Introduction

Second homes are the scourge of the British countryside; they alone are responsible for the rural housing crisis, for the closure of village schools and the collapse of essential services. Second homes are choking the countryside, forcing young local people to move away, and condemning once thriving villages to progressive abandonment. This is the picture that is sometimes presented of the second home problem in rural areas. It is not a picture that would be universally recognised in all parts of Britain, let alone elsewhere in Europe. However, there is a view – sometimes powerfully articulated – that the ownership of second homes is inherently unfair and that it robs many people of their right to a home of their own. The case against second homes is a simple one and boils down to a single question: how can it possibly be fair that hundreds of thousands of people across Europe are – at best – inadequately housed or – at worst – homeless, when literally millions own purely recreational second homes? George Monbiot (1999) sees an immediate link between the purchasing of second homes in England and the displacement of local households within more picturesque villages:

For many people in the countryside, and for their political representatives, this fast and easy way of explaining away housing shortages has huge appeal. For local politicians, it provides an opportunity to present local problems as being externally driven, caused not by failures in the immediate economy or by misjudged policy interventions, but by the greed and carelessness of outside interests. The logical extension of this argument is that too few housing opportunities cause young people to move away, rather than any lack of diversity in the job market or educational opportunities, or indeed any desire to experience new places. Similarly, house price inflation is associated with second

home pressures and not with planning constraints or low levels of house building. This suggests that second homes can be used as scapegoats, as an opportunity to divert attention from the ‘local’ factors that may erode the vibrancy of rural communities. In this book, it is not our intention to offer a defence of second homes. Four

years of research have demonstrated clearly that high concentrations of such properties in any community are likely to accentuate existing housing, social or economic difficulties. But the same is true of high concentrations of retirement purchasing, commuting pressure or unwarranted planning constraint. Too much of anything is likely to generate pressures that will adversely affect normal community processes; here, it is housing market processes that we are most concerned with, and particularly the link between local wage levels and the ability to compete for new and existing homes. The key difference between second homes and these other pressures lies in their propensity to provoke an emotional response; there may well be other factors affecting the operation of the housing market and limiting the supply of much-needed housing, but surely second homes represent one pressure that any society, which values the principles of fairness and equality, should be able to do away with? At the very least, we should be heavily taxing this particular luxury in a drive to minimise inequality and promote opportunity. However, there are those who view second homes in a more favourable light

and who tend to argue that growth in their numbers (to a level that has not changed a great deal over the last decade) is merely symptomatic of broader social trends (reflecting modern working patterns, preferences in leisure consumption, improvements in personal mobility and higher wages in society alongside regional economic decline in those areas that are a net importer of second homes) and, more recently, the perceived benefits of investing in property rather than in the stock market. Across Europe there are increasing concerns that demographic ageing will create future problems in terms of the costs of social welfare; fewer younger people in twenty years time will make it more difficult to support state pension schemes. People are already becoming worried that state and private pensions will be insufficient to support them in retirement; the stock market has simply not been performing well enough in recent years, and particularly since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. This realisation has fuelled investment in property, with many people believing that future equity release will make up for any shortfall in public or private pensions. Indeed, it is conceivable that pension concerns today will fuel the demand for second homes tomorrow, making them a sensible and logical investment for those who wish to retire at a reasonable age. Therefore, if second homes become a substitute for pension investment, and government is unwilling to raise income tax now to stave off a public pension crisis in the future, then the case against second homes might become increasingly eroded as acceptance of them takes hold. This is somewhat of an aside, and one which we return to at the end of this

book. Returning to the issue of ‘locating’ second homes within broader housing and social pressures facing the countryside, we have already noted the two opposing views: that second homes are inherently bad and are a root cause

of the problems faced by some communities; or that they are merely one feature amongst many within any housing market. In between these views, there is perhaps a more sensible position: that second homes – the product of broader social and economic changes affecting different countries – have contributed in specific ways to the process of rural change, or as Chris Bollom (1978) puts it, they have become a ‘complicating’ factor and agent of social change in many previously less complicated rural areas:

It is our intention in this book to locate second homes in their wider context, and to unravel many of the complexities of rural housing pressure in Britain and in the wider European countryside. We attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the second home issue without losing sight of the bigger picture. The more detailed aims of this book are set out briefly below.

Aims of the Book