Six percent of Estonian residents have multiple homes - census

Photo: Maret Välja

Six percent of Estonian residents have multiple homes, reflecting a growing trend caused by people's increased mobility, Statistics Estonia said citing data from the 2011 Housing and Population Census.

For the first time the 2011 census included a question about a second or third home. “What is meant by a second home is not a summer home where urban residents spend one or two months annually, but a dwelling where one lives at least three months every year," Ene-Margit Tiit, methodology chief for the 2011 census, said in the statistics blog.

Nor is having two homes or two apartments in the same municipality considered as possession of a second home.

The first or primary home is by definition shared by the whole household. The need for a second home mostly arises from working or studying far from one's primary home. The census did not look at the form of ownership of a second home -- whether it belongs to the respondents, is rented or used on some other basis.

The percentage of people with second homes would be considerably greater if summer and country homes and cottages owned by many Estonian residents, where people spend a month or a couple of months in the summer, were also included.

About 30,000 Estonian residents have a second home abroad. This, according to Tiit, quite well corresponds to the fact that 25,000 people from Estonia shuttle to work abroad, in addition to an unknown number who study in another country. The second dwelling is most often situated in Finland, with Russia as number two and other Nordic countries as number three. The United Kingdom follows in fourth place.

Almost two-thirds of second homes are situated in Estonia and most often it is rural residents who maintain a second home. People whose place of work is situated hundreds of kilometres or even across the sea from their home are more likely to have a second home. This is consistent with the finding of the census that relatively many residents of the islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa maintain a second home.

While men and women are almost equally represented among people with second homes, in a breakdown by age young people of ages 20–35 dominate.

Additionally, many people from abroad maintain a second home in Estonia. At the time of the census, 5,500 foreign domiciled people lived in Estonia temporarily, with the top three countries of origin being Finland, Russia and the UK. Almost two thirds of such persons had Estonian citizenship and had been born in Estonia, meaning that they had left Estonia to take up residence elsewhere but were now in Estonia again.