I'm thinking about buying a holiday home!

ninky_2

i'd think about why you want a holiday home. if it is primarily for investment there may well be better investments around. will you use it enough to justify the cost and potential hassle (extra maintainence and bills, managing lets if you decide to rent it out when not using it). what do you plan for it longterm? retirement / leave in will to family member / sell it? how much time to you have for holidays and how many of them would you actually want to spend here year after year - would you be better just renting for the weeks you actually want?

that said me and my family have a place overseas and it is lovely to have - but we get the use because there are enough of us with a share in it plus it gets rented out (and i don't actually deal with that side of things myself - hurray!) it's also somewhere i'm happy to go back to time after time and actually want to relocate there for part of the year in future (being freelance means this is feasible).

morally i think i'd personally have a problem with owning a property that was only occupied for a couple of weeks a year.

matbe

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've a lot to say on that, but it's late and if I start I'll start being incoherent before long.

But here's a thought: there are proper holiday homes, built and operated as holiday homes, e.g. lodge/caravan parks. Then there are holiday homes, where houses and residential places are taken out of the local economy and hardly used. Locals then find there is nowhere to live/nowhere to rent... the few that are available to locals to rent are at sky high prices. So a lot of locals are literally living in illegally converted garages and even garden sheds. Many people are living 6 to a room in bunk beds too.

You can have holiday homes/lets without grabbing all the nice houses. But in some towns 75% of the homes are holiday homes/lets, left empty most of the year. This has meant that the villages etc have literally died as there aren't enough people to support local businesses. You can't run a bread shop based on a town being full for 10 weeks of the year and empty the rest, nor a garage, nor a small corner shop, even the pubs give up. A lot of holidaymakers arrive with their Waitrose shopping bags in the boot of their car, they eat out twice in a couple of posh restaurants (money going out of the county) and that's pretty much it except maybe an entry ticket to a tourist attraction.

Imagine if 3/4 of your neighbours within 1 mile all disappeared overnight - and all you got was a bunch of holidaymakers 3x a year. And if your council tax went up because all those holiday homes were now registered as businesses, and claiming the small business rates because that's cheaper than council tax. And then your local pub shut down, and the garage shut down, and the bread shop ... but you can now buy flipflops in 4 new shops. Then your friend wanted to buy close to you and found that prices had multiplied 4-5x in the past 5 years because London money also wanted the house your friend could have bought.

And finally, the school shut down because there weren't enough kids, even though it'd been open for 150 years and was one of the reasons you chose to live there... so now you have to find out not only where the next nearest school is, but work out how to get them there as it's in another town.

There's nothing wrong with holiday homes and holiday lets .... until that's all there is left. So they need really to be looked at more closely as a lot have simply been bought as tax avoidance vehicles and savings vehicles for the wealthy. They're not serving a purpose in a lot of instances, they just sit empty, without even council tax being collected.

Yes but if your only income is tourism youre screwed anyway?

Young people are moving out of the area and old people are moving in i looked up economy cornwall and the facts are there.

Its dying your only economic plus is tourism can you find anything else ?


Dont look to government to solve youre problems they usually make it worse.

Graham_Devon

I'm reckoning the OP doesn't really give two hoots about how holiday homes are affecting cornwall.

May do if it gets to the stage where his own holiday home is effected though.

Then it may be "wahhh, where are the locals to buy my house".

Sorry, wotsthat, but you didn't really come here for advice, or constructive debate, did you....thats obvious by the above post. You want a holiday home, dont like what others have to say against your thoughts...so go buy one.

I live near Cornwall, I see the news items on the TV about the problems with cornwalls holiday home ownership statistics. The problem is real, but very much confined to the more popular holiday home areas. The bubble will burst one day, and it's a bit like the wilsons, all the holiday homes confined to small areas.

ultrawomble

matbe wrote: »

Young people are moving out of the area and old people are moving in i looked up economy cornwall and the facts are there.

Hardly surprising when the average house price is in excess of 15 times the average wage. A significant proportion of people who can afford that level of disparity are from out of the county, typically who've sold up in the SE and are retiring to Cornwall. This ageing population brings the added burden of a greater drain on health services in a rural county.

PasturesNew

wotsthat wrote: »

If anyone was thinking about buying a property to occupy it for a couple of weeks a year they'd have a mental problem not a moral problem.

Quite a lot do. Having bought them, people just couldn't be bothered to use them - and while the prices were going up they kept them.

Even right now I am 2 doors from one that was bought 2 years ago and it's been used just about 6x since then.... and that's when it was new/exciting for them.

wotsthat wrote: »

I think you might be over-egging your point. There's no evidence that holiday home ownership is forcing locals to live like this let alone a lot of them.

I have personally known a lot of people that are living just like this. A lot. Lots of illegal HMOs and my neighbour even had 3 people living in his shed, sharing one extension lead... not a nice shed either. My neighbour had 24 people in his house at one point, fire brigade would turn up and chuck out those in the roof space, but they'd be back the next day. He charged £50/week to sleep in a room with 4-6 bunk beds.

wotsthat wrote: »

I can't think of a town where 75% of the homes are holiday homes.

Port Isaac. I'm sure there are others.

wotsthat wrote: »

Your references to Waitrose, posh restaurants and tourist attractions paints a picture of people popping down from London in the Range Rover with the public school kids in the back. I know a few people with holiday homes who are much more down to earth than you suggest, they spend plenty of money in petrol stations and pubs. They also participate in the local community. I'd also suggest that Tesco and ASDA have damaged corner shops much much more than holiday home ownership ever will.

In the past 10 years it has been the London lot driving a lot of it. Petrol stations and pubs don't maintain an economy/community when they're only using them a few weeks of the year.

wotsthat wrote: »

Cornwall CC give a discount of only 25% on their council tax for holiday homes. I'd argue that holiday home owners in Cornwall are actually putting more into public services than they take out. I could bung the cash in a pension and get 40% tax relief so how holiday homes are tax avoidance vehicles I fail to see.

Many don't pay council tax though - they converted to business rates so they paid less under the "small business" rates rules.

I can't explain the rest/tax as I'd end up writing a volume trying to explain what I mean. I am not good at some types of explaining. Others will put it more succinctly and into the correct words. My only clues are: capital gains, offsetting income against paid employment.

PasturesNew

Some figures here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579598/Cornwall-holiday-homes-outnumber-local-houses.html

Including:

Holiday homes now outnumber those owned by locals along the coast of north Cornwall, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In popular resorts such as Rock, Polzeath and Port Isaac, ownership of second homes has soared in recent years. Official figures show in a number of parishes, the proportion of properties owned by outsiders has climbed above 50 per cent.

a recent report for North Cornwall District Council showed there are now more holiday retreats than council homes.

But the figures, compiled by the Office for National Statistics, are based on council tax records and do not include holiday homeowners who register their properties for business rates.


Taking this into account the portion of second homes soars above 50 per cent. One local estate agent, Alex Roads of John Bray, said the true figure was around 60 per cent.

Blobby8_2

Just who is it that sold all the nice houses to the nasty rich people ? Wow it was the locals !
I cant afford to live in Cornwall or Devon, where I live is no where near as attractive, thats one reason why the house prices are low.
Employment in D&C is low paid and unemployment is high I hear, housing is expensive & no one likes the new neighbours, pack your gear and MOVE. There are plenty of jobs for well qualified hard working people even if they do have webbed feet.
Who knows you may be able to buy a house and live wherever you like - thats why people work hard - to improve their quality of life.

Graham_Devon

Sorry wotsnot, I did jump the gun a little, however, I really do have my own issues with your plans, having been priced out of my home town and seeing shops close down because they simply cannot survive. Business rates have gone up massively for the other shops, as they need funds to keep the town going, but can't get funds in the usual way that they used to.

Infact, up until recently, you couldn't actually do general shopping in the town. No corner shop could survive. Just not enough trade. It all turned into art galleries, candle / soap shops, and shops which simply close down for the winter. Strange thing is, next to one of many charity shops, you have a holiday home letting office, which has actually taken over a real shop in a prime location with high shopper footfall. Simply isn't the shoppers, as the holiday home owners have deserted the place.

They'll be back at christmas though, taking over all the car parking spaces, once again making it a nightmare for those who actually do live there, buying up their expensive all day passes, and leaving their cars in much needed parking spaces for the rest of the town all week while they enjoy their holiday homes for a week or two. Of course, using the proper facilitated out of town parking is just too much hassle for these people, so just tread over everyone else and buy up the passes which the council allow simply to get money. Makes it a nightmare for anyone trying to work or live there, but who really cares....it's certainly not the rows of nice cars with their passes on the dash sat there going no where all week.

My understanding from your post was you wish to buy up a house, use it occasionally as a holiday home and then in 10 years sell it on at a profit. Therefore actively taking part in pricing other out of their homes, actively taking part in the demise of local towns and jobs, and actively taking part in trying to profit from the situation when you have had enough, all in a part of the country that can't really take any more of all of this.

I realise you are just one of many, but thats the problem. The problem IS being looked into now though, at quite serious levels, and it's that I'd suggest you look into, as you could find yourself with an expensive asset, which suddenly, isn't quite as attractive an investment as you had hoped for....surrounded by many others, probably many trying to get out.

There isn't the money locally to buy these houses, and if the councils and lobbyists do get their way, there will be lots of people trying to sell up quick.

All I'm saying is, you are buying in to something where loads of others have bought in. It's ripe for problems if anything is done to try and get money out of these houses to allow for the localised areas to actually survive.

In my opinion, buying up housing stock to use as a holiday home, with the purpose of making a profit later on, is worse than BTL. At least with BTL it's still used as a much needed home.

Edit: By the way, if you think I'm vocally against it, wait until you meet one of those affected in cornwall. I've heard of cars being burnt out etc. Not sure how true, and don't condone it, but the feeling aint good.

Edit 2: Your specific location may be different, cornwalls a biggish place. Maybe where you are looking holiday home ownership isn't quite as intensified.

PasturesNew

Blobby8 wrote: »

Employment in D&C is low paid and unemployment is high I hear, housing is expensive & no one likes the new neighbours, pack your gear and MOVE. There are plenty of jobs for well qualified hard working people even if they do have webbed feet.

I'm trying to move, but can't work out where to. I am not what I'd call well qualified any more as my skills seem to be 10-a-penny, or jobs want people with degrees. Also, ageism exists, although you don't find that out until you're that age.

But I will be moving .... next month. Just no idea where.

PasturesNew

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Edit: By the way, if you think I'm vocally against it, wait until you meet one of those affected in cornwall. I've heard of cars being burnt out etc. Not sure how true, and don't condone it, but the feeling aint good.

I think you're thinking of France, or Wales. Burning of cars isn't something I've heard of down here. Too laid back mostly.