Highland locals are being squeezed out by skyrocketing house prices

Many local people, Highland people, can no longer afford to buy a house or rent here and so they, especially the young, are forced to move away. Whereas before it was to be replaced by sheep, now it is to be replaced mostly by wealthier people, including those who are snapping up the properties for their second (and sometimes third and fourth) homes.

At the last count in 2018, there were 3800 second homes in the Highlands. Almost one-fifth of the houses on Skye are second houses or holiday homes. Some of those properties have as much as doubled in price in the space of only five years and have especially gone up since the lockdown.

A house price history search on Rightmove shows that in 2017 a three-bedroom property in Fort William was bought for £102,000.

In January of this year, it sold for £200,000. In Kinlochleven, a village an hour’s drive away, a three-bedroom house sold for £82,000 in February 2019. Late last year, it went for £125,000. There have been many dramatic price increases elsewhere.

“I am working two jobs and sometimes 60-hour weeks just to scrape something together to try and get a mortgage,” says Gordon Cameron, who is working at a Fort William restaurant. You can see his frustration, and hear it in his voice. “But it’s almost impossible. And all my friends are the same.”

Locals can’t work here if they have nowhere to live, so the outward migration continues as it has for years.

The area has relied on European workers to fill job vacancies. But due to Brexit – which Scotland and indeed the Highlands did not vote for – the numbers of European workers are a tiny fraction of what they were. The hospitality industry is desperately short of staff.

Walk down the main street of Fort William, or indeed any town centre in the Highlands, and you will see businesses closed during peak hours. Businesses closed two days a week so the staff can get days off. Businesses operating for only four days.

“All across the Isle of Skye, businesses are struggling for staff,” says Deirdre Curley, owner and manager of the Sligachan Hotel. “It’s down to many factors, but Brexit is probably the biggest. It’s just too difficult to get European workers in without them having settled status.

“They are almost completely gone. I have at least seven excellent former staff members who came back year after year before Brexit, who I could call right now and they would be here, if they could. But they can’t anymore.

“And housing is a big problem too, it’s too expensive to rent anything, so most hotels and businesses don’t have enough staff accommodation. And for locals, it’s cheaper to move away and get a flat in Glasgow.

“I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s really changed. Most businesses here are only open for five days due to lack of staff, and I think could maybe be the year when a lot of them have to give up and close.”

It doesn’t seem fair that some people are allowed to live what they want and where they want simply because they have money to blow, while local people can’t and that Europeans who could work here and help to build up the economies and help local businesses are no longer able or allowed to.

But what can be done about it? It seems the only solution is to regulate it and the Scottish Government is in the process of doing that. It has now brought in legislation that will target short-term letting properties and second homes. Local authorities have until October 1 to establish licensing schemes, and existing hosts have until April 23 next year to apply for licences for the places they are letting.

Some towns in Cornwall, which had similar problems, have already done this and have effectively banned second-home ownership, mostly for new-build houses. Wales has increased council taxes on second homes to a premium and set new local rules for holiday lets.

From April 2023, the maximum level at which local authorities can set council tax premiums on second homes and long-term empty properties will be increased to 300%. Welsh Parliament member Sian Gwenllian said: “It is clear we as a country are facing a housing crisis. So many people cannot afford to live in their local areas, and the situation has worsened during the pandemic.

“These changes will make a difference, enabling councils to respond to their local circumstances, and start to close the loophole in the current law. It’s a first, but important, step on a journey towards a new housing system that ensures that people have the right to live in their community.

“We are committed to introducing a package of measures to tackle the injustices in the housing market. Second homes are a symptom of a wider problem – a market that treats property not as a home but as a way of making a profit. By working across the parties we will introduce more measures as soon as we can, to make house prices and rents genuinely affordable for people.”

There is also a loud call for building more houses, and especially affordable houses – there is a minimum of 400 applications on the Skye and Lochalsh housing list all year round. And perhaps that too, is what’s needed. There is not much room in the small Fort William area and the glens to expand and it is absolutely crucial not to decimate the beautiful wildernesses and landscapes too much.

Personally, I would like to see Mallaig expand, with affordable houses, and a sustainable community within it. But it is essential to me that this would be based on something like the Findhorn Foundation in Moray, with buildings that are beautiful and unique and would fit with the town they are located in, and are not the identical, flat-pack rows of commercially driven pop-up houses that ruin a place’s character and now make so many places look so generic.

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Mallaig is on the popular tourist route to Skye and close enough to Fort William, yet just enough removed from some of the most scenic places so as to hopefully not damage them. But that is only one idea. Letting out rooms or properties can be a great and much-needed source of income for people and why shouldn’t they be able to do that?

It gives locals and owners financial help, brings money into the economy, and helps with the booming tourism industry which is only getting bigger each year. But perhaps it does need to be more closely monitored, so that communities are not ripped out and displaced, or houses left empty.

A few months ago I visited the old city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. It was like walking through a museum. There was no energy. No soul. No life. No vibrancy. Nothing. So many places had been bought over for holiday lets that all the houses and apartments and streets were no more than the empty places of ghosts that once were.

Is that what we want?