"Mikael Armstrong" wrote in message
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"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
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"Mikael Armstrong" wrote in message
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"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
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Given the that the increased road congestion in Friday and Sunday
evenings

It is the lack of supply which will have driven prices up.

Lack of supply, excess of demand.... whats the difference? It is entirely
subjective.

Lets face it, out
of teh total population, very few people have 2nd homes,

No, but the number of homes being sold as second homes is growing faster
than first homes, so they are having an effect on growing prices.

so you would not
have to let many new homes to be built to offset the effect in the areas
concerned. Lets allow people to build a few more houses in the areas
people
actually want to live in, rather than proposing more construction in the
areas already filled to the brim.

Um, people _do_ want to live in London, and there are 100,000 new homes
propesed. What is the problem with that?

People travelling to their 2nd homes pay plenty of tax travelling to
them.
I
would suspect most traffic though is caused by people seeing friends
or
relatives, or travelling to/from their place of work for the week.

The thing is, most people with a 2nd home will travel there every
weekend
without fail.

And so what? They already pay the petrol tax, they will have paid stamp
duty
buying the house (another unfair tax), and no doubt they will be high
earners paying fair amounts of income tax too.

Because they if they are rich enough to be buying a second house (which I
regard as the ultimate frivoulous activity), they can certainly afford to be
screwed for every penny by the tax man.

And as people keep seeming to forget, every pound that one of these rich
kids pays is a pound that the poor don't have to pay.

Many people owning 2nd homes probably also spend a reasonable amount in
the
local area where they travel to at the weekends, and perhaps will have
employed local people to renovate the houses if needed. Wealth and
properity
comes from people doing business, not from taxes.

Except of course they do _far_ less business than someone for whom that is
their first home.

Parts of the west country are dying off thanks to second home buyers, there
are just not enough people around to support the economy.


Mikael