Low-use homes in rural and coastal areas of the UK: Geography, impact and responses

This report presents evidence on the extent and impact of ‘low-use’ homes in rural and coastal areas of the UK and offers ideas for measures to tackle this problem. Low-use homes are dwellings that are significantly under-used, where a resident is not ordinarily present. This includes long-term vacant or derelict dwellings, but also those used as second homes, and those rented out for short periods. While much of the research on vacant and empty homes has tended to focus on urban areas, this project focused on rural and coastal areas that face particular housing pressures and dynamics including tourism, seasonal availability of employment, and concentrations of low-use properties (LUPs), often manifest as second homes and short-term lets (with these two categories often overlapping). This report offers a broad assessment of the problem of low-use property by bringing together quantitative and qualitative data to build an evidence base on low-use homes in ‘blue’ and ‘green’—coastal and rural—localities. We use council tax data collected through freedom of information requests to record the extent and concentration of low-use properties at a granular level within local authorities to pinpoint problem areas. We combine this data with a statistical analysis of house prices in these areas to consider whether areas of second homes are associated with higher property prices. This data will be especially useful to policymakers and other stakeholders looking to pinpoint areas with high concentrations of low-use properties where interventions may be necessary.