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Wales holiday homes


old'un
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8 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

Let me give you an example of what I know is going on down here.

I'm sure that happens all over the place.  There are a few rental properties in our village, though all I believe are legal - at least planning wise.  I have no idea what they do on taxation.

It is the duty of councils to police and enforce planning, building regs, listed buildings consent etc., however the actual enforcement seems to be incredibly difficult and protracted.  A case near some friends has been going on for several years (https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/one-year-judge-ordered-millionaire-7282671), cost the council a fortune and the owner is still happily illegally building.  It is not clear to me why these things are so difficult to enforce.  One reason the rules get broken/ignored is that the council are VERY difficult to deal with at times, and rule breaches are rarely followed up.

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3 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

I'm sure that happens all over the place.  There are a few rental properties in our village, though all I believe are legal - at least planning wise.  I have no idea what they do on taxation.

It is the duty of councils to police and enforce planning, building regs, listed buildings consent etc., however the actual enforcement seems to be incredibly difficult and protracted.  A case near some friends has been going on for several years (https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/one-year-judge-ordered-millionaire-7282671), cost the council a fortune and the owner is still happily illegally building.  It is not clear to me why these things are so difficult to enforce.  One reason the rules get broken/ignored is that the council are VERY difficult to deal with at times, and rule breaches are rarely followed up.

The trouble in Cornwall is there are hundreds (thousands? ) of "illegal" AirBnBs  putting people into spare bedrooms , attics and even garden sheds with no form of regulation or control , Why they get away with it is apathy

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There were similar issues in parts of Wales. Some of my friends who were brought up in the coastal parts of Wales moved the whole family into the garage to live for the 6 weeks of the summer holiday....they rented their home out as holiday let during the summer!  Tax free cash for 6 weeks. Don't know if it still happens. 

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21 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

The trouble in Cornwall is there are hundreds (thousands? ) of "illegal" AirBnBs  putting people into spare bedrooms , attics and even garden sheds with no form of regulation or control , Why they get away with it is apathy

Council officers, like many civil servants are just idle and will not do anything that may cause them work even if they employed to do so.

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We own a holiday cottage in Beddgelert North Wales and currently it's available to let for 10 months of the year. We keep back January (after new year's week, when it's available) and February as a maintenance period when we can get anything big that needs doing done. Even so it's rare we've made the 183 days actually let out required to still class as business rates.

It's an absurd idea. I agree the current levels are laughably low, but the result of this huge increase is going to be a lot of dumped cottages. All very well, the Welsh Nationalists will say, but who's going to move into Beddgelert? There are no jobs in the close vicinity. The train network's not good enough for a commuter lifestyle and the buses take forever. Added to which being in the National Park makes it fiendishly complicated to do anything to the buildings because they're all listed. So they're very expensive to run, which means that people on low incomes won't want to live in them even if they could afford the initial outlay and had some mythical job that would make it worthwhile. Then of course there's the issue of fewer people coming to the area because there's nowhere to stay, which means an even smaller local economy and because it's in the National Park, no one's going to be building big hotels any time soon! 

I think a lot of people are against the idea. 

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32 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

We own a holiday cottage in Beddgelert North Wales and currently it's available to let for 10 months of the year. We keep back January (after new year's week, when it's available) and February as a maintenance period when we can get anything big that needs doing done. Even so it's rare we've made the 183 days actually let out required to still class as business rates.

It's an absurd idea. I agree the current levels are laughably low, but the result of this huge increase is going to be a lot of dumped cottages. All very well, the Welsh Nationalists will say, but who's going to move into Beddgelert? There are no jobs in the close vicinity. The train network's not good enough for a commuter lifestyle and the buses take forever. Added to which being in the National Park makes it fiendishly complicated to do anything to the buildings because they're all listed. So they're very expensive to run, which means that people on low incomes won't want to live in them even if they could afford the initial outlay and had some mythical job that would make it worthwhile. Then of course there's the issue of fewer people coming to the area because there's nowhere to stay, which means an even smaller local economy and because it's in the National Park, no one's going to be building big hotels any time soon! 

I think a lot of people are against the idea. 

For me it's the speed of the proposal. Did you have any warning or consultation. I am with the principle but this sounds OTT and a lot of testing would be required to get it right. Will it apply to static caravans? 

I can't imagine the funding raised will be spent locally. It seems more of a deterant to investors. 

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Ive lived in several desirable areas in the UK and its the same story everywhere, wealthy people buy up houses as second homes,  why not tax  second homes possibly by 100% and the extra income could be invested into the local community e.g building affordable housing, investing in long term employment opportunities or improved amenities for local people

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Hello, I think you need to go back before gazumping and most new builds were available to most, 1970s ?? If you bought a property then average 3 to 5 £K what would it be worth now with inflation, compare that with the gazumping years the greedy estate agents, now house builders and billion £ profits and buying second homes to rent out as a holiday home has put 95 percent of young people not able to buy in places like Cornwall , many do this as part of their pension with rent income, that seems reasonable, but you then get landlords with multiple properties and it's all about profit, I feel for our young generation still in school years and now with this cost of living crisis what have they got to look forward to ?

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