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These are the second home statistics for 2026 that get cited most. The US had 6.2 million second homes in 2024, down from the pandemic peak. Around 30% of all US home purchases now involve co-buyers. And the average second home gets used only about 11% of the year, so it sits empty for roughly 10 months. My family co-owns a place in Ticino, and most of those numbers line up with what I see running it.
In this post: How many exist · Cost · Usage · Co-ownership · What it means
How many second homes are there in 2026?
The United States had 6.2 million second homes in 2024, equal to 4.3% of all housing units. That count comes from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and the 6.2 million figure was reported by Residential Design Magazine. The number has been falling for a while. It stood at 6.5 million in 2022 and roughly 7.15 million in 2020, according to the National Association of Home Builders' analysis of Census data. That is close to a million homes gone in four years.
These homes cluster heavily. Florida alone holds about 944,000 second homes, around 15.2% of the national total, and half of all US second homes sit in just eight states. So they are bunched into far fewer places than people actually live.
Europe looks different on the surface but lands in a similar spot. France counts 3.7 million second or occasional homes as of January 2024, about 9.8% of its 38.2 million housing units, per INSEE, the French national statistics office. That is a much higher density than the US figure, which fits France's long tradition of the family country house. In England, the 2022/23 English Housing Survey from GOV.UK found that 4.3 million households owned a second property, though only 712,000 of those were used as a personal holiday home. The rest were rented out, stuck in inheritance, or held for some other reason.
The three biggest markets, side by side:
| Country | Second homes | Share of housing stock | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 6.2 million | 4.3% | 2024 |
| France | 3.7 million | 9.8% | 2024 |
| England | 4.3 million second properties (712,000 used as holiday homes) | not published | 2022/23 |
One caveat worth being upfront about. There is no single Eurostat number for the share of EU households that own a second home. The agency does not publish one, so anyone who quotes a neat continent-wide figure is almost certainly extrapolating. The numbers you can trust come from the national statistics offices, which is why the France and England figures above are pulled straight from INSEE and the UK government rather than a blended estimate.
Is second-home ownership growing or shrinking?
Shrinking, and the turn has been sharp. The pandemic pulled a wave of buyers into the second-home market, and that wave has now gone out. In 2024, US lenders issued 86,604 new second-home mortgages, the lowest figure in years, according to Redfin's analysis of mortgage data. That is just 2.6% of all mortgages, down from a peak of about 5% in 2020. Second-home buying ran at roughly one-third of its pandemic-boom volume.
Europe is going further in places. In the Netherlands, private second-home owners were net sellers in 2024, offloading roughly 18,000 more homes than they bought, per Rabobank citing CBS and Kadaster figures. When people who already own these homes start selling instead of adding, you are looking at a genuine contraction, not just cooler interest from newcomers. Fewer people are buying in on both sides of the Atlantic, and the owners who are already in are mostly holding or trimming, not buying more.
The typical second-home buyer is older and wealthier
The people still buying second homes are not a cross-section of the population. They sit at the top of the income range. The same Redfin analysis found that 86.4% of 2024 second-home mortgages went to high-income buyers, with a median income around $280,000. Middle and lower-income buyers have been almost entirely priced out of this part of the market.
They are older, too. Buyers between 45 and 64 took out about 58.6% of 2024 vacation-home mortgages. And in a detail that says a lot about who can afford this right now, Baby Boomers were the only age group buying more second homes than the year before, while every younger cohort pulled back. The market is being propped up by people who already have a lot of home equity and savings.
What do they want the home for? Mostly themselves. An Ameriprise survey of affluent owners found that 81% use the place mainly as a personal getaway, and about a third see it as a future retirement home. Rental income is a side motive at best. That matters for the cost picture, because it means most owners are footing the full bill themselves rather than offsetting it.
What does owning a second home actually cost?
The sticker price is the smallest part of the story. The median US second home was worth $495,000 in 2024, against $385,000 for a primary home, a premium of about 29% per the Redfin data. But you pay the purchase price once. The carrying cost is what grinds on every year.
A rough rule of thumb, laid out by Bankrate, is that a cash buyer should budget around 2% to 3% of the home's value per year just to keep it running, and that figure can climb past 7.5% of the purchase price annually once a mortgage is in the mix. On a $495,000 home, the cash-buyer band lands somewhere between roughly $10,000 and $15,000 a year before a single mortgage payment.
These are real bills, not rounding. Bankrate's study of hidden homeownership costs put the average at about $21,400 a year in 2025 across maintenance, utilities, property tax, and insurance, and that is for a single home. A second property roughly piles a second helping on top, often for a house nobody is in. The bills show up whether anyone visits or not.
Then there is tax, which keeps moving one way. In England, from April 2025, 71% of councils now charge up to a 100% council-tax premium on second homes, as the UK Commons Library explains. In the Netherlands, the Box 3 wealth tax takes its own annual bite on a deemed return from the property. So owners pay more each year for homes that sit idle most of the year. That is the squeeze behind the next two questions.
If a household shares one of these places, the carrying cost turns into a coordination problem on top of everything else. Spreading $20,000 or more a year across several families only works if you have a clear system for tracking and splitting those costs across everyone who shares the place. Without one, the bills land unevenly, and resentment follows.
Rental income rarely covers what a second home costs
Renting the place out is the offset most owners picture paying for everything. The numbers say it usually does not. AirDNA, which tracks short-term-rental performance, reports that the average US short-term-rental host earned about $14,000 a year. Occupancy across the market runs around 55%, so even an actively rented home sits empty close to half the nights it is available.
Set that against the carrying cost and it gets tight fast. That $14,000 gross has to cover the 2% to 3% annual carrying cost on a roughly $495,000 asset, or the 7.5% if there is a mortgage, which already puts the expenses above the income. And $14,000 is the top line, not what lands in your account. Full-service property management usually takes 25% to 40% of revenue, which can drag the host's actual return down to a few thousand dollars before maintenance and tax are paid. For most owners, renting takes the edge off the cost without ever turning a real profit.
How often do second homes actually get used?
This is the one that changes how you read all the rest. The average second home is used only about 11% of the year, which leaves it empty for roughly 10 months. That number comes from Pacaso, citing an EBP economic study, published on the Pacaso blog. It is a vendor estimate, so it is worth checking against a hard government number. The government number backs it up.
The US Census Bureau reports about 4.3 million "seasonal" vacant housing units, which is the largest single category of vacant housing in the country. More homes sit empty because they are seasonal than for any other reason, including homes for sale or for rent. So the official count and the industry estimate end up agreeing: these properties spend most of their lives empty.
Empty does not mean low-effort, though. Owners still sink time into upkeep. Angi found that homeowners spend roughly 140 hours a year on home maintenance for a primary residence, and a second home roughly doubles that. So the typical second home gives you about six weeks of actual use in return for a full year of bills and a couple hundred hours of maintenance. That gap, between what these homes cost and how little they get used, is the real problem. The practical fix is coordinating bookings so the home actually gets used.
Why are more people co-owning their second homes?
Because sharing fixes both halves of the problem at once. It splits a cost no single household wants to carry, and it makes the home far more likely to get used. The trend is big and still growing. About 30% of all US home purchases now involve co-buyers, up from 26.7% in 2023, and roughly 61 million Americans co-own a home with someone other than a spouse, according to a 2025 CoBuy report. To be precise about it: that 30% covers all home purchases, not second homes specifically. But it shows how fast shared ownership is turning into a normal thing to do.
The appetite for sharing a vacation home in particular is high. A 2025 Pacaso survey found that 80% of US adults like the idea of co-owning a second home. When you can split a $495,000 asset three or four ways, a place that felt out of reach starts to look doable.
What co-owners say they struggle with lines up almost exactly with the day-to-day of running a shared house. In the CoBuy data, 94% want a written co-ownership agreement and about two-thirds want clear roles. Groups tend to be small, usually three or four people, which keeps those agreements manageable but no less necessary. That is the gap a shared way to run a co-owned home is meant to fill, turning a loose arrangement into something with a bit of structure.
The friction here is real, and it usually starts with roles. When nobody has agreed who pays the insurance, who books the plumber, or who handles the spring open-up, each of those turns into a small negotiation. Agreeing who handles what up front clears out most of the recurring arguments before they start.
Inheritance is the other main way people fall into shared ownership, and it is the messier one. An Ameriprise study on money and family found that about a quarter of inheritances cause family tension, that 68% of asset-holders plan to leave real estate to their heirs, and that 56% have never discussed it with them. So a big share of future co-owners will inherit a shared house with no plan and no conversation behind it. That is about the worst place to start for a group that suddenly has to run a property together.
What these numbers mean for shared-home owners
Put it all together and the picture is fairly clear. Second homes are expensive to carry, often $20,000 or more a year, with carrying costs that can run past 7.5% of the purchase price annually once a mortgage is involved. They sit empty most of the time, used only about 11% of the year. And more of them are owned by groups, with co-buyers in 30% of US purchases and 80% of adults open to sharing a vacation home. Add those up and one conclusion keeps surfacing.
More and more, the value sits less in buying a second home and more in running a shared one well. A property costs the same whether you use it six weeks or twenty-six, so any group that actually fills the calendar comes out ahead. A bill that lands evenly across four families causes far less friction than one that does not. And a house that passes between owners cleanly stays something people enjoy instead of something they fight over. None of that means buying more. It means running what you already have with a bit more structure.
I want to be honest about the limits, though. No tool fixes a family that will not talk to each other, and software cannot manufacture goodwill that is not in the room. What a shared system can do is take the small recurring frictions off the table: the double-booked weekends, the unsplit bills, the question of who left the heating on. A lot of that comes down to smooth handovers between the families who share it, the unglamorous handoff from one stay to the next. Get the running of the place right, and the numbers in this guide stop reading like a warning and start reading like a plan you can work with.
