What is a holiday home?

Or is it a "second" home?

Good question I hear you ask (well perhaps not).

It is important to distinguish between what is a holiday home and a second home. To me a holiday home is where you go for a “holiday” - kind of obvious but there is a serious point behind the statement.

Many people buy a holiday home with the intention of visiting as often and for as long as they can. Than to me is more of a second home especially if they don’t go on any other holidays. Nothing wrong with that approach in principle but it can very get very monotonous (it did for us). In my humble opinion (you will hear that phrase often) such an approach only tends to work if there is something to do at the second home that you can’t do at home. Now that could be something as simple as access to a warmer climate. I have several friends with second homes in Spain who spend time there to escape the vagaries of the English weather.

I guess the ultimate definition of a second home is one that could be your first home now or in the future.

I categorise our property as a holiday home and not a second home. We don’t visit at every opportunity as there is nothing there that is unique in terms of things to do. We do book 3 weeks for our own family use and take full advantage of the lake access for our grand children to paddle board and swim etc. But these kind of things are not of such intense interest for us to go there at every opportunity. We have other interests for holidays such as skiing and visiting different places.

So why is this differentiation important? Well it comes down to your motivation for buying another property - be it a second home or holiday home.

To my mind you have to be absolutely clear in your own mind what you are getting into. I can actually speak from experience here. We bought our property as a second home and very quickly realised that visiting every weekend possible was not the lifestyle for us. We did however furnish our property as a second home to our own tastes and preferences. This highlights another differentiation between a holiday home and a second home. It is not easy to rent out a second home to “just cover our costs”. If you are going to rent out then in my humble opinion (there I go again) then you need to commit 100%. I would also maintain that if you need to rely on renting to cover your costs, then perhaps a re-evaluation of the financial case would be appropriate.

Location is a key consideration here as well. You may fall in love with a location but your “love” may not be mainstream enough to generate sufficient rental income to cover your costs.

Second homes do work for some people. Some friends bought a second home in a remote area of Scotland because they fell in love with the area. Difficult to rent out but it did not matter as they eventually moved there permanently.