Owners of second homes in Wales are having to sell up. That’s no disaster: it’s a godsend | Will Hayward
www.theguardian.com
Council tax hikes on holiday homes aren’t ‘anti-English’ or detrimental to tourism. This is about preserving embattled communities, says Guardian columnist Will Hayward

To try to tackle this, the Welsh Labour government, alongside Plaid Cymru, introduced measures to curb second-home ownership. This included giving councils the ability to push council tax on second homes to 300% the usual rate. They also closed a loophole whereby second-home owners could register as a business in order to pay the much lower business rates.

Gwynedd council used these powers to hike council tax to 150% in April 2023. By the end of 2024, house prices had fallen by 12.4% as second-home owners tried to sell up. In Pembrokeshire, house prices fell by 8.9% after the council increased the council tax to 200% on second homes (though this was reduced to 150% recently).

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Or impose a minimum radius around a property where you can’t buy a second one and then a minimum around both where you can’t have a third one and so on. Want to have a house in the city and a cottage >100km away in a straight line? Go ahead. Want to own a bunch of house and use them as short term rental units? Better be ready to waste your time traveling all over the country buddy!

    • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      22 hours ago

      Or impose a minimum radius around a property where you can’t buy a second one and then a minimum around both where you can’t have a third one and so on. Want to have a house in the city and a cottage >100km away in a straight line? Go ahead.

      But this is what’s causing the problems. People are buying second houses in holiday destinations, then either leaving them empty for most of the year, or renting them out for things like Airbnb. House prices are going up, and locals can’t afford to buy. Off season, the local businesses don’t have enough custom to sustain themselves, and end up going under.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        13 hours ago

        Most people who do that do it close enough to home to take care of it themselves though

        • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          11 hours ago

          The whole point of holiday homes is that they’re not near the main home, otherwise it defeats the object.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            9 hours ago

            I’m talking about the ones who rent them, not people who have a cottage somewhere out in the boonies. You don’t want to have to travel hours every weekend just to clean up after your client.

            • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              9 hours ago

              They don’t travel to clean up, they hire a cleaning company for a fraction of what they charged the guests. No-one’s travelling half way across the country every week to change the sheets and empty the bins.

        • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          12 hours ago

          Where are you getting that opinion? Is that backed by data or literally anything that would give weight to what you’re saying?

          Otherwise you’re just defending landlords. Cause that sounds so wrong it’s unbelievable someone would just assert that.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            9 hours ago

            Just my experience having had a cottage far away from everything with other cottages around, the few of them available for short term rental were either unavailable most of the time as the owners didn’t want to have to travel hours just to clean up every weekend and those that were available at all times were owned by people who also lived around there full time.