The true cost of second homes, and air BnB

[mudsticks]

In many popular holiday areas, local people are being priced out of housing, by holiday lets, and well off incomers buying up property for retirement or as second homes.



It's always been a problem, now it looks set to get even worse..



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...tion-summer-locals-fear-a-winter-of-evictions



Where are 'ordinary' people, who are already part of the community supposed to live now??

 

[newfhouse]

I don’t think it is helpful to conflate retirement with second homes or the change from secure tenancies to Airbnb. Special pleading? Maybe - you decide.

Filthy capitalist that I am, my retirement plan is to sell our home in London and buy somewhere smaller in a cheaper part of the country within easier reach of our daughter and her family.

I suppose that our purchase may momentarily distort the local market but I’m not sure how you could easily prohibit such moves, even if desirable. We will be exchanging one home for another, plus some cash which over a period will be spent in our new local economy. I will be also be leaving a well paid job vacancy for someone who wants to live in or commute to London.

 

[Bromptonaut]

I don’t think it is helpful to conflate retirement with second homes or the change from secure tenancies to Airbnb. Special pleading? Maybe - you decide.

They absolutely can be conflated.

Buying a house in (say) Northamptonshire because it's cheaper than London is one thing but even here commuter etc money has moved ordinary estate homes further from the reach of local first time buyers.

Areas with serious tourist/weekend or holiday home buyers are another thing altogether.

 

[newfhouse]

They absolutely can be conflated.

Buying a house in (say) Northamptonshire because it's cheaper than London is one thing but even here commuter etc money has moved ordinary estate homes further from the reach of local first time buyers.

Areas with serious tourist/weekend or holiday home buyers are another thing altogether.

In an ideal world there wouldn’t be the sometimes huge disparity between London/SE and elsewhere, and our cash surplus would rely solely on the downsizing. Accepting that it currently exists, how can people be dissuaded from taking advantage by moving from one area to another?

As you say, holiday and second homes create a different problem. That is the conflation I think is unhelpful as they are effectively reducing the total housing stock available for local owners or tenants.

 

[Beebo]

I was in Cornwall this summer.
Chatting to the restaurant owners they were running at reduced capacity because they didn’t have staff, and they didn’t have staff because there was no where for the seasonal staff to live as all the usual sub prime accommodation was being used by tourists who pay more.
They will end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

 

[mudsticks]

Aiui in France local authorities are allowed to play a part in deciding who gets to buy local housing stock , it has to be offered at an affordable price to a local resident before being placed on the open market.

There is definitely a need to build more truly affordable LA housing stock for rent to key workers and locals too.

Many of us more 'understanding' land owners and property owners let people discreetly park up in vans on our places.

But it isn't ideal, and we're effectively supporting house price inflation, and low wages, by 'housing' local workers , when they should have decent accomodation available.

 

[matticus]

Aiui in France local authorities are allowed to play a part in deciding who gets to buy local housing stock , it has to be offered at an affordable price to a local resident before being placed on the open market.

There is definitely a need to build more truly affordable LA housing stock for rent to key workers and locals too.

This shows that measures are POSSIBLE, if only anyone wanted to make them work. No doubt there are devils in the detail, but no market is perfect, and no markets are purely "free" in the UK anyway ...

_________________________
Meanwhile, my recently departed Uncle owned a "2nd home" in Cumbria for a while. Very nice location, we visited briefly once. He argued strongly that him+mates were only helping the local economy, as the flats they owned were built specifically for this purpose, and they always spend locally when they stay (it would be pretty miserable to not visit ANY pubs or restuarants!)

 

[mudsticks]

This shows that measures are POSSIBLE, if only anyone wanted to make them work. No doubt there are devils in the detail, but no market is perfect, and no markets are purely "free" in the UK anyway ...

_________________________
Meanwhile, my recently departed Uncle owned a "2nd home" in Cumbria for a while. Very nice location, we visited briefly once. He argued strongly that him+mates were only helping the local economy, as the flats they owned were built specifically for this purpose, and they always spend locally when they stay (it would be pretty miserable to not visit ANY pubs or restuarants!)

Allegedly 'free markets' in things such as accomodation, in which prices are held artificially higher by a deliberately created scarcity , cannot in any way shape or form be claimed to be 'free'.

Some sort of control and regulation is clearly needed, so that housing is far more about actually housing people.

And far less about profiteering.

Clearly the housing situation in this country is so far from this ideal, that it's hard to imagine we might claw our way back to anything like it.

But that's not to say we shouldn't try.

Nor that we shouldn't be aware of the inequities of the present system.

So much 'hidden' homelessness out here.
But it doesn't get spoken about very much.

Partly because many people are too 'proud' or feel they're not entitled to anything, or fearful they'll get chucked out of their 'unofficial' situation.

But also because people who try to make space, are technically speaking, outwith the current 'regulations' so we don't bring it to the attention of the LA either.

 

[Archie_tect]

It was The 'Right To Buy' policy which decimated social rent homes in the UK... HAs resorted to setting up charitable trusts in an attempt to protect social housing in the UK from being sold out from under them.

Couple that with Buy To Let people moving in to snap up houses that would formerly have been bought by families and young people, moving for work, who then can't afford to live where their jobs are.

Social housing with affordable rents would provide the platform for people to be housed at reasonable cost.. where Councils raise money to fund housing for rent- like they used to do when the Housing Corporation held grants for development so that service charges as part of the rent covered long term maintenance rather than the build costs which private developers have to factor in to market rents.

 

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

Nonsense discussion, looking for easy victims to blame, while it is the government failing to build social housing, hell even failing to build affordable housing. That's the whole issue, because buy to let is fed by demand, if people can choose between social housing and buy to let without enormous waiting times for social housing, buy to let will become the least favourable option, probably only interesting for investors in London and such, with temporarily workers we don't want the fuss with an housing association. Which will lead to more former buy to let property becoming available again on the housing market which in it's turn will result in pressure on the housing prices. Not to mention private rent prices as a whole.

 

[Archie_tect]

Successive Governments did enable all LAs to build fair rent Council Housing in massive numbers after the WW2 and then social housing through Housing Corporation grant-aided HAs, dutchguy... and all throughout the 80s when I first got involved. Council Housing was passed to HAs via ALMOs [Arms Length Management Organisations] to try to sideline Right to Buy by creating housing charity trusts but Cameron brought back Right to Buy again.

It was Thatcher's Right to Buy which decimated the UK's core core of social rented LA Housing stock leading to profiteering and the rise of the buy to let landlord market rent chemes favoured by successive Tory Governments.

 

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

Successive Governments did enable all LAs to build fair rent Council Housing in massive numbers after the WW2 and then social housing through Housing Corporation grant-aided HAs, dutchguy... and all throughout the 80s when I first got involved. Council Housing was passed to HAs via ALMOs [Arms Length Management Organisations] to try to sideline Right to Buy by creating housing charity trusts but Cameron brought back Right to Buy again.

It was Thatcher's Right to Buy which decimated the UK's core core of social rented LA Housing stock leading to profiteering and the rise of the buy to let landlord market rent chemes favoured by successive Tory Governments.

Yeah it's the same in the Netherlands, Belgium, i believe Germany too, after the second world war they build lots of social housing, but look at the situation now and it's all the same, long waiting lists, no lack of new houses being build, just the lack of new houses that are social housing.
In the 80's they blamed to much children being born, then the immigrants, now the second homes, it are all excuses that enable those in power to pretend to do something about it while they actually put a tiny plaster on a gaping wound.

 

[matticus]

I don't see this changing in my lifetime, unless we get a total Unicorn into power.

Who wants the housing market to keep working as it does? And who are the people in power?