Dream second homes are now a nightmare

Dispel those dreams of owning a holiday home in the sun, says Merryn Somerset Webb. Once you've totted up all the costs, you may find it's not worth it.

Every time I go on holiday, I am, like everyone else, gripped by the need to look in estate agents' windows and dream of owning a house in the sun that I can fill with local bric-a-brac and return to every year. Fortunately, I tend to have neither the cash nor the depth of enthusiasm to tarry too long at any one window.

Why fortunately? Because I don't have a euro mortgage. I don't have to worry that Ryanair might cut flights to my favoured French airport. And I don't have to spend wakeful nights totting up all the extra taxes that cash-strapped governments are slapping on houses owned by non-residents. As The Sunday Times points out: "Britons who own holiday homes in France are facing a double whammy of higher mortgages and property charges."

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.