Holiday Homes & The Carbon Footprint
Many holiday home owners are worried that their holiday property may be less accessible as a result of climate change feature griping world headlines. The latest buzz phrase doing the rounds is' carbon footprint". this expression is a representation of the effect human activities have on the climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases produced and measured in units of carbon dioxide. Thus someone with a large carbon footprint would be burning or helping to burn a lot of fossil fuels. Anyone travelling on a regular basis to a holiday home in Spain for example, could be said to have a large carbon footprint.
As an example a person travelling from London to Malaga ( a journey of 3376 kilometres) would produce 0.480 tons of CO2. A trip to a holiday home for example could be seen as an avoidable trip and thus an extra amount of CO2 had been pumped in to the atmosphere for no reason.
Feeling guilty? then don't worry holiday homeowners, there are a number of initiates designed to help reduce Carbon Footprints and anyone wishing to ease their environmental conscience can visit www.carbonfootprint.com and offset any trips to the holiday home by making a donation ( usual only a few pounds). This money is then put towards projects which will plant trees and forests etc which can help reduce the effect of green house gases by turning harmful CO2 back in to Oxygen
This is a wonderfully simple idea that can be effective but of more worry to holiday homeowners is perhaps the chance that governments will eventually decide to restrict the number of non essential air flights, flying is seen as a direct contributor to global warming. Less flights, means more expensive airfares and any one looking to obtain a second income by letting out their holiday home are likely to see bookings decrease if the would be holiday makers find the cost of the flights to be too expensive.
Many areas of France and Spain have seen fairly dramatic increases in property prices off the back of cheap airfares at it will interesting to see if these areas remain popular if they prove harder to reach. Of course if you are a British Expatriate, the cost of airfares is hardly likely to bother you, trips back to the UK will be infrequent and thus airline charges will be less of a worry.
Many holiday home owners have been asking if there is any way of insuring, that property prices are not effected by rising aviation costs. The simple answer is know but logically and area that is popular and served by a large number of airlines is likely to be Ok, if your holiday home is in an obscure location with a tiny airfield served by only a sprinkling of budget airlines, you may find that in the event services are suspended or cancelled because of fuel prices or restrictions your investment may appear a little less attractive.
Assetsure a UK insurance intermediary and provider of Holiday Home Insurance said " At the present moment, none of our customers seem to be too bothered about the possibility of reaching their holiday homes being cancelled or curtailed"' We receive little insurance enquiries from homeowners seeking protection against loss of bookings and we do not believe an insurance market exists for this type of enquiry.
