The Holiday Home Dream Is Dying

In 2021, 447,000 people had a holiday home where they spent more than 30 days – up 4.7 per cent in ten years. 

That’s 0.76 per cent of people in England and 0.56 per cent of people in Wales.

Some 77 per cent of them were aged 50 years and over, and they're getting older: the peak age of holiday home use was 64 in 2011 and 73 in 2021.

Most holiday homes are outside the UK, but the gap is closing as the number spending time in a UK holiday home is growing – from 180,000 in 2011 to 217,000 in 2021, and the number spending time in a holiday home elsewhere is falling – from 246,000 in 2011 to 230,000 in 2021.

These figures are taken from the most recent Census.

For younger people, the dream of owning a holiday home is dying. It’s hard enough to imagine being able to afford a property of their own, let alone the outlandish possibility of buying a second property. 

More people have a holiday home than ten years ago, but those who own them are getting older.

Less than one per cent of people in England and Wales have a holiday home, and over the past decade, owners have become much older. Now more than three quarters of them are over the age of 50, and the peak age to have a holiday home has risen from 64 to 73 in ten years. 

This looks distinctly like there’s a specific cohort of people who were able to buy a holiday home when it was far more affordable and are now ageing.

For younger people, the runaway price of property has made it far harder to get onto the property ladder, let alone consider a holiday home. 

The number of people aged 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 with holiday homes has fallen over the past decade, while the number of people aged 70 who have them has risen. 

In 2021, a 70-year-old was almost 11 times more likely to own a holiday home than a 30-year-old, while ten years earlier they were only around six times more likely.

The age of holiday home owners may be part of the reason why we’re not keen to buy a bolthole at the other end of the country, where a trip would be more taxing. 

The average distance between a usual address and holiday home in the UK was 145.7km. Half were within 112.9km.

We’re also retreating from overseas properties, which may be because as holiday home owners age, they don’t want to have to travel so much and so far. 

Brexit may have played a role, not least because currency movements and lower mortgage availability will have made buying and staying overseas more expensive. 

There may also be those who were unable to use a property for periods during the pandemic, and felt it wasn’t worth the expense.

* Sarah Coles is head of personal finance at business consultancy Hargreaves Lansdown *

Want to comment on this story? Our focus is on providing a platform for you to share your insights and views and we welcome contributions.
If any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.
Please help us by reporting comments you consider to be unduly offensive so we can review and take action if necessary. Thank you.