The Anonymous Widower

Andrew Motion Says Make Second Homes Very Expensive

It is reported that former Poet Laureate; Andrew Motion has said that second homes must be made very expensive to stop sucking the life out of villages. The full story is here in the Guardian.

I have owned and lived in two houses a couple of times in my life. At one time we were living in Cromwell Tower during the week and also had the house at Debach in Suffolk for the weekend. And then we had Les Ondes in Antibes.

I think in truth,neither arrangements worked out for C and myself, as we were incessant travellers. And fixed bases are not compatible if you want to go long distances abroad for a couple of months a year.

Before we moved to Newmarket, we were not using the house in France, but were flying everywhere in my Cessna 340A.  If we hadn’t bought Les Ondes, we might have visited some of the places, I now regret we didn’t.

So my argument against second homes, is that they may look good on paper, but spending the money you save by having only one home, on say travel or something you enjoy is probably better.

Since C died, I’ve been to a few places, where she never went, that to have flown to in a light aircraft would have been fun. For a start on my cruise, there was Corunna.

There is also two other arguments against second homes.

By having a second home, you are effectively denying someone else or another family, a home. That is morally indefensible in times like these, where we don’t have enough homes.

There is also the climate change argument, in that loading a 4×4 up with half your worldly goods each weekend, isn’t a way of cutting CO2 emissions. All it does is create profits for oil companies.

I could throw in a few other arguments too, like the fact that I believe spontaneity and impulse are good for you and do you want to be involved in the various NIMBY arguments that plague the countryside.

Perhaps though, most people don’t think logically about life as I do, and they have so much money, they can’t spend it creatively.

So is Motion’s idea to make second homes more expensive is the only thing, that might curb second home ownership and put more houses on the market for those, who don’t have a nice place to live?  But no government would bring in the legislation, as it would be a catastrophic vote loser. Just look at the protest, when Ryanair chopped all those routes to France a few years ago, as it cut the cheap route to second homes.

Similar arguments can also be applied to those individuals from abroad, who buy up desirable properties in the UK and leave it empty.

We need more housing and as we haven’t got the space to built much more, we must maximise our use of what we already have.

April 1, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel, World | Driving, Global Warming/Zero-Carbon, Housing, Tax