Why I’m keeping my holiday home secret
It’s no surprise that nearly a third of Britons with a holiday home keep it a secret, says Katie Stewart
Trailing my toe in the infinity pool, I felt a twinge of excitement. Behind me, a terracotta-topped villa shimmered in the warm winter sun, only a tangle of fuchsia bougainvillea casting shade across its walls. Beyond the pool, row upon row of vines stretched down towards the Mediterranean Sea.
Staying in such a spectacular pad provides a taste of another life; you know, the sort that other people tend to live. But this time, it was mine. Three months ago, my husband and I bought this beautiful four-bedroom bolthole near Valencia for a steal from an owner desperate to sell.
Keep it under your sombrero, though, because our hideaway is a secret. Bar our parents and siblings, we’re not telling a soul. And we’re not alone. An estimated 1.1 million Britons own a second home in the EU – France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, in the main – and a recent poll by survey company OnePulse revealed that around a third of them keep it on the QT. The reasons are varied, but the most common concern (for 58 per cent of owners) is that friends and family will expect a freebie. Others worry that spreading the word would be seen as bragging.
In our early forties, with a young son, our purchase feels like just reward for years of hard work – my husband in construction, me as a journalist – and being shrewd with our money. However, we might not have kept it under wraps but for a chance conversation with a friend. We were discussing taking a break in Mallorca when he whispered that he and his wife had owned a villa for 15 years in the very town we were visiting. No one, except their immediate family, had a clue.
“If it were common knowledge, we’d have spent years fending off requests for ‘a week in June’,” he told us. “Once you let one friend stay, you open the floodgates to the rest.” When we subsequently confided our own plans to buy abroad, his advice was clear: keep it to yourself or it won’t be the escape you want it to be.
It’s a sentiment shared by Andrew Burton, 51, and his wife Jacqui, 43. Ten years ago, Andrew, a successful businessman, flew from Yorkshire to Quinta do Lago on the Algarve with “£850,000 in my pocket” and returned with the keys to a luxury villa with private pool. “We bought it as a retreat for us and our three kids,” says Andrew. “We wouldn’t invite other people to use our house in the UK, so why should our villa be any different just because it’s in the sun?”
According to Chris White, founder and MD of Ideal Homes Portugal, an estate agency on the Algarve, it’s increasingly common for people to make surreptitious purchases overseas. “There are far more Britons than you would imagine with secret hideaways,” he says. “Up to 25 per cent of our clients don’t tell anyone.”
Although Andy Bridge, MD of holiday home agency A Place in the Sun, believes it’s “admirable” not to brag about a second home, he says there can be benefits to being less guarded. “Letting others use it can help with the running costs,” he says, “and having a paying friend or family member visit who can cut the grass while there can be useful.”
Still, friends or not, they may not treat your home as you would. We’ve had plenty to stay at our house in the Midlands who have left the guest room and en suite looking like a war zone. Giving them the run of our holiday home would leave my nerves frayed.
But there’s something else at play, too. The lines between our work and personal lives have become so blurred now that even on holiday it can feel like there is no escape.
“Who doesn’t sometimes hanker after the days when we’d disappear to the Med for a fortnight and, other than calling home once from a payphone, there’d be no reminder of normal daily life?” says Natasha Greenhalgh, 48, an architect who bought a gîte near Bordeaux in 2013 with her husband Nick, 51, and decided not to tell a soul. “Letting others in on the secret would complicate it. There’s something liberating about people not knowing exactly where we are.”
When my husband and I invited friends over for dinner last weekend, they asked about our most recent trip to Spain: “Did you stay in a villa?” “Yes, we did,” I replied. “Would you stay there again?” “Yes, I think we will,” I said, poker-face in place. Again. And again.
‘If you let one friend stay, you open the floodgates to the rest’