Part-time Villages: How Second Homes Are Hollowing Out Mallorca's Communities

When the neighbor is only here in summer: The quiet transformation of our villages

You can hear it on an early morning in Palma: the rattling of a scooter, the rustle of bakery bags, the chatter of market vendors. But drive ten or twenty kilometers into the Tramuntana or to a southern mountain village, and it is often quiet. Not the pleasant island calm — but the emptiness that arises when houses are only part-time occupied. Many places now experience that more dwellings are registered as second homes, holiday rentals or simply vacant than as real, permanent households.

The pressing question

Why are neighbors, shops and school classes disappearing from places that used to be lively? The simple answer: housing becomes an investment asset, a tourist resource or a weekend residence. That has effects that are visible not only in statistics. It concerns everyday things — an open supermarket on a rainy day, a soccer club with enough children, a bus connection that runs beyond the summer months.

What the numbers hide

In some villages, more than half of the registered dwellings are no longer main residences. This affects not only the coast with its beaches but surprisingly often the quiet interior: Deià, Fornalutx, Banyalbufar or Santanyí are examples of places that have become popular with weekend visitors and second-home owners. In rural areas, this creates a kind of seasonal pulse: in July and August everything is full, in November and February the streets are empty — the church bell then often sounds like an echo.

What is happening on the ground

"My son can no longer find an apartment near his work," says a vendor at the weekly market in Inca, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "There used to be life here every Sunday, now the shops are closed." Such remarks are heard at kiosks in Llucmajor, at the baker in Sóller or in bars on the Plaça in Manacor. The consequences are concrete: schools shrink or close, small supermarkets lose their customer base, and craft businesses find fewer long-term contracts.

There is another underestimated dimension: municipal revenues and political participation. Owners who are only here occasionally or live abroad take part in elections or meetings less often — that changes priorities in council sessions. At the same time, infrastructure costs are allocated to permanently resident households, while vacancies inefficiently consume public resources.

The often overlooked mechanisms

Besides the obvious tourism model there are gray areas: pseudo-renovations that enable short-term reclassification; legal structures that obscure ownership; registration practices where main residences are formally relocated without people actually moving. Technical aspects like electricity and water consumption are also rarely systematically analyzed, even though they could provide clues about real use.

Concrete levers for change

The government has programs to reduce vacancy — guarantees, subsidies for renting to locals, deposit schemes. Enough? Not in all villages. What we additionally need is more courage for local governance:

- Better data and controls: Regular reconciliations of registration records with energy and water consumption could distinguish real from false main residences.

- Financial incentives for long-term renting: Tax relief for owners who rent long-term to residents with low incomes.

- Sanctions against prolonged vacancy: Moderate vacancy charges that motivate owners to use their properties, combined with exemptions for demonstrable reasons.

- Municipal housing funds: A portion of tourist fees could be earmarked for socially oriented housing — for cooperatives, municipal new builds or the conversion of vacant buildings.

- Local tariff zones and restrictions for short-term rentals: Not every municipality needs the same model. Smaller places could adopt stricter rules.

A look ahead

The solution will not simply be one more regulation, but a mix of data, incentives, sanctions and local initiatives. Some projects already work: municipalities that renovate vacant houses with grants and allocate them to young families; cooperatives that jointly acquire land and houses. It is demanding, but possible.

What is at stake is more than housing. It is the question of whether Mallorca's villages remain part of everyday life or shrink into backdrops where life only takes place in summer. If we do not act, the island will lose a piece of its social infrastructure — the friendly talk at the bar, the school class with 15 children, the shop that is also open on a rainy Tuesday. And that is something not easily recovered.

The neighbor who is only here in summer has already shown us how the end of a whole neighborhood begins. Now the question is: Do we watch — or do we act?