Second home owners in Wales face soaring council tax bills after Labour-Plaid deal.

That’s not being said though Doodledog? If you want to buy a house in Wales as your main residence there are no restrictions wherever you come from, this is specifically about second homes.
Just another point which I don’t think people perhaps are aware of, is that a lot of the second homes in Wales are owned by Welsh people who live in the cities - Pembrokeshire for example is the second home capital for residents of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea.

Perhaps the bitterness that some feel towards second home owners should be directed towards those who sell their property to them?

One of my closest friends lives in a street where she is the ONLY permanent resident for streets
She says it is utterly miserable. They have lived there for years, since kids really, worked local. No one they know is there anymore.

When I lived in Suffolk it was always said that the second home owners arrived for the weekend on a Friday night with their cars laden with food - so they didn't shop locally.

janeainsworth

Perhaps the bitterness that some feel towards second home owners should be directed towards those who sell their property to them?

all that is being suggested is tht people who buy second homes get taxed more so increases in house prices is curbed and local people who live there can afford to rent and buy

By the way, places where second home ownership is high have struggled to recruit seasonal staff the last few years because of the lack of permanent people living in the vicinity + Brexit+ the pandemic

The UK government should take a leaf out what happens in France. Here every town must have 20per cent of its housing stock for low income families. If this doesn’t happen the town has to pay extra taxes to central government until they reach the 20 per cent.

If the balance of 2nd home owners, vs people who live in small communities full time is too high, the infrastructure suffers; their children are not attending the village schools and so numbers drop and schools close (this has just happened in Abersoch where 40% of homes are owned by 2nd home owners). Local people, who usually earner lower wages than those in cities, can't afford to live near their workplace and so have to commute further and further out. If people aren't living in the houses 52 weeks of the year, the local shops, such as butchers, bakers, greengrocers only have a "season" to trade and over the winter months can't trade enough to survive. If the shops close, they're not paying any local business rates which, in turn, affects the budget of the town council and what social services it can provide. Close knit communities aren't sustainable when 40% of the people who live there are transient; they're not there to support parish councils, local charities etc.

I come from a small community in North Wales and I've seen first hand how, once the summer school holidays have ended, it's like a ghost town. And every April, the council tax goes up higher and higher for those locals who are grimly hanging onto their family homes by the skin of their teeth.

janeainsworth

Perhaps the bitterness that some feel towards second home owners should be directed towards those who sell their property to them?

I don't blame people for selling - most of us would take the highest offer. I'm not bitter, either. I don't live in a village or the city. We do have Air B&Bs in my hometown, and they will inflate house prices by making available housing scarcer, but not significantly.

I don't have children wanting to move to Hometown - they are settled elsewhere, so I have no 'skin in the game'. I'm just observing what happens in the villages in one direction from me and the city in the other.

Chewbacca

If the balance of 2nd home owners, vs people who live in small communities full time is too high, the infrastructure suffers; their children are not attending the village schools and so numbers drop and schools close (this has just happened in Abersoch where 40% of homes are owned by 2nd home owners). Local people, who usually earner lower wages than those in cities, can't afford to live near their workplace and so have to commute further and further out. If people aren't living in the houses 52 weeks of the year, the local shops, such as butchers, bakers, greengrocers only have a "season" to trade and over the winter months can't trade enough to survive. If the shops close, they're not paying any local business rates which, in turn, affects the budget of the town council and what social services it can provide. Close knit communities aren't sustainable when 40% of the people who live there are transient; they're not there to support parish councils, local charities etc.

I come from a small community in North Wales and I've seen first hand how, once the summer school holidays have ended, it's like a ghost town. And every April, the council tax goes up higher and higher for those locals who are grimly hanging onto their family homes by the skin of their teeth.

??????????????

Shouldn’t the people who own the second house pay higher rates/tax because it isn’t their main residence and the community still provide and has to pay the cost for the amenities and infrastructure whether they use it or not.

mokryna

Shouldn’t the people who own the second house pay higher rates/tax because it isn’t their main residence and the community still provide and has to pay the cost for the amenities and infrastructure whether they use it or not.

I think so, yes.

I live in Anglesey, I love winter time when our roads are virtually traffic free and the beaches are deserted for my daily walks. I’d close the bridge in summer to keep this island for us locals if we could afford to but what right would I have? None of us own Anglesey, Pembrokeshire, the Lake District or Cornwall. I thought we lived in a free country where we could live and own property anywhere without that being policed.
We must invest in our small communities, our seaside towns, our country villages so that those who choose to can live and work all year round, surely we have the technology to spread the job market more equally.
If these communities thrive there will
be room for second home owners too without having such a drastic impact on local economies.

mokryna

Shouldn’t the people who own the second house pay higher rates/tax because it isn’t their main residence and the community still provide and has to pay the cost for the amenities and infrastructure whether they use it or not.

But they are paying the same rates as the locals and not even using the amenities and infrastructure for half the year. Why should they pay more?

But they are paying the same rates as the locals and not even using the amenities and infrastructure for half the year. Why should they pay more?

Because schools need to be open all year for the local children; if attendances drop, schools close, staff lose their jobs and children have to travel further afield to another school which may, in turn, mean that transport has to be paid for.

Because whether 2nd home owners are in their properties for 2 weeks a year or 52 weeks a year, the council still has to pay for staff, vehicles maintenance, insurance and licenses for dustbins, recycling and waste to be dealt with all year.

Because librarys (where they still exist) need staff, premises upkeep, heating and lighting need to be paid for all year.

Because clinics, dentist's, GP surgeries need to be staffed all year, not just for the few weeks of the year of a sudden influx of part time residents. If those services aren't used efficiently, they get closed and the whole community suffers.

Because shops can't continue to trade when they get customers for only a few weeks of the year. So those shops close, staff lose their jobs and the council gets less business rates income.

well maybe it should be policed more.
if fewer people had two homes, more people could have one.
greed is not good, economically or morally.
when each prospers, we all prosper.
we are all inter-dependent, the pandemic has shewn that, how we need vital services provided by low wage earners.
and they deserve to live among us.

Quite welbeck

I also think it the argument re council tax is absurd and people wouldn't wan't to pay towards bin collections, policing, the fire service, libraries and schools in the place where their second home was as surely they'd want a burglary investigating or a fire putting out, no litter on the street, an educated community ETC

Better than setting them on fire.

I forgot my think owning a second home is about greed. Some people have to live and work in the city but need a bolt hole somewhere peaceful to unwind.
My husband and I live in a big five bedroom house in the country. We have our shopping delivered, we rarely eat out, we have no children at the school, we fill our car up once a month if that. We contribute far less to the local economy than those with a second home here who fill up their car after travelling a distance, shop for a large family during the months they are here and eat out quite regularly.
Also lots of people who live here permanently send their children away to school so not helping to keep local schools open.
Too many variables to penalise one group for deciding to spend their hard earned income on a second home rather than foreign holidays or regular new car purchase or whatever else.

I don’t think owning a second home is about greed. Should have been my opening. Predictive text decided otherwise

Lincslass

Better than setting them on fire.

second home owners or their second houses? either seems a tad extreme

Well, as usual, the very rich won’t care and it will drive out the middle income ones which no doubt will please them. They always do well in every circumstance.

They pay the same rates as everyone else in the area but only use the bin collection for half the year.

nanna8

Well, as usual, the very rich won’t care and it will drive out the middle income ones which no doubt will please them. They always do well in every circumstance.

It's not that they don't care, it probably doesnt even cross their mind. What I mean is that if you have enough money to buy a holiday home in the first place you won't be worrying about paying higher council tax. I don't think it is about greed at all.
When we were working in London we bought a holiday cottage in Devon and used it at weekends to get out of the city with the children and dogs. My family members were also in Devon so it gave us the opportunity to be together. We probably spent more in farm shops, tourist attractions, petrol pumps, restaurants etc in the two days away, than we did in the 5 days back home.

How many second homes are there in the UK, I wonder?

I'm finding it strange reading this thread when some of the defenders of 2nd home owning are on another thread telling us that we can't possibly take any more people into the UK because it's 'full' and, among other things, we're short of housing

I’m not one of those people MaizieD,
I believe that because we are born here by accident of birth we don’t have the right of ownership.
If people anywhere in the world want to give their family the best shot in life and feel that the U.K. is the right place for them, they have as much right as anyone to be here.