Landlord explains why cottages are for locals
APROPERTY owner in Cornwall is changing his holiday lets into long-term residential homes in response to the county’s housing crisis.
Robert Gray, an actor and antiques dealer, has been renting out three cottages in Portscatho to holidaymakers for over 50 years.
While his father was born in Cawsands, and he would visit frequently as a child, Robert moved to Cornwall permanently four years ago, residing in one of the three cottages. Now he has shared the news of his decision to rent the remaining two properties to local people in need of long-term homes.
While one has recently been let, the other will be available from September. According to estimates by estate agents Barrows and Forrester, there are more than £2 billion worth of empty homes in Cornwall, which is around 7,083 empty houses in the county.
Robert said: “How I see it, it’s rather like an Agatha Christie book. If you look at Miss Marple and where she lives, the fictitious place of St Mary Mead, it’s all very beautiful. But if you took the characters out, it would just be like a sepia photograph – the people are the colour.”
Robert, said: “We’ve got to have holiday lets and it’s perfectly legitimate, as long as you go back and use it rather than parking your money in property and then using it one week a year. I think that’s the heart of it. All these houses probably have spare rooms or outhouses, but of course they’re all empty.”
Robert’s experiences had left him feeling that second homes caused a loss in the sense of community owing to the properties often being vacant and due to a lack of consideration or interest in local people even when owners are present.
He added: “I’ve been coming here a long time but I remember, when I came here permanently, I thought: ‘You have to tread softly, it’s not my area, I don’t own it’. But I don’t feel this is everyone’s attitude. There are two second homes that back on to me and they’re doing a big extension on the house and building a great big shed right on my boundary.
“They’re perfectly entitled to do it,
I’m sure, but I just think it would have been polite to say: ‘I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to put a shed here’. It’s the arrogance of it.”
In addition, Robert said that local people are being driven out by unaffordable prices, partly driven up by wealthy owners of second homes, demonstrated by someone offering him £40,000 for a single parking space.
He said he remembered in the 1980s someone bought a tiny seafront cottage as a second home for a high sum “and we all had a giggle about the ridiculous price”, but “the giggle has rather disappeared. Portscatho has become a ‘Chelsea-onSea’ where cottages are like a paint chart from Farrow and Ball”.
He added: “In the height of the season, sometimes you hear these Sloane Square voices and they can be very insensitive to the situation locally. It’s like that marvellous Catherine Tate sketch. If you get a towel that’s saturated, what do you do? You ring it out. That’s what people need to do with the excessive second homes in Cornwall.”
Robert charged up to £1,500 a week for each of the cottages, sleeping four people, as holiday lets. They are now on the rental market for £625 a month, which includes parking spaces and outbuildings.
He said: “It will be less money but money isn’t everything. The two cottages are fairly small; they’re one up, one down, with outhouses. They’re exactly what Cornwall needs – it’s the bottom end of the market, pricewise, for people starting out or who can’t afford an awful lot. It’s not as if it’s a five-bedroom house.
“Yet, I have no doubt that if I put them up for sale they would be snapped up as second homes or holiday lets because they’re chocolate box cottages.”
Many people responded to Robert’s Twitter posts, expressing gratitude and hope that others would follow in his footsteps. Abigail Johnson said: “Thank you. So much housing is needed down here for local people. The lack of affordable homes is horrendous,”
Sally Burton commented: “Good to hear. Hoping other property owners follow.”
However, Robert was also met with some cynicism. One person, Philip Ryan, commented: “Wow! That’s really generous, after a lifetime of preventing locals the chance to live in their home towns, you’ve decided to retire because you can’t be bothered to manage renting out those properties. The sad thing is that you really think that you are being generous.”
Robert said: “Whatever you do, you get criticised so I’m tending to get rhino-skinned about everything. Someone said to me on Twitter, ‘you’re only doing it to make yourself feel good’, but that’s not the reason at all. I can say, hand on heart, I wasn’t in the holiday let business for a quick buck, I’ve been doing it for 55 years.
“Actors don’t work all the time ,so this was my livelihood. The reason I’m doing it is to give something back. I want to give something back to the village.”
‘They’re exactly what Cornwall needs – it’s the bottom end of the market’ ROBERT GRAY