Talk to me about second homes...

[wonderingwondering]

We're considering buying a second home in the UK, to use for holidays, weekends. We've a location in mind - good access from where we live by plane/train, close to DH's extended family. What are the pros and cons?

We live in London (central is necessary for DH's work) but are looking for a weekend place with countryside nearby. I don't work so would envisage spending school holidays there with DH commuting for the weekends.

We can afford to move from our current house, but are thinking we'd rather stay put (our current home is adequate for our needs and good location/schools) so we thought a second home in a greener, more peaceful location might be a better investment (financially and in terms of lifestyle) than upgrading our current house.

Any thoughts?

[wonderingwondering]

Thanks - the link looks great LaurieScary, but we'd need to be east-ish of London,but something like that in the right location would be ideal. South Coast would probably work, too, Hastings is reachable for us (but not sure about the rail link?).

I do drive, but we'd need a decent rail link from Central London for DH to commute.

[LaurieScaryCake]

beautiful cottage in lovely village of Battle to rent

[LaurieScaryCake]

lovely barn conversion with views over the Sussex weald

[wonderingwondering]

Laurie, those links don't work, but thanks for making suggestions - are they specifically holiday homes? I'll have a look on rightmove but not sure how/where to search for the right sort of property.

[miumiu]

[hellsbelles]

Wondering - another thought - if you are going to be there alone with DS for some time then it is also worth thinking about how you feel if somewhere is quite cut off.

The idea of a beautiful remote cottage sounds wonderful - but I suspect being there on your own in the middle of winter when it's pitch black outside might be a bit scary if you are used to have neighbours around in London.

[wonderingwondering]

Sorry miumiu - it is helpful to have experience from others. I like the idea of being able to drive/rail to a place for the weekend, but within an hour or two of London is very pricey.

[wonderingwondering]

Yes, we were looking for a street or collection of houses, as I may be there on my own.

Am off out now but will check back later. Thanks all.

[GrendelsMum]

I definitely agree that you should try renting, first, to see how much use you get from it. I guess you're trying to balance a lot of family needs in quite a pressured environment, and it may be that having a second property to look after is actually more of a hassle than it is relaxing.

Have you thought about getting a flat rather than a house, to cut down on some of the security and maintenance hassles? And have you thought about going for an upmarket seaside town rather than the country? I wondered about Whitstable, or Aldeburgh except that you can't go by train. I think a town might be more fun for you and DS as he gets older, have more facilities, and be more suitable to second home ownership?

I wouldn't buy a second home in Cambridgeshire, to be honest,despite the easy commute to London - its very expensive (because a lot of people are commuting to London) and the countryside is dull as ditchwater. I think that with a budget of £200k, your options would be very limited.

[Stillsquaffingthesteamingblood]

Whitstable is 75 mins from Victoria or Cannon Street. Station right in middle of town.

Which is why it is full of second-homers and known by the locals as Islington-on-Sea

FWIW before the Londoners discovered it, it was a fairly shitty run-down town with no businesses (I grew up nearby - it was where we went if we wanted to indulge in underage drinking) and the second-homers have totally re-generated the area and helped local businesses/restaurants no end. You may find the odd local complaining about the Range Rover brigade at the weekends, but you don't find many of the town's employed people having a whinge....

[EldonAve]

I agree with GrendelsMum - don't bother with Cambridge
Too dull and too expensive plus the M11 is awful

[Anifrangapani]

You miss the point with why people in rural communities are unable to stay due to high house prices - if an area is popular with 2nd homers the house prices go up. In our area wages start at around 9K for a full time admin job and managers get around 25K. A house which may have a resonable asking price to someone paid London wages is well out of the range of someone working locally. The "resonably priced" house to you may be 200K but to us that is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore houses used for weekend homes are excluded from the long term rental market driving up local rents as well.

We don't have the option of building more houses as we are located in the Peak Park where new build is very very restricted by planning rules and further restricted by geography.

By being priced out of our local market our schools are in danger of shutting, local shops are struggling, complaints put into our planning office (in the main by the red sock and 2nd homer brigades)have forced the closure of a local factory and a 2nd factory will most likely remain closed after a fire with the loss of 40 jobs.

If you wish to have a better quality of life why don't you look to move to a rural area permanently - you will be welcomed as a full member of the community.

[miumiu]

Anifrangipani - the house we are buying is reasonably priced because it is well under the normal price range for the area because it has just been left, midwork, to fester.

My dh has his own business and could not just upsticks and move to the countryside, and an hours commute either way would benefit neither the environment or the long hours he already works.

My children will do local activities there, we will shop there, use local labour for the building work and hope to make friends with our new, farflung neighbours; what is there to criticise?

[HerHonesty]

also wanted to say, i know several of my parents generation who did similar. inevitably either man or wife had storng preference for town/country, and ended up spending more time alone in one or other of the properties. oh and a few broken marriages along the way. sorry to be blunt.

also op i would argue that your pay rises have clearly dented your sense of responsibility - poster after poster have expressed their distaste for second homes on the basis of what it does to rural communities, but you seem to think you will be somehow immune to this, or do it differently from everyone else. If you are gong to do this, at least be honest to yourself about the impact you will have.

[miumiu]

hh - what negative impact will we have?

The house is in the middle of nowhere - the village schools are full but the senior schools are all an hour away _ either where we live now or in equidistant towns.

We are buying an empty house that no one else is fighting for.

The locals are all either farmers or tradesmen and the tradesmen seem to be doing ok - going by how long it is before they will be free to do anything as menial as replace a shower.

There are miserable bastards in every village. There are those who never use local shops but always use tescos, those that choose to live in A but educate their children in B or work in C.

Surely in times of financial crisis, a bought, used, loved house is better than an empty one and a bankrupt ex-owner?

[shonaspurtle]

If you're thinking of what it might be like just you and your dc on a winters night, spare a thought for my 91 yr old grandmother who'll be the only human being in many miles tonight, as most nights, because in her small community of 4 houses the other three have sold for holiday homes in the last few years as the other elderly people, who were her friends and neighbours for decades, died.

She was appalled at the prices they reached. None of the many young couples living with parents in the area could have afforded them.

Never mind. Her new occasional neighbours at least have someone to organise their gardeners and take in parcels for them

A purpose-built holiday site seems the most ethical option and will be creating jobs in the local area.

[Anifrangapani]

If the "normal price range" is inflated beyond the means of local people by people comming into an area who can afford the higher prices because of their higher wages it cannot be bought by those people who live there who have lower wages. House prices are set by who has the funds. If your house had been resonably priced for a local persons borrowing maximum I am sure it would have been bought by a local person.

Your children will not be using the local school - and falling rolls leading to mixed age group teaching is common. This is thought to contribute to increassed teacher stress and poorer teaching standards.

When you have people complain about local businesses or the building of new housing stock to the planning department because it will deminish the value of their home - and the majority list their address out of an an area it is galling. In many areas house price devalutation is not a material consideration in planning, unfortunately because we are in a National Park it is.

We have a very local issue here at the moment because a 2nd homer has applied to have a permissive ( for the last 247 years) footpath closed. It is the path that half of the school children use to get to school. Their alternative is to cross a busy carrige way. His legal team was better than the one we were assigned, so it looks as if due to a lack of funds it will be closed. Not all people with weekend homes are such twunts.

When the 2nd homers retire to the village (and many do) we end up having a much larger aging population to working population ratio than is the national standards - putting strain on Elderly People Services such as the Aids and Adaptaions budgets, NHS and Community Nursing. These are paid out of our much higher than national average Council Tax Bills, putting further strain on limited family budgets.

I applaud you for using local labour and amenities and wished more people here did that. It saddens me to see so many people here roll up with bags of food bought at Waitrose or Sainsburys as our nearest is 17 miles away.

I am not saying that all 2nd homers are bad - some contribute a great deal to the local communities, however many people when buying their weekend home do not realise the the issues that are caused by part time occupation of a property. If they were more cluded up and made a more active decision to participate in the local community then there would be less friction.

[miumiu]

SS - the house we are buying has been empty for years now. Neighbours 2/3rds of the time is better than no neighburs at all, and no, no gardeners or parcel-takers necessary here.

I have to say though, is one of the first things I thought when I saw the house was its isolation - how difficult it must be to live somewhere and be totally cut off, especially if there is no car or public transport locally. I feel for your grandmother, it must be terrible to feel isolated.

[Anifrangapani]

SS's grandmother is not alone - it is a picture mirrored in many rural communities.

[miumiu]

Where I live, no one wants a house in the sticks (perhaps for the same reasons that SS's grandmother is feeling isolated, because it is difficult to live with nothing and no one close by). The local village houses were far more expensive and the local village schools were full - the estate agent was a local and was talking about the schools and local amenities.

[shonaspurtle]

It's a hard one miumiu, but on the other hand from her chair she can watch red squirrels raiding the birdfeeders and the constant change of the loch across the single track road.

I do have sympathy with wanting to get away. We had that growing up because we went to stay with my grandma! They are very precious memories.

Your purchase is a very different prospect from the ones beside her. These were nice 2 bed cottages which would have been perfect for couples starting out and working in local businesses.

[Anifrangapani]

An estate agent will always talk up an area - I used to be one.... of course it is not going to damage a community. It is great to have so many new faces in a village. With one eye on the commission so they can pay their mortgage and feed their kids. I have been there and done that. Not my proudest moment.

Many people in rural areas love to live in isolated houses, but cannot afford it. Your vendor will have paid a price below which he could not accept - hence the house standing empty for years beacause the only people who could afford it would have had to come in from an area where wages are higher. I saw it all the time. Yes I feel for those individuals who paid over the local wage ceiling, but it is not a healthy thing for a community as a whole.

[miumiu]

No, my vendor is greedy and rather foolish - he had the house on the market to make a killing, took out a bridging loan on a new build and then could not afford to do anything with the first house as no one was interested......The house stood empty and there is now damp on one wall, a frog ridden pond for a pool and an flooded cellar. Two days after he accepted our offer he renaged and said he would take the pool out (!!!) it is frigging built in, underground, unless we upped the price by 5K.

He is local who has moved to a seaside town, btw.

The estate agent was not selling up - we had already signed contracts and were asking about what was available in the holidays for children.