Eleven Scottish communities now contain more second homes and short-term lets than permanently occupied dwellings, according to council tax and licensing data compiled for this article.
All eleven are coastal. Nine are in the west, two in the north east. In the highest, 63% of dwellings are in occasional use.
In every case the crossover happened within the last four years.
What a majority-empty village is like
The practical effects appear in a predictable order, and residents in all eleven described the same sequence.
The bus goes first, because the passenger numbers no longer justify it. Then the shop’s winter hours shorten, then the shop. The school roll falls below the threshold for a second teacher. The football team folds because eleven players cannot be found in February, though there are two hundred people in the village in July.
“It is not a ghost town. It is worse than that. It is full for eight weeks and dark for forty-four, and you cannot run a school, a shop or a life on eight weeks.”
A resident of one of the eleven
The counter-argument, fairly put
Owners and letting agents make a case that deserves stating. Visitor spend supports businesses that would otherwise not survive at all; many second homes were bought from owners who wanted to sell and had no local buyer; and a good number of properties now let out were derelict a decade ago.
All of that is true, and none of it addresses the February problem, which is the one residents keep raising.
The eleven
- Communities where occasional-use dwellings exceed permanent: 11
- Highest share: 63%
- All eleven crossed the threshold: since 2022
- Communities within five points of crossing: a further 26
- Bus services withdrawn in the eleven since 2019: 7
The policy levers that exist
Councils can charge up to double council tax on second homes, and most now do. Short-term let licensing gives some control over new entrants. Neither has reversed the position anywhere.
What has worked, in the two communities that have pulled back from the threshold, is housing built and held by a trust and let only to people who work locally. Both took nine years.
