Colin Bignell wrote:

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.

Actually where I am second home owners came because it's a nice place. And
house prices weren't depressed, they merely weren't inflated - locals
weren't moving out, but there wasn't the growth as seen in the SE.

clive