The Telegraph are reporting a landlord previously owning 25 holiday homes.  Despite the booming staycation market and ability to rent out the properties for tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, the landlord recently starting scaling back, and now has just five holiday lets to their name.

Blaming the anti-holiday home rhetoric by the previous Housing Secretary Michael Gove, the landlord commented “More regulatory hurdles and the fees that come with them will cause the cost of doing business to rise significantly and with it the price of insurance and debt,”

Going on to say “If the Government is seriously worried about a housing shortage it needs to go back to basics; driving out investors isn’t the answer. I am certainly considering selling up altogether.”

After years of generous mortgage deals and little government regulation, the legislative tide seems to be turning on holiday home owners.

In June the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it was planning to close “tax loopholes” while “introducing higher rates of stamp duty and empowering councils to apply a tax premium of up to 100pc on second homes.”

Local authorities have been granted the power to double council tax bills on second homes not in use or let out for at least 70 days per year.

The changes are designed to protect areas like Cornwall from becoming ghost towns during the off-season.