travel to second homes during the corona virus

Well now, here’s an interesting debate for a Friday morning?

If someone is homeless because of the number of second homes in their area, and therefore deprived of the right to a family life, are they justified in occupying a second home that is mostly empty, in order to accommodate their family?

Human rights are extremely important but I've not ever heard it applied to justify enjoyment of second homes during pandemic.

Peaseblossom apart from cost, the problem you pose is one of the reasons we bought a house across the channel in France, where second home owning does not cause this problem.

The whole question of ‘rights” is interesting isn’t it M0nica?

When I first went to France it was a revelation to see so many buildings that weren’t being occupied ?

In many places in France, less so now than in the 1980-2000s, foreigners, mainly British, buying up and restoring older properties were seen as a force for good, revitalising rural economies.

France has housing problems in big cities, but outside the cities there are no housing problems, which is reflected in house prices. Our holiday home is the same size as our British home, has the same facilities, but more land and useful outbuildings. Our British home is worth 5 times more than its French equivalent.

A second home abroad is usually a holiday home.

I wonder whether in the UK there isn't a case for the second property to be seen as the main home? My friend's husband is a lecturer at Cambridge. When he is working they live in their small owned city flat with their dog. At weekends and when he is not working they go up to their 4 bedroomed home they bought on the Norfolk coast. They have all their stuff there. They often call it home.
So they have the right to have two properties fulfilling different needs.

Erm, have you noticed the hundreds still arriving from abroad ?? And people worry about driving in this country to make sure their homes are safe ? Some things just don't make any sense.

Cambridge is an interesting one. The prices are so high that ordinary people, shop workers, nurses, transport workers etc cannot live there. The prices are kept high by the number of wealthy people who own second homes there, for work use or letting.
Cambridge has a high rate of homeless people.

Should the wealthy have the right to two homes. Or should the less wealthy have the right to one?

I’ve just looked it up. It’s hard to classify but around half a million people in the uk have a second “home” that they are not renting to someone else.

That would be a lot of travelling and mixing if everyone thought they should be able to go between the two.

It is hard not to feel resentful that although we are not allowed to visit or stay in our second home we still have to pay full council tax.

You can feel resentful, that is fine but it is only fair you pay full council tax on that house. If it set on fire presumably you'd expect the fire service to go and put the fire out - for example?

I've never really understood the second home thing - personally in times when we were Ok to travel I liked to see new places but I know others are different.

I would like to understand why two properties is an advantage though, is it an investment? A status symbol? An income source?

Equally, although no one could have anticipated this particular situation, lousy things happen all the time - so wouldn't some kind of financial/caretaking etc contingency have to have been factored in to owning a second property?

This isn't a critique, I am genuinely interested to hear people's views so that I can better understand the logic and expectations of second home owning and why some believe they should have a right to bend the rules in a pandemic to maintain what many see as a privilege and why others see it that in the grand scheme of things other people's lives are more important to some non essential bricks and mortar.

Does it all boil down to money?

I certainly don’t think it’s a status thing, purely from time immemorial if people have enough spare cash and wish to have a bolt hole in a place they love, they can choose to buy one. Some people obviously buy property as an investment but I reckon unscrupulous landlords who buy cheap housing , turn it into HMOs and then neglect the properties are much worse.
In my case, it is an inherited property (formerly a main residence of my late mother) which I decided not to sell. Instead, I run it as a pretty low-key holiday let (thereby bringing useful income to the area) which pays the running costs, and enjoy it for family use. We rarely take holidays anywhere else. I haven’t been on a plane for over thirty years.
It’s by no means an easy option as, just like a main residence, problems occur.
In general, people should be able to spend their money however they want!

NellG, we bought our house when we were both in very busy jobs and lived in a house in a big town, where a quiet location had become noisy and busy as the local university and 24 hour economy developed.

Our house in Normandy is in a very quiet a rural area and it gave us an opportunity to disappear for three days every month where no one could reach us, (this was all before mobile phones). The house is neither an investment, nor a status symbol, nor an income source, as we do not let it out.

The journey to it is easy. We used to leave home after work, an hour to the ferry, a night on board and an hour to the house and we could be eating breakfast on the terrace (if it isn't raining by 8.00am). A journey like that in many ways makes our home more accessible than those on the west coast of Wales or in North Yorkshire, or Scotland. It is a 12 hour overnight journey, with 2 hours driving on uncrowded roads (even the UK side) and 6 hours sleeping,

DH spent his whole working life jumping on planes to fly here there and everywhere, most of them to places the wrong side of the tracks. The house enables us to visit another country and spend a lot of time in the same area, so that it is a home and we feel settled there when we visit. It is so nice going somewhere, where we know the neighbours, are recognised in the shops and have a restaurant where we are greeted as old friends and bars where, when we visit, we are likely to meet someone we know.. We have had wonderful family holidays there, which we could not have had elsewhere. We are also not in competition with local people for scarce housing.

We do visit other places in the UK and go abroad on holidays, but we are not beach bunnies and I am uncomfortable visiting countries with very different cultures which are much poorer than us. It seems to me that tourists visiting these countries are treating these countries and their people as if they were human zoos, while they see us just as rich people to be envied and exploited - that or tourists hole up in resorts, protected from local people so that tourists can buy into the sea and sunshine without having to worry about the country or its people.

We have not had any financial/caretaking problems. We visit our house in normal circumstances every 5-6 weeks and money to pay the bills, can and is transferred to our French bank account regularly and COVID hasn't affected that.

For the last 10 years we have paid someone to come and cut the grass. Our garden is large and 5 weeks growth of grass was becoming more than we could deal with. During COVID we are paying her an extra sum to check the house when she cuts the grass and make special visits through the winter. The visits she makes will end when we can start visiting again.

We worry very little about the house when not there. It has stone walls a metre thick, the floors are tile on concrete and it is electrically heated, we turn off the water and power when we are not there and, as the house is well insulated, the residual heat usually keeps temperatures above zero, although Dec-Feb we do sometimes leave two towel rails on. We are, both in UK and France, people who do not buy new, if it can be bought second-hand, so all the furniture is second hand, we do not have a tv or any electronic equipment in the house and we have good neighbours. In 30 years we have never had to make an insurance claim, nor have we had even an attempted break-in.

As for why some believe they should have a right to bend the rules in a pandemic to maintain what many see as a privilege and why others see it that in the grand scheme of things other people's lives are more important to some non essential bricks and mortar. Since we do not consider we do have the right to bend COVID rules and have put people above bricks and mortar, I cannot answer your query, but i would point out that there are a lot of selfish and self-centred people out in the world. We see examples daily, in different forms . They break rules on meeting up at home, park their cars on yellow lines and expect to be given special consideration in every aspect of their lives It is inevitable that some will have second homes and act similalry over those.

Sorry this post is so long NellG, but you did ask!

MOnica No problem at all, as you say I did ask and your post is really interesting. I agree, people often find ways of justifying selfish and self centred behaviour. I'm always curious about the whys and wherefores though and whether people see it as a conscious choice to bend the rules, or if it's just considered to be human nature. There is honestly no judgment from me - I was reflecting things I've heard and just like to have a greater understanding of such issues as I have no direct experience of owning a second home myself.

Kate54 - I couldn't agree more, other people's money and spending habits are none of anyone's business. Even when some appear to be irresponsible, a long as they aren't being irresponsible with mine! Again, just interested in how people see things. I also agree regarding unscrupulous landlords.

Speaking for myself I think the responsibility of a second property wouldn't be something I'd enjoy - I feel the benefits would be outweighed. I sold my last house to people who wanted it as a holiday home and have always wondered about the appeal. She was desperate for a little retreat by the sea, he was more inclined to see a second property as a financial burden. I've often wondered how they've managed during the lockdowns and honestly felt for them as it was only a year ago they bought and all this hit just after. I also know that the people in the village were often grudging and snarky about incomers and second home owners, so I doubt they will have been supportive.

Anyway, thank you for your answers.

I just thought it would be interesting to discuss following Nannaroses vociferous declaration of rights. How one persons “right to” can impact on and actually deny another’s rights.

However, Nannarose hasn’t come back so it’s a bit of a dead duck.

Certainly didn’t mean it to get personal. Just exercising my brain - what’s left of it?

Grannyrose, sorry.

No brain at all, obviously.

I agree a holiday home is not usually bought as a status symbol nor as an investment. I think sometimes it is an emotional thing which triggers a longing to be somewhere else, when work commitments tie you to a more humdrum place.
We bought a second home on the coast four hours from London to be able to see more of family there and to enjoy the scenic area. The journey was a bit of a pain, but we were young. We did end up selling it when miraculously a job came up there and we moved lock, stock and barrel. We did make a profit.
We then bought an appartment abroad in a posh French resort for holidays. After a while we sold it but only just got back what we paid for it. Properties abroad do not increase year on year to the same extent, but we had fun and it fulfilled a little dream. Our children were no longer particularly interested in the location either.
We employed a management company to clean it, and to do the gardening. Added to that the maintenance charges, the insurance, utilities, the car left over there and the flights, there and back, were like you say NellG a financial burden. We felt the money could be better spent on different holidays.
We would certainly not have travelled to either place in covid times.
I agree with what someone said about paying council tax. Just because you aren't there the street lights have to be paid for and the infrastructure maintained.

My daughter converted her garage into a holiday let, so no travelling is involved to check on it. She has been able to let it during the pandemic for legitimate reasons, eg someone working in the area, someone between house moves, someone whose property is experiencing subsidence.
So there can be valid reasons for second properties being occupied.
Personally I would not report any such occupancy. Well, I would if they were having wild parties, I guess.

Peaseblossom the question of wealthy with 2 homes and poorer without, is not as simple as it seems, particularly now people are working from home more.

DD works for a research centre just ouside Cambridge and has colleagues who work a 2 week in the office, 2 weeks from home pattern, where 'home' can be 100 miles away or more, or in one or two cases in another country.

Several of them own a small property near work as well as their family home. Living half your life in a B&B or hotel is both dispiriting and expensive and even if you rent the second home, it is still 'depriving' another person of a home.

Lillie one of the reasons we bought a house in Normandy was to avoid so many of the costs you mention, plus not wanting to fly. We go by ferry in our own car, so no costs of needing an extra car, apart from utilities and rates, which do not work out too expensive, our only other cost is a grass cutting contract in the summer months. The garden is nothing except grass and two small shrubberys and those we can manage ourselves.

Cambridge as a research hub seems to be causing issues wrt housing AND employing people. My dh consults for a company in an umbrella capacity as they just cannot get staff to relocate there because of the cost. So maybe people aren't the problem. I couldn't even afford a hotel there when one of my children was in ICU in Addenbrookes but the hospital thankfully sorted me out a hostel room on site which was very lastminute dot com but I was grateful all the same

I don't think someone walking to their garage is a problem during lockdown either, I am continually going for a cream in mine (I use it for quarantining myself really)

a scream oh dear!

I thought you perhaps had a butter making business in your garage JaneJudge!

Or maybe even a beauty treatments' room!