Picturesque Cornish village becoming ghost town as house prices slashed by £100k

A picturesque riverside village is quickly becoming a ghost town thanks to second homes, with locals warning people who "lock up and leave" are "killing" the community.

Golant, in Cornwall, is a stunning village nestled on the banks of the River Fowey, and just a few miles downstream from the glittering Cornish coast. The local beauty should, on the surface, keep the community humming with local activity, but sparsely populated Golant has largely attracted affluent outsiders. Properties have been snapped up by second home owners, many of whom, business owners have warned, "lock up and leave", but even they are now being discourage from buying, with prospective full-time residents even harder to come by.

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Debbie Pugh-Jones, 69, placed her Golant home on the market this year for £400,000, a price she felt was reasonable given the £425,000 some in the village's vicinity fetched during the Covid pandemic.

She was forced to reduce the price of her waterside home by £100,000, and is still yet to sell, telling Cornwall Live nobody at all looked at the house between November and April, when fewer people visit Golent. While she criticised council tax raises on second-home owners as the fault of the village's dwindling popularity, she also acknowledged that there is little to attract newcomers.

Cornwall Council has levelled a 100 per cent Council Tax premium on second homes which activated from April, 1, 2025 a move local officials expect could raise an additional £24 million, while also dealing with the controversial presence of second home owners.

Ms Pugh-Jones said: "Around half of the houses in this village are second homes and the rest are retired people, there are very few people working in this village." 

She added: "People living here used to work in farms and on the boats but all those industries are gone and the village doesn't have a school, it's not near a bus route and it doesn't have any amenities.

Nick Budd, a local landlord of The Fisherman's Arms village pub, said second home owners who "lock up and leave" are "the ones that kill us", while those who set up holiday lets bring some business during the warmer months.

He said: "It's a hard one because not all second home owners are the same. You have the holiday lets which are great for us, because when people come on holiday they want to eat out and drink in the pub. Then you have the lock up and leave its and they are the ones that kill us.

"The overwhelming outcome of property price rises is young people cannot afford to buy a house in the village and that situation needs addressing."