Second Home Ownership by Country: Who Owns the World's Holiday Homes

Published on: August 6, 2026

Last verified: 6 August 2026. Figures are the latest available from the named statistical offices; definitions vary by country as noted.

Quick answer: France holds Europe's largest count, 3.7 million résidences secondaires, about one home in ten; the US counts roughly 5.5 million seasonal homes (around 4% of the stock); Finland has a summer cottage for every eleven residents. Most second homes are domestically owned by older, wealthier households, not by foreigners. And the rules are tightening fast: Switzerland caps second homes at 20% per municipality, Denmark largely bars non-resident buyers of summer houses, England and Wales charge council-tax premiums of up to 100% and 300%, and Croatia's 2025 property tax reaches exactly this stock.

Roughly one in ten homes in France is not anyone's home at all: it is a résidence secondaire, used for weekends, summers and ski weeks. Norway has close to one cabin for every twelve residents. The United States counts millions of homes as "seasonal, recreational or occasional use." This page maps where second homes are, who owns them, and the fast-tightening rules around them, because holiday homes have moved from lifestyle statistic to political battleground in less than a decade.

First, a definition worth keeping straight: a second home is used part of the year, which statistics offices treat differently from a vacant home used by nobody. Countries draw the line differently, which inflates some "empty homes" figures with what are really holiday houses; we flagged that trap in the world's empty homes, and this page is the other half of that story.

Second homes by country

Croatia, Portugal and Alpine Austria and Switzerland all carry similarly heavy concentrations along their coasts, lakes and mountains even where national averages look modest; in France, more than 350 communes are over 70% second homes, with the extreme case, the Pyrenean village of Germ, holding 671 second homes for 38 permanent residents.

Who actually owns them

The best-documented answer comes from INSEE's deep dive into French second homes, and it demolishes two popular assumptions at once:

• They are mostly not foreign-owned. Only about one in ten French second homes belongs to a household living abroad. The overwhelming majority are domestic.
• They are owned by the old and the comfortable. Two-thirds of resident-owned second homes belong to households headed by someone 60 or older (three-quarters in some coastal zones), and 34% belong to the top tenth of households by living standard. Only 3% belong to the bottom 90%'s poorest segment.
• They cluster where people don't work. About 40% sit on the coast and 16% in the mountains; the coastal strip alone holds 38% of France's second homes on 13% of its housing, meaning 28% of all coastal homes are secondary.

The Nordic pattern rhymes but with a crucial cultural difference: the cabin is a mass institution rather than an elite one. Finnish mökki and Norwegian hytte ownership runs deep into the middle class, often inherited, often modest, and often the emotional center of family life; surveys consistently find a large share of Nordic households with access to a cabin through family even when they do not own one. In the US, the seasonal stock splits between classic vacation markets (Florida, the lakes, the mountains) and snowbird migration housing, and the National Association of Realtors tracks vacation-home buying as its own market segment, one that surged in the pandemic and has since cooled with rates.

The squeeze: second homes become policy targets

Because second homes concentrate exactly where housing for locals is scarcest, the 2020s have produced a wave of restrictions, and any prospective buyer should know the big ones:

• Switzerland has capped second homes at 20% of the housing stock per municipality since the 2012 "Lex Weber" referendum; in most Alpine resorts, new second homes effectively cannot be built.
• Denmark holds a special EU treaty protocol letting it bar non-residents from buying summer houses; even EU citizens generally need years of residence or a permit.
• Austria's Tyrol and Salzburg restrict Freizeitwohnsitze (leisure residences) through quotas and permits.
• England allows councils to charge a 100% council tax premium on second homes from 2025; Wales allows premiums up to 300%, and most tourist-heavy councils use them.
• France lets designated tight-market communes levy a surtax on second homes' taxe d'habitation, and hundreds do.
• Croatia's new annual property tax, in force since 2025, exempts primary residences and long-term rentals, which makes it in practice a second-home and vacant-home tax, as we detail in countries with no annual property tax.

We cover the tax side of this global trend, from Vancouver to Paris, in second home and empty home taxes. The direction is uniform: using a home part-time is becoming a taxed privilege in high-demand places, while remaining untouched, even courted, in depopulating ones, where second-home buyers are often the only demand left.

What this means if you are buying one

1. Price the premium taxes into the yield math from day one. A second home in Wales, coastal France or Dalmatia now carries recurring charges its primary-residence neighbor does not, and the gap is widening, not narrowing.
2. Check whether you may buy at all. Denmark's summer houses, Swiss resort quotas and Austrian leisure-residence permits are eligibility questions, not cost questions, and they bind before you ever see a tax bill.
3. Use classification honestly. The line between second home, short-term rental and vacant property now determines your tax treatment in a growing list of countries; registering the use correctly (as Croatia's long-term rental exemption shows) can change the annual bill dramatically.
4. Buy where second homes are wanted. The same purchase that is politically contested in Cornwall or Lake Annecy is actively welcomed in emptying inland Spain, rural Japan or the Italian villages selling houses for a euro. The market's warmth toward you varies more by geography than almost any other factor in cross-border buying.

Frequently asked questions

Which country has the most second homes?
In absolute European terms, France, with 3.7 million résidences secondaires, about one home in ten. Relative to population, the Nordic countries lead: Finland has roughly one summer cottage for every eleven residents.

What share of US homes are vacation homes?
Around 4% of the housing stock, roughly 5.5 million units, is classified by the Census Bureau as for seasonal, recreational or occasional use, concentrated in Florida, the Sun Belt, lake and mountain regions.

Are most second homes owned by foreigners?
No. In France, only about one in ten belongs to a household living abroad; most holiday homes everywhere are domestically owned, typically by older, wealthier households. Foreign buyers dominate only in specific resort micro-markets.

Where is it hardest to buy a holiday home?
Denmark (non-residents largely barred from summer houses), Swiss municipalities at the Lex Weber 20% cap, and Austrian regions with leisure-residence quotas. Elsewhere the barrier is increasingly fiscal rather than legal: council tax premiums in England and Wales, surtaxes in France, Croatia's 2025 property tax.

Is a second home counted as an empty home?
Statistically, sometimes, and that is a major source of confusion. Serious statistics separate seasonal use from true vacancy; countries that lump them together overstate their "empty homes" dramatically.

Keep reading on JanusHermes

Second homes are the most geographically concentrated market in cross-border property, which makes local rules matter more than national averages. JanusHermes aggregates local agency listings across more than 50 countries in 11 languages, with the local agency's contact details on the listing.

Planning the purchase? Start with the holiday-home starter guide and the best time of year to buy abroad. On the rules and costs, see second home and empty home taxes, countries with no annual property tax and the 90/180 Schengen rule for second-home owners. For the flip side of the map, read the world's empty homes.

This article is general information, not tax or legal advice. Second-home rules and premiums are set locally and change frequently; verify the current position for the specific municipality before buying.

Primary sources: INSEE second-home statistics and the Insee Première study "Deux résidences secondaires sur trois sont détenues par un ménage de 60 ans ou plus"; US Census Bureau, American Community Survey (seasonal, recreational, occasional-use units) and National Association of Realtors vacation-home research; Statistics Norway, Statistics Sweden and Statistics Finland holiday-home counts; INE Spain 2021 census; Greek census data via Eurostat Census Hub; the Swiss Second Homes Act (Lex Weber); Danish summer-house acquisition rules; UK and Welsh council tax premium legislation; French taxe d'habitation surtax rules; Croatia's real estate tax (2025).

Figures are the latest available as of August 2026 and rounded; definitions vary by country as noted.