there are bad people everywhere, but being dragged down to their level is surely for losers?

We have a couple of friends that live 10 minutes away, so my son would go to them or call us if he needed help. He won’t have bothered you. 🙃 My son has dealt with various issues from an injured animal on our land to a flood in part of our property. He also helped an elderly local when her electricity tripped.

I think our old second home neighbours would describe us as friends because we did help out their teens, keep an eye on their house, mow the verge to their gate (seemed petty to not do it while we did ours) .

But they have sold up, I have their mobile number and their old main home address but the favours were all one way.

Ancedotaly, a few of us full time locals have said we're doing more than ever in the community but certainly hardening towards second home owners and buy to let owners asking us to 'keep an eye' on their assets.

It will be interesting to see how socially acceptable the idea of second homes will be in different circles. Obviously the OP flagging it suggests an awareness that wasn't there in the past.

Where my mum lives, a tiny fishing village, is now being colonised by rich second home owners.

i can’t really blame those selling for accepting twice the market value of the property, capitalism innit - but the reality is now that locals starting out cannot afford to live there when they leave their parent’s homes. It’s quite traditional still so those who don’t leave for university tend to only move out when they get married. Local rentals are mostly now air B&b, this means the local shops, hotel etc are losing the local staff who are having to move further away and get jobs further away. It’s too costly to commute to work rurally so they get jobs in the bigger towns and cities. There’s nothing to keep them living in the area they’ve grown up. Without the staff businesses are struggling and when supermarkets are doing online ordered weekly deliveries for second homers the local independent retailers aren’t getting the necessary business.

Is it fair that rural youth/young people have to change how and where they live because relatives of recently deceased are looking for mega bucks from second-homers and weekend goodlifers? I don’t think it is. It’s perfectly legal and understandable they want as much money as they can get but I think it’s sad that traditional communities are being lost to people with more money than and less respect for local communities.

Yes I hear you. If they are always being used they are less toxic, but there are far too many of them and it’s heartbreaking to see what has happened to parts of the west country.

@CollieChaos “So stop moaning about communities not wanting to welcome and run around after visitors. We don't owe you anything. We don't know you.”

Hey! I didn’t say you should! I’m Cornish, living up long for many years, no second home - I’ve seen them devastate communities (though I’m from a shitty town council estate that has no key boxes outside 😉). I’m with you!

Only said that I didn’t understand your post and asked why you were hardening hearts now. You said that you’d helped after a storm with grateful thanks received. Which doesn’t really fit with decided not to help any more. That would fit more with helping all the time and no thanks. I was asking why the sea change. Not why you don’t want to help - I’m with you!

If you’re wealthy enough to afford a second house, you’re wealthy enough to put some of your money into the local community by paying someone there to make a regular check. I still don’t like communities being decimated - but at least put some money back in if you do!

Is fairness something that applies only to the west country? Is it fair that in the space of less than 30 years, not a single community in central London apart from those in social housing has been displaced? Ditto many other locations seen as "desirable". None of these displaced people will ever return except as commuters. What's worse, never returning or always returning and never belonging? Nobody cared then and nobody cares now. Even the media can't be asked because there are no pictures of lovely countryside to print, only completely decimated inner city communities replaced by shiny "hotel" blocks of deposit boxes

There will always be bad neighbours, there's no excuse for self centred entitlement, but that isn't due to them not being resident, just being bad. Why do you feel you have to engage with them? We know people who have been non resident full time for decades even generations, eg when farms pass down the family, and none of these people are seen as burdensome in any way because they have a reciprocal relationship and boundaries. Why don't they say pay you for services they require, which you could decline and they can pay someone else to manage their property?

Sorry @Testina wasn't paying enough attention.

COVID changed things, the full-time community pulled together. People like Kirsty Allsop writing newspaper columns about travelling to second homes with her COVID partner did a major dis service.

The growth of Air BNB in areas full of full-time families, it's not the just the understandable chocolate Box, outdated cottages, it's now normal three bed semis near schools. A group on holiday works at different pace to those in work and school.

The complete lack of 'normal' homes to rent or buy at decent multiples of local wages. Whilst empty houses are sat there.

Obviously these factors apply across the UK, empty investment flats in London, beds in sheds in the suburbs, student housing crowding out long-term residents.

We should be having a national conversation about how we can first make the UK housing better for all of us, all of the time, not just some people's weekends and holidays.

Lots of local homes are changing ownership or use patterns at the moment. Our local discussion was about will we provide the same level of support to new owners as we have to old ones in the past and people said no.

Most of us don't work in tourism, we don't necessarily want a minimum wage for odd jobs, we'd rather have full-time neighbours. We don't want to go through the petty thought process of I'm only mowing to that point unless they pay me or they don't pay me to call when cows are in their garden.

We do get thanks and the odd bottle of wine but it's a empty compared with my long term neighbours who've watched the kids grow up, lent and borrowed stuff, shared a beer after the tree clearing.

And the key safes are even in Camborne, my sil's sister has the first second home in a cal de sac of bungalows.!!! No where is safe.

Really interesting to hear all the different perspectives on this. I do feel very strongly that it’s wrong that people are priced out of the area they grew up in as it’s happened to friends & relatives of mine here in London too. Not a chance they can buy anywhere near here sadly. The problem here is also due to second homes (but where the main property is overseas rather than in the UK) and foreign investment increasing the demand for housing which pushes the prices up. Though obviously it doesn’t devastate the community in the same way as in the countryside given that London is already so densely populated.

Property prices should be more controlled so that they aren’t just tools for investment - whether that’s by taxing second homes and holiday lets a lot more or giving long term tenants more security.

The house I’m thinking of buying has been a second home for a long time - 40+ years so it’s not a new property being taken off the local housing market. And given the location/price/type of property, it’s very likely it would just be bought by another second home owner. By not buying it, I’d be demonstrating my own personal misgivings about second homes and their effect on the local community but it would make absolutely zero difference to the status quo. I could ask my in-laws to try to sell it to a local family at a cheaper price (doubt I’ll manage that!!) - but who’s to say the new buyers wouldn’t then sell it and cash in on the discount. Really this is an issue that only government legislation has any hope of resolving.

Camborne?! Christ alive. Although, it always had the best chippy. Outing myself to anyone who actually knows me, I lost my virginity in Camborne… and not because we’d chosen a special chocolate box property in which to do it 😭

I agree with you that conversation is needed. I’d like to understand more about how the Jersey local sales restriction works and what could be learned and applied from that.

As far as I'm aware the Fogles made the full move to the countryside, I follow Marina's instagram... I could be wrong maybe their dc are still in school in London but I get the impression they have moved. They seem like a very outdoorsy family so I'm sure the move suited the lifestyle..

I'd rather spend that money on travel and being catered for in a hotel.

Time off, the last thing I want to do is clean and organise another house!!

@Reinventingat40
Yes maybe the Fogles are now fulltime in the countryside - as I said upthread it was a friend who told me their kids were still in school in London - quite possible she’s mistaken.
And even if it were a second home, it sounds very well used and not lying empty for weeks on end by any means - surely that’s ok?

I suppose what I’m trying to get at specifically is whether people with children in school and working in London during the week can really make enough use of a second home without it being a complete stressy nightmare!! And, after reading all the many very helpful replies here, I think the answer is probably a no for my family.

I really dislike staying in hotels, so a second home is much nicer for me. Cleaning and organising doesn’t take up that much time and is definitely worth it to us.
We always made lots of use of our second home even when the kids were younger, we have always found it the total opposite of a stressy nightmare.

‘for every £1 they [second home owners] spend in a local small business, they've spent £25 in a major supermarket’

surely that’s just similar to locals and other (tourist) visitors?

And it’s hardly as though the supermarket doesn’t employ locals.

We have holiday home in France. Before Covid I spent 6 weeks summer holidays with DC. DH came for 2 weeks, went home to work for 2 weeks then came back for final 2 weeks. In weeks 3 and 4 my sister and niece came to stay with us. We used to pop across at Easter too. Since Covid we have not been once. Wondering about going this summer. Several family and friends have borrowed it though and even my cleaner went for a week.

You have to pay at 2nd home stamp duty at it value not the purchase price. Something to be aware of if they are giving you a big price reduction. They will also have to pay capital gains. Again at the actual value