第二居所
- This article is about purchase or long-term rental of second homes. See vacation rentals for limited stays in vacation homes.
A permanent vacation home, holiday home or second home is usually a long-time investment, for decades, or even generations to come. In a low-income country, or a less busy countryside, it does not need to cost a fortune.
Second homes of strangers or friends may be available for short-time rent, either directly or through some rental agency, as vacation rentals.
了解
[]People have second homes for a variety of reasons. In general, ownership becomes more economic the more time you want to spend at a place.
- As a place to spend vacations and maybe weekends at some distance from the main home
- As a place to stay when working away from home; working abroad or studying abroad
- for elderly people to retire abroad, or to spend periods away from home in a comfortable manner
- Families with children could prefer a vacation home over a hotel, with a safely adventurous environment, and opportunities to find new friends
- Traveling with pets can be enjoyable if they can stay in a vacation home surrounded by nature
- As an investment to be leased out to others ("buy to let")
- As the main home for other family members
- Family properties which have been inherited, or which used to be the primary residence before occupants left a rural area for the city
Although some points apply to any type of second home, this article focuses on homes for vacation use. We assume that the second home is some distance away from your main home, but it might be in the same country a few hours drive away, or it might be on another continent.
抵达
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You should consider transportation when buying your second home. If getting to your dream château involves a strenuous hike over rocky footpaths, you may want to ask yourself whether you want to do that once you're old and frail and how you'd get anything you need to your abode.
您家附近的机场今天可能航班便宜，但几十年后它还会运营吗？丹佛和慕尼黑的机场都已在夜间迁往新址，新的丹佛机场比旧机场远了 15 英里/25 公里，而慕尼黑机场甚至搬迁了 20 英里（32 公里）。铁路可能更持久，但过去也有支线被废弃，火车也可能停止停靠您所在主线车站。如果政治发生变化，道路可能会收费，如果您无法或不想再开车了，您该怎么办？
最常见的情况是，小屋会坐落在偏远乡村地区，没有机场，没有铁路服务（或者，很少有，只有赔钱的铁路服务连接到某个没有公路的偏远地区）也没有公共交通。有些完全脱离电网的地点只能乘船到达。即使有可通行的道路，如果只是穿过邻居农场（私人土地）的一条单车道砂石路，如果积雪未及时清除，冬天可能无法通行。从纽芬兰偏远的沿海村庄到千岛湖的一些地方，许多景点都变成了鬼城，因为唯一的通道是通过已不再运营的渡轮。想进去吗？买条船——并找到一种方法，在您离开时将其妥善保管。如果您梦想中的度假地是一个没有公路通道的岛屿，运送物资会非常辛苦：您开车到港口，卸下汽车，将物资搬到船上，将所有东西装上船，在码头卸下，然后搬到小屋。一个地方越偏远，人造或自然灾害造成的交通中断就越不可能被优先修复。如果一条主干道一天无法通行，可能会成为全国头条新闻。如果雪崩切断了您度假小屋的交通，您可能几个月后才会知道，这个问题可能需要数年才能解决。
A property that's off the grid and only reachable by float plane or snowmobile may look like a bargain (or a chance to "get away from it all") initially, but a place that is difficult to reach will also be harder to sell later.
Some pieces of property come with a private driveway, or a cooperatively owned road. In that case, the upkeep cost is on the owner.
类型
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- Cottage/cabin: A detached house outside settlements. Plumbing, electricity and other infrastructure is usually inferior to urban homes in the same country, and the toilet might be an outhouse or similar. Cottages and cabins often lack proper heat or insulation, limiting them to seasonal use.
- Old farms can survive as holiday cottages, where the land can be used for leisure activities, such as gardening and horse riding. Although they are built for year-round dwelling, this is according to the standards of their heyday, without modern comfort (heating may be by stoves only, and an outhouse toilet is less comfortable in cold winters). Later repairs may have mixed incompatible techniques; this can cause all kinds of problems. If you like the opportunities the farm or its buildings and milieu provide, this can be a bargain, but maintenance of the buildings may require quite some work.
- Prefabricated house: An empty lot with building rights can be settled with a prefabricated house, provided that it is within reach of the delivery vehicle. Prefab houses come in different sizes and shapes, and they are usually economic and reliable. Make sure to find a solution for electricity, water supply and toilets. Making the foundations may be your responsibility and not included in the price, like any amount of finishing work. Also make sure the house satisfies all regulations in the building rights, that you get all needed permits and that you fulfill your responsibilities as commissioner.
- Resort home: A cluster of houses or apartments built for vacation guests. Might have communal facilities. Occupancy might vary with seasons, from deserted to overcrowded.
- Dwelling house: Living with the locals in an urban or suburban house built for year-round residence. Usually more practical and social than a rural house. Can be expensive, especially if you look for an attractive neighborhood.
- Apartment: An apartment, condominium or flat with some communal facilities. Might be built for permanent residence or vacation. In some cases a set of apartments is constructed by dividing a larger house.
- Gated communities provide more a perceived gain in security than actual gain in security and you may feel uncomfortable "hiding behind fortress walls". At high-risk destinations, some companies won't let their employees live outside one.
- Static caravan/trailer: A caravan which is kept in the one place, often on a site of similar caravans. Generally these are larger than the caravan which you would tow behind a car, and with water and electricity connections. Not directly comparable with other second homes as a caravan has a much shorter life and is not a house. Depending on the design and type you may be able to move it around once every few years if you decide the current location is less than perfect.
- Dacha: Common especially in the former East Bloc, it is in theory just a hut in a garden away from the city apartment, but has in many cases grown into a veritable second home over time. Some of those expansions may be illegal, but the law may not be enforced. There may be a stipulation not to live more than a certain part of the year in a dacha or rules requiring cultivation of the adjacent garden lot. Getting a dacha (or "Schrebergarten" in Germany) often involves buying out a previous owner, joining an association or having contacts. It is usually not easily available to non-residents of the country or region
- Beach house: Properties on or near a beach are popular among people where either their hometown is far from the beach or the beaches nearby are too crowded. If you are building a beach house, make sure it can withstand the unique conditions, including being built on sand, and being protected against salt water and waves.
优点
[]- You don't need advance scheduling for your own home. Come early or late, stay early or late.
- Make your own rules. Handle wear and tear as you want, and improve if you have the time and money to make the place the one you like (within some limits).
- Real estate is perceived as a relatively predictable and safe investment. If you buy in a recession and sell during a boom, you can turn a profit. There is of course a risk for the opposite.
- House ownership might give some legal privileges - including easier residency or citizenship in foreign countries in some cases.
- A prolonged stay in a new place gives opportunities for a new social network.
- To spread the cost, owners can offer their vacation home to rental, home exchange or timeshares.
- It can be something handed down in your family or to hand down to (biological or social) descendants and is often associated with memories and stories
缺点
[]Owning a piece of real estate involves a lot more paperwork (and risk) than simply going to a place for vacation
- Maintenance takes time and money. Finding and following up a repair firm away from home, is a challenge.
- Vacation homes are prone to theft and other intrusions, especially when the owner is gone.
- Any damage which happens while you're away can go undetected for months, causing small problems to become larger.
- The house is tied to one place. If you enjoy seeing more than one place, choose a location with many interesting attractions a day trip away.
- There may be tax implications, such as having to pay property taxes in two locations and capital gains tax when you sell higher than what you had purchased it for.
- Localities with a lot of vacation homes might seem sterile and empty out of season.
- You are less flexible – if your airline chooses not to fly to the airport close to your vacation home or some public transit service is withdrawn you cannot simply go elsewhere.
- If you own a structure (or structural improvements) on leased or rented land, the owner of the land may sell it out from under you. Depending on the local legal situation, it may be profitable for the owner of the former caravan park to sell to condominium developers, but the hapless tenant is left having to pay to remove or demolish structures on the land when the tenancy is terminated.
- If the underlying land was freehold when the cottage was built, but has since become part of a national or provincial park, there may be severe restrictions on the use of the property – if it's possible to remain there at all. Similar pitfalls apply to any structures built on native land; as the native first nation owns the underlying reserve, they may demand you remove your structures and leave at any time.
费用
[]Work out what the running costs of your property will be. Things to allow for include
- Taxes on the purchase price of property; a higher rate may be charged for second homes.
- Local property taxes (rates, council tax etc). These may change over time.
- Charges for road maintenance etc. Any subventions from the state may change in the future.
- Management charges if you are in an apartment or park development
- Insurance can be expensive if you're miles from the nearest fire brigade (or the nearest fire hydrant). Small amounts of damage become bigger problems quickly if water enters a damaged roof at an unattended site. Monitored alarm systems (or observant neighbors) are valuable, if they're available.
- Electricity, telephone and Internet will cost more in a remote location, if they exist at all; off the grid, your only connection to the outside world may be a satellite dish. Ability to have providers turn utilities off when the cottage is vacant for the winter (and the cost of doing so) varies. If heaters, sump pumps, monitoring or alarm systems must remain online, they will incur power costs and be more vulnerable to some disasters. Having the utility turned off by the provider may or may not reduce the yearly bill.
- If you're off the grid or the grid is sketchy, weigh the pros and cons of solar, diesel and small scale wind energy. Diesel tends to be cheaper in initial investment but has higher running costs as well as noise and exhaust problems. In remote locations there is also the headache of getting the diesel there and the question what happens in case of a leak. Wind power plants are often only economical at rather high energy output – often more than a single house needs. A small scale combined heat and power plant may be an option depending on climate (some can use the generated waste heat for cooling) and locally available fuel type. Using wood as fuel in a forested landscape may be cheap, but the cheapness may depend on your doing heavy and time consuming work or having good relations to a forest owner and a lumberjack.
- Gas (where available; rural areas often rely on bottled propane)
- Water and sewage. If you're off the grid, a well and septic tank can be costly to maintain. Removing salt or sulfur from well water can be expensive.
- Repairs – unfortunately this is almost impossible to reliably predict. While many buildings do need more repairs after a certain amount of lifetime has passed (often thirty to fifty years), depending on construction, climate and just plain luck you may live mostly maintenance free for decades or have to have expensive repairs done quite often. Knowing your way around easier repairs certainly helps. Knowing things to do to prevent certain faults before they occur can also save huge sums of money.
- Costs of your trips to visit if property issues arise, or the cost of employing a local agent
Purchasing buildings and land for occasional or seasonal use can get expensive – it is a house, however primitive, with the associated acquisition, maintenance and property tax costs. Some try to minimize these costs by sharing ownership with friends or colleagues; for instance, four different owners might each have use for a quarter of the time. These fractional ownership arrangements get complicated and awkward; what happens when one of the owners dies, goes bankrupt or wants out? What if a major repair is needed which one of the owners can't afford? For that matter, what happens when all or multiple owners want the cottage on the same long weekend?
Insurance for a second home is generally more expensive than for the same house being used as a main home. Insurance policies may impose limits on how long you can leave the property unoccupied, or require that the property is inspected regularly. Policies may also require the property to be heated (to a low or not so low temperature) in winter even when you are not there. Ensure that you are honest with the insurance company about how the home will be used or they will have an excuse to refuse any claims that you make.
购买或租赁
[]All countries have different laws, regulations and tax systems for property. Sellers and real-estate agents might not tell the whole truth, and some fraud schemes are associated with holiday property sales. Seek out the destination country's tax agency, or another national authority, for complete information. Timeshares have a bunch of issues of their own.
Most people buy their second homes, but a few are leased. If you are leasing, you are likely to be making a long term commitment and many of the same considerations apply. In some types of vacation home development, you may have to do a combination of both – buy the physical house, but lease the land it is sitting on. Unless the house is cheap to build or easy to transport, the legal implications may be convoluted.
Buying a home is a major purchase and is subject to the local laws on property ownership (and sometimes special rules on second homes). You may be surprised at the differences compared with the laws you are familiar with at home. It is important to take good independent advice. Whilst you may get useful informal advice in the early stages of looking at buying a second home, you should pay for professional advice before you enter into any commitments (or sign anything). Unless you are fluent in the local language, it will be easier if you can find professionals who speak English.
Abandoned houses in some depopulated towns can be bought at a near-zero token cost (1 euro in some villages in southern Italy), but the purchase comes with a commitment to restore and maintain the property.
Do you have any knowledge on the future of the neighborhood? Is your nice countryside villa in an area planned to become a suburb? Or where the motorway is to be built? At least check official plans. On the other hand, if most neighbors are old, the village may lose its shop, post office and bus line as the population drops – or you may lose the good neighbor who was keeping an eye on your place while you were away. On the other hand, don't "bet" too much on a future that may never come. Mad Men (set in the 1960s) famously has a throwaway joke about an apartment being a steal because of the "soon to arrive" Second Avenue Subway – a line which only opened in 2017. All forms of infrastructure can fall victim to this, so don't bet on that "soon to be inaugurated" piece of infrastructure if you cannot do without.
If you lease your house, the contract is not necessarily renewed when the term ends. What about your children (or grandchildren) who spent all their summers there and love the place? Even the "99 year lease" frequently employed in Commonwealth countries to mean "essentially forever" can expire, as happened in Hong Kong in the 1990s, leading to it being given over to the People's Republic of China; something nobody who was around for the drafting of the original lease would have seen coming.
Remember that over the long term your plans can change for many unpredictable reasons, so always consider how easy it would be to sell the property. In some countries particular types of property might mainly appeal to overseas purchasers and then selling your property might become harder should exchange rates move, the political situation deteriorate or immigration policies change.
餐饮
[]Smaller vacation homes have a very basic kitchen, if any at all. Many countryside houses are outside the electricity and water supply grid; if they have electricity, blackouts might be more common than in cities, possibly shutting down the refrigerator. Some countryside kitchens rely on propane, wood, or other fuels. A ground cellar can be used to keep groceries cool.
Drinking water might be drawn from a well, or from a retailer.
A vacation home far away from supermarkets and restaurants requires thorough planning.
活动
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Rights for fishing or foraging might, or might not, come with property ownership, sometimes depending on how you write your contract. In some places old farms also entail old rights to distill your own alcoholic beverages out of surplus produce or various other almost feudal sounding rights or duties. Many of those rights also have "use it or lose it" clauses embedded in them.
If the house is at the waterfront, boating might be an option.
While repairs can be one of the major downsides of a weekend home, many owners especially of weekend homes that are easy enough to reach and close enough for short trips come to enjoy upgrading and repairing and working on their weekend home and unlike many other hobbies, it provides with an immediately apparent benefit outside the fun of the hobby itself.
哪处是第二套住房
[]如果您的第二套房与您的主要住房在同一国家（或您拥有公民身份的国家），您或许可以选择哪个房产在税务、投票和其他事务上被视为您的主要居所。您可能可以选择在另一个省或联邦州指定一个主要居所，这可能会影响一切，从所得税率到汽车保险的价格。有必要告知有关部门，以免他们做出错误的假设。有些家庭会将第二套房申报为一个家庭成员的主要居所，以获得两处房产的税务优惠。另一方面，公共服务可能与居住地挂钩，您不想为了半紧急的医疗需求或为孩子报名当地公立学校而不得不去您的夏日小屋。有些地方会征收第二套房税，而有些地方只对主要居所征税。这部分是因为有些资金是根据某个地方的主要居民数量分配的。“第二套房税”在那些遭受“寒冷赌注”（大量第二套房，居民大部分时间居住在其他地方）的地方往往更高，也更普遍。
How free you are to choose your official primary home varies by jurisdiction and sometimes by decisions by local authorities. In some countries, houses are classified as homes and vacation lodgings, where the latter may not be accepted as primary homes. Some may allow an unmarried couple to have a separate nominal primary residence for each person, while denying this option to married couples with rare exception. That's unfortunate if your contingency plan is that you keep one place each if you divorce later.
Sale of a cottage may incur capital gains taxes in jurisdictions where the primary residence is exempt. Governments often offer subtle home ownership incentives, such as a lower down payment for an insured mortgage on a primary residence or tax breaks on mortgage interest payments, for which a secondary residence or a rental income property might not qualify. Some jurisdictions allow a buyer of an existing rental home to evict the current tenants only if they intend to live in the unit themselves.
If you own one building and rent elsewhere, it may be tempting to designate the owned land as "primary" – if that doesn't put your principal residence in a high-tax jurisdiction far from your workplace and change your local school district to some small village a hundred country miles away. Some provinces deny professional or building trades licenses to non-residents. Want to draw extensive scrutiny? Accept a public or elected office, where seats are allocated per jurisdiction and often weighted to favour small provinces or states. Hordes of journalists investigating whether your tiny cottage on Prince Edward Island is habitable year-round may seem far-fetched, until your seat in the Senate (and its generous travel and lodging allowances) suddenly becomes dependent upon your actual residency in that province.
关注事项
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Some real estate may be far away from the comforts of modern life, like running water, electricity or even mail service. While it may be a refreshing experience to "get away from it all" and usually reduces the price of a prospective second home quite a bit, many find themselves researching the costs of Diesel aggregates versus solar panels or small scale windmills within a few seasons of buying a "rustic" second home with no electricity. Houses that aren't hooked up to local water or sewage mains may be environmental hazards or even violate local laws, and it is certainly not pleasant to deal with the waste product of human digestion in an area where no infrastructure to take care of that exists.
Houses are usually built for permanent living. There may be problems with moisture when heating is off (or vegetation not kept at bay), and keeping systems on when nobody is there is costly and may involve hazards: think of plumbing breaking in your absence. Things that could easily be solved or would not be a cause for concern in a home that you live in can become a major headache if it happens during your absence. If a storm knocks a few tiles off the roof at home, you can have it fixed before more damage occurs. If it happens during the beginning of a long off-season, you might come back to a very expensive repair, to be arranged when you had looked forward to your vacation stay.
Many of the steps in getting ready to leave your ordinary house are equally valid when leaving your second home for the season (and do not fool yourself to depend on a later visit that you might not have time to do).
Pests can be a nuisance, especially in wooden houses, and in the tropics. Overall, natural disasters that aren't a concern at your regular home might be a risk if your second home is located in a different environment; even, say, in a mountain range just a few hours' drive away.
Before buying, consider natural hazards in the area. Sea levels have been rising, which means low-laying property may be at risk at high tides combined with storms. Also flooding rivers have become more common in many regions, because of more rain or because of wetlands being taken into other use. In some places areas prone to flooding have been taken into use because of big demand, perhaps also relying on better water level management, which may or may not live up to expectations.
法律问题
[]If your house has special cultural values, it may be or become protected, severely restricting what you are allowed to do. Sometimes also quite ordinary houses have odd restrictions on what may be done. Most importantly, repairing a valuable 19th century house may require your using old techniques and materials, paying for skilled craftsmen instead of buying off the shelf products. You might enjoy its atmosphere and be proud of owning and maintaining it, but you'll need the budget or the skills, preferably both.
如果房产在外国，情况会更复杂。有些司法管辖区（如墨西哥）不允许外国人购买土地；有些则要求额外征税或在获取当地抵押贷款时设置障碍，有些则要求您耕种您购买的农场。房产可以出售，无论市场能承受多少，但会带来额外的税务陷阱——在出售、赠予或继承房地产时产生的任何资本利得，都可能在您的母国和房产所在地被双重征税。然后还有边境管制带来的噩梦；只需要一个无法追责、面目不清的官僚随意认定您购买土地的意图可疑，将您标记为非法移民并完全禁止您入境。您现在拥有一处昂贵的小屋，但您已无法合法访问；您将很难从国外安排出售。在欧盟内部（如果您是欧盟公民），情况要容易得多，但您的国家可能会决定退出欧盟，从而产生许多意想不到的问题。
购买任何房产时，务必确保您获得良好、无负担的产权，这一点至关重要。否则，您可能会在没有赔偿的情况下被迫搬离，或者需要花钱来解决问题。有时，产权问题是由于赤裸裸的欺诈造成的，骗子出售他们不拥有的房产；对任何提供异常优惠价格并希望快速成交的人都要保持警惕。或者，房产可能有多人拥有合法权利：父母去世后，他们的房子可能有多个子女继承；前夫和前妻等；不精明的买家可能会卷入家庭纠纷的争斗中。在某些国家，原住民土地主张可能与定居者主导的政府所认为的情况相冲突，又一个无辜的买家可能会卷入争斗。在许多国家，在房产上工作但未付款的承包商可以在该房产上注册“留置权”；没有支付他们，就无法获得清晰的产权。抵押贷款人也有权利，必须在产权转移前支付。
您需要对潜在的产权问题采取何种措施因国家而异；您的第一步应该是寻求当地专家建议。在许多地方，聘请一位好律师来处理您的购买就足够了；他们将在标准程序中检查产权，并确保在交易结束前或交易时所有留置权或抵押贷款都已付清。在一些地方，您可以购买产权保险，以在以后出现意外问题时保护您，这有时是一项非常好的投资。
当地人
[]Good relations with the neighbors can help immensely to prevent problems deteriorating and to find people or firms to do maintenance and repairs. Even in the wilderness there may be hunters, fishermen and others roaming the neighborhood, who could look for anything out of the ordinary when passing by. In sparsely inhabited areas people often know each other and every regular visitor, so getting in touch with the right people may be easier than one would think.
You may wish to consider what your neighbors will think of a house near them becoming a second home. In some scenic areas locals are unhappy that their families cannot afford to rent or buy a house nearby, due to property being bought as second homes by people from elsewhere. In other locations the locals may be delighted that a nearby house is going to be used rather than allowed to become a ruin. In general, the people around your second home – especially those who stay around most of the year while you're not there – are perhaps even more important than the people around your first home. Build a good relationship, even a friendship with them and many things get easier. Annoy or enrage them and you may be in for a world of hurt.