"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
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"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
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But the net result is that buying a holiday home is
depriving someone else of a permanent home.

Only if there is a local shortage of housing. If you buy in
France, for example, there are tax advantages to buying a
new property, so there are lots of older properties around
that nobody wants. They are the ones invariably offered to
the British buyers.

Colin Bignell

Just in case you hadn't noticed this discussion has nothing to do with
France or any other country outside the UK.

I suspect the same would be true in parts of Britain, but I don't know the
housing situation well enough across the country to be able to give specific
examples from the UK. Although second home owners are blamed for pushing
prices up in rural areas, they probably first went there because the locals
wanted better wages than they could get locally, so they moved out,
depressing the local house market and making the houses cheap enough to
attract outside buyers.

Colin Bignell