‘It was ours but now it’s gone’: Residents in Europe’s tourist hotspots slam second home ownership

10.04.2024 - 22:37 / euronews.com / Rebecca Ann Hughes

In 2022, the flower-bedecked, lakeside town of Gérardmer in the Vosges mountains was rattled by a spate of vandalism attacks.

An environmental saboteur targeted outdoor jacuzzis at holiday rentals and second homes amid rising tensions between tourists and local residents during a water shortage emergency.

Since then, there has been growing discontent in holiday destinations in France as locals contend with the soaring number of second homes.

Across Europe, other tourist hotspots are also feeling the strain; in Cornwall, Wales, Barcelona and Lisbon, residents are being priced out.

Roughly one in 10 properties in France is a second home, some owned by foreigners but predominantly by French people.

Affordable prices in rural zones mean having a holiday home is a luxury that is not just accessible to the rich.

Along France’s glitzy coastlines and throughout its bucolic mountain ranges, communities are losing their housing to tourists.

The ski resort of Germ in the Haut-Pyrénées classed nearly 97 per cent of properties as second homes in 2019.

While having dozens of properties that lie empty for large portions of the year is not conducive to community spirit, it is also fuelling a serious housing crisis in France.

Thousands of communes are officially designated as ‘zones tendues’ - ‘tense zones’ experiencing a housing shortage and pricing out of locals.

In these areas, authorities can increase the housing tax on second homes by up to 60 per cent.

In Saint-Tropez, for example, the tax hike on holiday properties raised an estimated €3 million in 2023 which the council say will be used to develop affordable homes for residents.

The regulations have been spurred by mounting local resentment at the growing unaffordability of homes in their own community.

Like in Gérardmer, frustration has sparked vandalism in the Brittany département. In 2022, two properties in Morbihan were graffitied with the messages “Finis les riches” (No more rich people) and “La BZH aux BZH” (Brittany for the Bretons).

Throughout Brittany and Corsica, second homes - which make up as many as one in three properties - have increasingly become targets for arsonists, French media has reported.

Recently, regional authorities in the two areas proposed plans to limit the purchasing of properties to those intending to live in them permanently.

In the UK, tensions have flared in Cornwall as local residents face a similar housing crisis.

In 2022, graffiti slogans appeared on a number of properties. “Second home owners give something back: Rent or sell your empty houses to local people at a fair price,” was written on a holiday home in St Agnes.

Property prices have been steadily rising along the coastline; the town of Redruth saw an increase of 25 per cent from 2019