1.5 million people have a second home
23rd Oct 2012
More than a million people in the UK have a second address in a town away from their primary UK property, a new study from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has discovered.
At a time when there is a shortage of housing stock in the rental market, driving prices up, the ONS said that these homes were not including those used for a buy-to-let purpose.
The 1.5 million who own these second properties amounts to 2.8 per cent of the residential population of England and Wales, with 77 per cent of people who have these houses saying that they owned them for purposes not including holidays or for work reasons.
The majority are student houses that parents have purchased rather than forking out for rent each month, while some parents are also citing a second home for a child that has separated parents as a reason for having two addresses.
However, despite 11 per cent of people saying that they use a second address for holidaying, the ONS said that this was "not equivalent to an estimate of holiday homes".
"These estimates could include, for example, addresses that are used over the course of the year, by more than one person."
Posted by Staff Writer: Ewan Robertson
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