Six Reasons for buying a lodge in Devon

A lodge is not a house (which is good!)

Let’s be frank. Second home ownership in seaside towns is not generally a positive development for local communities. It pushes up house prices and reduces the housing stock available to local people to buy or rent. Houses are often empty for most of the year, contributing almost nothing to the local economy. If they are let to holiday makers, it can often be to the detriment of those living nearby, who must suffer a carousel of temporary neighbours.

However, lodges on established holiday estates, are everything that bricks and mortar second homes are not. They take nothing from the local housing stock, instead, bringing only additional revenue into the tourist economy. In fact, in the 2019 UK Camping and Caravan Alliance report, holiday parks were estimated to have generated £9.3 billion in visitor expenditure and supported over 170,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Three years and a staycation-creating pandemic later, those figures are almost certainly higher. Buying a lodge is the ethical way to own a holiday home.

Easy come, easy stay, easy go

Aside from the importance of respect for the local community, there are many other reasons why buying a lodge on a holiday estate is a wise choice. The purchase itself is easier and cheaper than buying a house – at Lakeview Manor, our lodge prices start at 20% below the average cost of a house in the Southwest – and the real sweetener is that there is no need for conveyancing, no stamp duty to pay and no council tax, which all adds up to a massive saving. And the purchase price includes furniture, appliances and soft furnishings. The benefits continue after your purchase; the grass is cut, flowers bloom, fences are painted. Your service charge covers it all. There are maintenance people to fix the things that go wrong, security people in case things go bump in the night and even people to clean your hot tub for you after you leave. Lodge ownership is just so easy.

“Devon, Devon, Glorious Devon”

It’s an old drawing room song from the 1920s but ‘Glorious’ Devon is as good a description today as it ever was. Devon has all the ingredients needed for the perfect holiday home. The Gulf Stream influences a mild climate and sunshine hours are among the highest in the UK (perhaps it’s no coincidence that Devon is home to the Met Office HQ). Devon is the only English county with two separate coastlines and, wherever you stay, you’re never more than an hour from the sea. From the Jurassic coast in the south, where children can spend happy hours searching for ammonites and dinosaur footprints, to the wilder surf-dude vibe of the north, there’s 700km of coastline waiting to be explored.

If that were all of Devon it would be enough. But there’s more, so much more. The two National Parks, Dartmoor and Exmoor, offer some of the most unspoilt and open moorland in the UK with endless opportunities for hiking and biking. The county is dotted with Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, including the Blackdown Hills, where Lakeview Manor enjoys a privileged position. And – most important for a holiday home – Devon is easy to get to. While Cornwall may tempt the explorers, the risk-takers and probably the helicopter owners, Devon is for the pragmatists; the people who realise that a bolthole needs to be easy to get to for a weekend or it’s just an expensive outpost.

All in all, with its natural charms, its temperate climate and its easy accessibility, Devon is a glorious choice for the location of your holiday lodge.

Everybody needs a bolthole

Irish poet, W.B. Yeats knew all about the yearning for a peaceful spot, away from the hustle and bustle. If you haven’t read Lake Isle of Innisfree, read it right now. What Yeats captures is a sense of escape from the ‘grey pavements’, a feeling of ‘peace dropping slowly’ and the ‘lake water lapping’. It’s a change of scenery to refresh and reinvigorate your spirit, a place you can escape to and where you can stay for as long as you need; your own little hideaway where life is on your terms. At Lakeview Manor, that escape is as real as it can be, with the lush Devon countryside surrounding the woodland and lakes of the sensitive lodge development.

Lodges are purpose-built for down-time

Lodges are not houses (did we mention that?) They don’t grumble and creak in the winter like old bones, they’re not in suburbia with traffic and graffiti, and they don’t have a thousand jobs that need doing just to keep them habitable. The whole point of a lodge is that they are for down-time. They are purpose-designed for easy maintenance; they come with a view and a hot tub, if that’s your heart’s desire. They are built with holidays in mind so that you can arrive and find yourself out on the decking with a beer within minutes, and when it’s time to go home, you can lock up and leave until you’re back again. Most holiday resorts have an onsite shop to cover you for emergency bread and tea, impromptu Prosecco parties and forgotten toothpaste, many have safe play areas and entertainment for children, and at Lakeview Manor, we also have a bar and restaurant, The Dabbling Duck, open for breakfast pastries and fry-ups through to late-evening nightcaps. Everything is designed around down-time, when you drop your responsibilities for a while and truly relax.

You can generate an income

You might want a Devon holiday lodge so that you can have a change of scenery every weekend or perhaps spend the whole of summer in the Southwest. Or you might prefer the idea of enjoying the laid-back, peaceful Devon that presents itself to out-of-season visitors. Whatever your preferences, chances are you won’t be staying in your lodge all the time. And this opens the opportunity for creating an income by subletting your lodge. Most of the owners at Lakeview Manor use our letting service at some point in the year. Many maximise the higher revenue summer months and this pays for their own relaxing breaks at other times of the year. We handle the whole process of letting, from taking bookings to the housekeeping services that keep your lodge pristine. And our letting figures for 2021 are jaw-dropping, showing that you could generate over £30,000 per year. You can let it as little or often as you like and it’s a great fall-back position if you find you can’t get to your lodge as often as you had planned.