I have to admit, I hadn't come across the expression before, but according to the Future Foundation (who have been conducting a survey for Direct Line) it's a home "bought by one person for the use of a dependent", and there are 327,000 of them in the UK. It's bad news, argues Direct Line, for first-time buyers... which is ironic, since the majority of the people who live in handout homes are would-be first-time buyers. The overall picture is of property market increasingly "dynastic" in nature. At the moment, it's a smallish proportion of the UK's 2.6 million second-homes (the majority of which are let), but it's a proportion that may well see the biggest growth in the coming years. Why? Well, ironically because of the difficult market for first-time buyers. Catch 22.