# Holiday Homes In Cornwall.



## behemoth (Jun 21, 2007)

This looks interesting:

http://rentfreecornwall.blogspot.com/

Is this as credible as it makes out?


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

well it is a hot topic down here. maybe madzone may be able to give us a stear. its in her neck of the woods. there is a second home owner just behind me. they only come down for the 13 weeks of the school holidays. they are nice enough and we're civil to them when they are around but they are a very london with it.


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

I don't know - there's been nothing in the press about it so I'm not actually sure it's happened or is just a bit of propoganda designed to shake up the second home owners. Personally I think it's a frontline problem and needs to be tackled first before we start building great swathes of 'affordable' housing. We need to make it unnattractive for people to have 2nd homes down here as they contribute fuck all to the community. Some of them even do their shopping at home and bring it down with them. Whether that's done by making it a financial disincentive or by squatters taking them over I don't know - but it needs to be addressed.


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## chymaera (Jun 22, 2007)

behemoth said:
			
		

> This looks interesting:
> 
> http://rentfreecornwall.blogspot.com/
> 
> Is this as credible as it makes out?



No, it is a very good work of fiction though.
Do you really think no matter where it was in Britain that that many houses could be squatted and it kept out of the national media?


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## jæd (Jun 22, 2007)

chymaera said:
			
		

> No, it is a very good work of fiction though.
> Do you really think no matter where it was in Britain that that many houses could be squatted and it kept out of the national media?



At the very least, I would expect you, TobyJug, to go around and tell them clear off...!


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

It's a tricky one as tourism is worth a lot to the local economy in many of the places which suffer the most from second homes. Need to find some level at which empty housing is dramatically reduced, local revenue is increased and tourists still come.

Tripling council tax on second homes would be step one.


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## Paulie Tandoori (Jun 22, 2007)

Tourism and owning a second home aren't the same things though are they? Second home owners, being very general about the situation, tend to contribute very little to local economies, ime. Afaik, they still pay less council tax, when imo, they should pay double. They undermine communities to the point that some of the smaller Cornish villages can be like ghost towns during certain months of the year. I would love to see a mass squatting movement of second homes but the uproar would be all too sadly predictable.


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## Belushi (Jun 22, 2007)

> Tripling council tax on second homes would be step one.



Spot on.


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

Paulie Tandoori said:
			
		

> Tourism and owning a second home aren't the same things though are they? Second home owners, being very general about the situation, tend to contribute very little to local economies, ime. Afaik, they still pay less council tax, when imo, they should pay double. They undermine communities to the point that some of the smaller Cornish villages can be like ghost towns during certain months of the year. I would love to see a mass squatting movement of second homes but the uproar would be all too sadly predictable.


Many second homes are rented out as holiday cottages for the few months a year their owners aren't there. I have stayed in various holiday cottages in Devon, Cornwall and Wales and the majority had times in the calendar that they were reserved for the owner's own holiday.

I don't have that much of a problem with that, providing some balance can be found so that people who work in the area can afford housing - a problem that can only be fixed on a national level by reducing the power of landlords and improving the rights of tenants.


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

Idaho said:
			
		

> - a problem that can only be fixed on a national level by reducing the power of landlords and improving the rights of tenants.


How would that address the fact that the average house price in truro is nearly £400,000 - more than 20 times the average salary.


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## Paulie Tandoori (Jun 22, 2007)

As i understand it, something like 1 in 10 homes in Cornwall now are holiday homes/2nd homes - so whilst it may be true that a proportion of these are indeed rented out to tourists, there is simply no way that such a disproportionate amount of houses being owned by non-residents cannot have a detrimental effect on the economy and the social conditions of such a small and remote community.


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

madzone said:
			
		

> How would that address the fact that the average house price in truro is nearly £400,000 - more than 20 times the average salary.


In this country we are obsessed with house ownership. Much more so than in Europe. Hardly anyone in Paris owns a house and the reason is becuase you can get 5 year rentals of nice houses/flats with secure tenure and low rents. The reason people here are in such a hurry to buy is that renting is expensive and insecure.

This in turn fuels the buy-to-let market as being a landlord is such an easy money spinner - further driving up house prices and rents, and making the situation worse.


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## Paulie Tandoori (Jun 22, 2007)

Didn't this stem from Thatcher removing rent controls in the 80's iirc? Can't see any politician being brave enough to challenge or change the current unregulated market.


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

Idaho said:
			
		

> In this country we are obsessed with house ownership. Much more so than in Europe. Hardly anyone in Paris owns a house and the reason is becuase you can get 5 year rentals of nice houses/flats with secure tenure and low rents. The reason people here are in such a hurry to buy is that renting is expensive and insecure.
> 
> This in turn fuels the buy-to-let market as being a landlord is such an easy money spinner - further driving up house prices and rents, and making the situation worse.


I agree that landlords have too much power - it's likely that ours will turf us out next spring without a by your leave. I still think it's more complex than just sorting out rental options though. For instance, the amount of homes used as holiday homes is out of proportion to the size of the duchy. There needs to be a major disincentive for people having them in the first place.


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

Paulie Tandoori said:
			
		

> Didn't this stem from Thatcher removing rent controls in the 80's iirc? Can't see any politician being brave enough to challenge or change the current unregulated market.


Yeah, the change to a 6 month assured shorthold tenancy becoming the norm was pretty instrumental I htink.


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## Voley (Jun 22, 2007)

Mousehole's 50/50 split between holiday homes and locally-owned ones these days, iirc.

And when I worked as a Housing Officer down here I heard this horrible statistic - 80% of young people (18-23) can no longer afford to buy *or rent *down here.

It's certainly the case for my family - my brother and sister are both in full-time jobs but still living at home because of the gaping chasm between local wages and house prices / rents.

To look at the other side of the argument, though - for every house that's been sold as a holiday home, there's usually a local person that got rich out of the sale. That's a point that many Cornish seem to forget.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

madzone said:
			
		

> How would that address the fact that the average house price in truro is nearly £400,000 - more than 20 times the average salary.



[pedant] isnt it £300,000.[pedant] well it was yesterday according to the person who said it at the Carrick core strategy examination. either way its still fucking expensive.


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## jæd (Jun 22, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> It's certainly the case for my family - my brother and sister are both in full-time jobs but still living at home because of the gaping chasm between local wages and house prices / rents.



I'm always  as why there isn't more incentive to build affordable housing in these areas...


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## lewislewis (Jun 22, 2007)

Paulie Tandoori said:
			
		

> Didn't this stem from Thatcher removing rent controls in the 80's iirc? Can't see any politician being brave enough to challenge or change the current unregulated market.



You just wait til we get law-making powers in Wales, we have a duty to redress the problem because the Welsh language is threatened by it.


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> To look at the other side of the argument, though - for every house that's been sold as a holiday home, there's usually a local person that got rich out of the sale. That's a point that many Cornish seem to forget.


I don't think they do forget it - we've talked about it here fairly often - but what can you do about it? Is it the responsibility of the people or should the govt step in and give incentives to sell to other local people or even pass legislation that makes it semi compulsory? And just to be pedantic it's not always cornish people are selling the houses is it?


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

Fuzzy said:
			
		

> [pedant] isnt it £300,000.[pedant] well it was yesterday according to the person who said it at the Carrick core strategy examination. either way its still fucking expensive.


I'd read it was £357,000 or something - more than 300 anyway


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## madzone (Jun 22, 2007)

jæd said:
			
		

> I'm always  as why there isn't more incentive to build affordable housing in these areas...


There's incentives to make 2% (or something equally ridiculous) of new builds affordable. However, I don't want to see great swathes of new houses when we have so many perfectly adequate ones sitting empty for the majority of the year. Cornwall is becoming rapidly overdeveloped and they're spoiling the very golden egg they're trying to sell to tourists.

And quite often affordable housing is campaigned against by Nimbys


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

jæd said:
			
		

> I'm always  as why there isn't more incentive to build affordable housing in these areas...


Developable land is like gold-dust. Developers can either get a nice return building affordable housing, or make a packet at the top and middle end of the market.


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

madzone said:
			
		

> Is it the responsibility of the people or should the govt step in and give incentives to sell to other local people or even pass legislation that makes it semi compulsory?


I don't think either would be workable. All such schemes can be got around. Just introduce triple council tax for low occupancy houses and throw in rent control legislation. Landlords and second homers will run a mile freeing up loads of housing.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

jæd said:
			
		

> I'm always  as why there isn't more incentive to build affordable housing in these areas...



who is going to pay for it? the private sector wont as there is no profit for them to do so and there is no public money available to do it either so none gets built.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

one of the issues of building affordable housing is that who ever builds it has to first buy the land and then pay for the cost of building the houses. as the price that can be obtained from selling the affordable units to an RSL is quite low in comparison to open market houses the amount of money that the land owner gets for selling their land is low. hence there is not much incentive for the seller to sell.


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## Voley (Jun 22, 2007)

madzone said:
			
		

> I don't think they do forget it - we've talked about it here fairly often - but what can you do about it? Is it the responsibility of the people or should the govt step in and give incentives to sell to other local people or even pass legislation that makes it semi compulsory? And just to be pedantic it's not always cornish people are selling the houses is it?



Personally I think anyone should be able to buy a house irrespective of where they're from. Can you imagine a law that restricted your right to purchase based on your origins?  I can't count how many other anti-discrimination laws that would break.

But I think if you buy a second home you should be taxed heavily for it.

This won't go any way near to redressing the balance, the main problem of which is the lack of secure tenancies at reasonable rents these days.

I'm not arguing in favour of people having second homes. Far from it. The housing situation down here is in crisis but little seems to be being done about it.


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## mwgdrwg (Jun 22, 2007)

They're selling "affordable" homes around here now, for shared ownership.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6763475.stm

Only 135k instead of 180k. I think I'll pop down to the bank and get that 7.5x mortegage asap!


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## jæd (Jun 22, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> But I think if you buy a second home you should be taxed heavily for it.



Sounds like political suicide for the party that introduces it... More realistic would be incentives to encourage more affordable housing...


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

jæd said:
			
		

> More realistic would be incentives to encourage more affordable housing...



or public money like there used to be. seems like labour liked too much what maggie did for social housing as they have shown no willingness to undo what was done.


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## Idaho (Jun 22, 2007)

They showed no willingness because they changed their core voters. People who need affordable housing are less electorally signficant than middle class property owners.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

true. i cant see any of the parties reversing the situation though and i dont see the private sector jumping to help.


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## Voley (Jun 22, 2007)

It's hard not to come to the conclusion that things are gonna get even worse over the next few years ...  

I really feel for the young people priced out of the market - I left home when I was 18 and I was at my Mum's throat by _then_. I shudder to think what would've happened if I'd still been living at home well into my 20's.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> I really feel for the young people priced out of the market - I left home when I was 18 and I was at my Mum's throat by _then_. I shudder to think what would've happened if I'd still been living at home well into my 20's.



you would hope that at some point the market does come to a head and something sorts itself out. if not you can foresee a case here similar to the americans and their college funds. british parents will be saving for their kids first house.


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## Voley (Jun 22, 2007)

Happening all ready, mate.

My folks are looking at remortgaging their house to buy something for my brother and sister.


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## Fuzzy (Jun 22, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> Happening all ready, mate.
> 
> My folks are looking at remortgaging their house to buy something for my brother and sister.



blimey. i guess at the moment that is the easiest way for youngsters to get on the ladder. once on though its hard to get off isnt it.


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## lewislewis (Jun 22, 2007)

mwgdrwg said:
			
		

> They're selling "affordable" homes around here now, for shared ownership.
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6763475.stm
> 
> Only 135k instead of 180k. I think I'll pop down to the bank and get that 7.5x mortegage asap!



I'd do it if I lived there, that's a 'good' price compared to where I live. Still not affordable enough, but at least the council's trying to do something about it.


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## madzone (Jun 23, 2007)

NVP said:
			
		

> Personally I think anyone should be able to buy a house irrespective of where they're from.


So do I in principle but this is a crisis which shows no sign of abating. We're already losing key workers because they can't afford to live here - what's going to happen if this continues? If someone is selling ex social housing stock they can only sell it to someone who has been full time resident in Cornwall for 3 years (don't have to be born here or anything  ) - if that's not breaking discrimination laws then why couldn't it be the same for selling general private housing stock? I agree there's ways around most legislation like that but even if it worked 75% of the time it would go some way to addressing the issue. Something which simply lowers prices without addressing the other issues will merely encourage more wealthy incomers to buy 2nd homes.


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## Calva dosser (Jun 23, 2007)

A few dirty great mobile home parks where the local youth could afford to live and pursue such traditional industries as souping up ancient Renaults and diy pharmaceutical production may act as a disincentive to those temporarily resident emmetts.

It is unfortunate, that these days, with the ability to cocoon themselves people do not have to interact with local communities. Years ago a few encounters with surly Cornishmen was sufficient to convince most people that it was ok for a holiday but.....


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## chymaera (Jun 23, 2007)

Calva dosser said:
			
		

> A few dirty great mobile home parks where the local youth could afford to live and pursue such traditional industries as souping up ancient Renaults and diy pharmaceutical production may act as a disincentive to those temporarily resident emmetts.
> .....




I think you will find those already exist, unless things have changed in the last few years. There was one near Penzance and one near Kennack Sands on the Lizard that were as roughs as rats a few years ago.


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## Voley (Jun 25, 2007)

madzone said:
			
		

> So do I in principle but this is a crisis which shows no sign of abating. We're already losing key workers because they can't afford to live here - what's going to happen if this continues? If someone is selling ex social housing stock they can only sell it to someone who has been full time resident in Cornwall for 3 years (don't have to be born here or anything  ) - if that's not breaking discrimination laws then why couldn't it be the same for selling general private housing stock? I agree there's ways around most legislation like that but even if it worked 75% of the time it would go some way to addressing the issue. Something which simply lowers prices without addressing the other issues will merely encourage more wealthy incomers to buy 2nd homes.



Agreed. I honestly can't think of a way out of this current situation without taking some radical steps like restricting people's right to purchase, or something similar. Not that I'd particularly agree with a step like that but it's hard to see a way forward with the way things are at the moment.

Look at these 'affordable homes' that are being built now - still way out of the financial reach of most people down here. It's probably seen by some as a progressive measure but it's a drop in the ocean, really.

It's difficult not to be extremely pessimistic about the whole situation. I've yet to hear a credible, workable solution to this problem and I'm buggered if I can think of one!


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## Calva dosser (Jun 25, 2007)

Plenty of disused mines, I'd come back to Blighty like a shot if I could live in a tin mine.

Dark, dank and full of poisonous heavy metals.

Bit like a pub I once frequented in West Pentire.


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