Would you buy a vacation home?.

[coffee]

Erased.

[heygrey]

I wouldn't be opposed to it. It's obvious that you would do a lot of research and make a smart choice just given your other financial priorities. Your kids are at the prime age to have amazing memories in this home and it's well before the years of them wanting/needing to stay home in the summer for friends or jobs or other commitments.

2 things I would consider - do you have an emergency fund large enough to cover a second property, especially one where renters aren't always gentle on stuff? Could you sell it and at least break even if a worst case scenario happened and you needed to unload it?

[tcu2003]

I wouldn’t, but my reasons have less to do with money and more to do with time and hassle. If we were going to buy one, I’d get it within 2-4 hours (or closer) so we could easily go there for a weekend. If I had to drive 8+ hours, I would want to fly, so I’d be annoyed every time we drive it. I also want to be closer to it so I can check on it as needed.

We have friends with a lake house about 30 minutes away, and they love that they can pop over whenever and use it. My friend is a SAHM so they sometimes go for a few weekdays and her H will commute from the lake. They intentionally bought nearby so they could get the most use out of it.


You know your family best, so if you think you’d use it and create the memories you’re looking for, then go for it.

[mambo123]

I really want a vacation home and my husband thinks I’m crazy. He thinks I would end up not enjoying it because I would feel trapped there and not being able to explore other places. He has a point as we tended to travel once a quarter pre Covid, domestic and international.

Anyways, the 8hrs drive is what gave me pause. I wouldn’t do more than a three hour drive. I’m guessing that’s the closest beach you like? If so I would pass and maybe look at a mountain or lake house if you’re just looking for a place to getaway.

[lemoncupcake]

May 15, 2021 23:26:56 GMT -5 tcu2003 said:

I wouldn’t, but my reasons have less to do with money and more to do with time and hassle. If we were going to buy one, I’d get it within 2-4 hours (or closer) so we could easily go there for a weekend. If I had to drive 8+ hours, I would want to fly, so I’d be annoyed every time we drive it. I also want to be closer to it so I can check on it as needed.

Ditto this point - 

OP: do you have long term plans to spend more time at the beach house? Are you sure that if you want to live at the beach at some point this is where you'd want to be? 

If it will just be for vacation, are you comfortable committing to this one place being the only place you go? I imagine that if it's that far away and you won't be able to go often, it will be hard to justify spending money on a trip anywhere else but there's a whole wide world of places to visit.

[tacokick]

I wouldn’t want to own a vacation home that far away. Unless you love driving I would think that would be a barrier to getting more regular use out of it. Additionally, if you are renting it out you will have to hire people to check in on it that you trust and potentially have to go out there yourself to handle an issue. I wouldn’t want to do that if it was 8 hrs away.

Growing up my grandfather had a fishing cabin (with an outhouse!!) not far from where we lived and we were there all the time. It was on a river and we’d occasionally spend weekends there but most often go there for day trips a couple times a week during the summer. It was still a pain when something broke and we had to deal with it and having to go there in the winter to check on it was a drag and it wasn’t that far away. So that is coloring my opinion of it but 8 hrs to me is a lot. That’s a real time commitment to any visit.

Would you be able to rent it out year round? Would you want to visit in the colder months? Would you want to retire there? My parents built a small house (with a real bathroom lol) where the cabin was after my grandfather died and live there now and love it. That goal would make it more reasonable for me to deal with it in for the intervening years.

[coffee]

May 15, 2021 23:24:15 GMT -5 heygrey said:

I wouldn't be opposed to it. It's obvious that you would do a lot of research and make a smart choice just given your other financial priorities. Your kids are at the prime age to have amazing memories in this home and it's well before the years of them wanting/needing to stay home in the summer for friends or jobs or other commitments.

2 things I would consider - do you have an emergency fund large enough to cover a second property, especially one where renters aren't always gentle on stuff? Could you sell it and at least break even if a worst case scenario happened and you needed to unload it?

We do have a healthy emergency fund. We never touch this account since usually pay out of pocket our “emergencies” (most of them we can predict them) Or use some, and then “pay back” to this account when we get the bonus. Also, the bonus is usually thrown to the college account and mortgage/vacation account.

[sadlebred]

For an 8 hour drive and a house that you'll only use a few times a year on a holiday, I think you are better off getting an AirBnB or VBRO for those times. For me a vacation house 8 hours away would be too much hassle.

[sandandsea]

We like vacationing to new places every year and wouldn’t want to go back to the same place all the time. But that’s just our style and a lot of people love the comfort of going to a
Known place. I would also get frustrated with the upkeep, renters, and time/stress of owning a second place. We don’t have the capacity (mental or time) to deal with it and would have to hire a property manager to deal with cleanings between renters, keeping an eye on it, etc.

We have thought it would be nice to have a place near the ski resorts as we do that every year, but the upkeep for 12 months doesn’t offset the 1 month of use for us.

We’ve also made a list of places we want to visit and have increased our travel funds because we aren’t doing a vacation home.

[sillygoosegirl]

Hell no. I don't even want to deal with the maintenance on the house we live in (from a hassle perspective much more than a money perspective). Why not just rent someone else's vacation home when you go on vacation?

[coffee]

wow! You all are awesome! I knew you all would help me thinking through this better. Great points!

We talked about a lake house or something else closer, but, even though we like it, we don’t love it. The closest beach is 8 hours away, and we go twice a year to this place which we absolutely love.
Our plan would be more of a investment place that we could also enjoy any extra time we could find.
We usually travel 5-7 times a year and we do NOT plan on give that budget away as we like to explore new places.
We were thinking to hire someone to take care of it. So the return would not be a lot, but it would take a lot of the stress away. I know we would still have to deal with a it a lot.

I like the idea of owing a place where I would feel comfortable inviting my children’s friends. I know my husband would NOT like to rent a vacation place bigger than we need just so we can invite friends, but if it’s ours and we are in our comfort zone, he wouldn’t mind to have extra kids over.

I don’t think we would retire there as we would like to live close to our kids, but I think we would spend A LOT of time (months) there. Also, if in 10-15 years it doesn’t work for our lifestyle. We could just sell it and move on.
Would you still stay away from it?

[sandandsea]

As far an investment goes, second home markets are generally the most volatile. Over the long term it will likely increase (maybe by a lot) but selling in a down or depressed market could be really hard and it’s likely you’d make more in other avenues. So I wouldn’t buy it purely for an investment.

[hbomdiggity]

I would only buy if it was location that I loved going to and I could get there conveniently (driving vs flying). I would want to enjoy it more than like 2x a year.

[Deleted]

May 16, 2021 10:38:49 GMT -5 sillygoosegirl said:

Hell no. I don't even want to deal with the maintenance on the house we live in (from a hassle perspective much more than a money perspective). Why not just rent someone else's vacation home when you go on vacation?

This. My in-laws have a beach house 1800 miles, 2 plane rides, and a 3 hour drive from where we live. They are hell bemt on leaving it to us. We dont want it. Too far away and the last thing we want is another home to maintain.

We almost bought a beach house several years ago. Life intervened and we didnt end up gettig it. We are so grateful it didnt work out!

[tacokick]

I still wouldn’t for a place that far away unless I really thought I was going to retire there and/or spend more than a couple weeks/weekends a year there. 8 hrs is just so much! It’s far for an impromptu weekend and if you did have to go down to deal with something, it would kill a whole weekend or would require time off work.

Even if you had a trusted care taker (or long term winter tenant) there still is a lot to worry about with a second house. The only people I know with a place that far away that really loves the situation, lets someone live there for free in the winter to just keep an eye on the place and then they (the owners) use it pretty much all summer.

[coffee]

Well, seems like it’s a bad idea. I really appreciate all your input! Yesterday was the first time we talked about this more of a short term goal and as soon as we started getting excited about the topic, I told my DH I would get input from all of you!
THANK YOU!

[goldengirlz]

I just want to say that there are many ways to make memories with kids. We travel with DD all the time, and even though we go to different places and stay at different properties/hotels, our travel memories are still some of our most cherished. (Just the other day, DD said to me, “Remember the time our hotel room had an upstairs?” There are just as many memories to be made in discovering new things as going back to one special spot.)

I agree that houses can be a money pit, and unless you were really counting on the rental income, I think you’d be better off keeping your assets liquid. We know several people who rent a vacation home each year (sometimes even the same house) so that’s certainly another thing to consider.

[aprilsails]

There are many ways to approach this. My family always had cottages on the lake. My grandparents owned them when I was a kid and now my parents have access to them or own them outright. DH and I are considering buying a cottage with my Dad since he doesn’t have ownership of one right now. All of the cottages are within 1.5 hr drive from our house. If we consider buying ourselves, we want a specific lake that is at most 1 hour door to door.

DH’s family always went to the coast for vacation. They had standing annual vacation home rentals on the East and West coast. They flew to the West coast for a week and stayed in the same place every year. They then drove to the East coast later in the summer and stayed in the same townhouse in a resort community for three weeks each summer. They also went to the Dominican each March break and booked the same resort and even room every year. That way MIL knew what to expect and the kids had more stability while travelling. FIL travelled for work and pretty much hates travelling, so this made it easy for the family.

8 hours would be too much for me and the hassle of maintaining and renting doesn’t feel like it would be worthwhile for two weeks use per year. Prices are super high on vacation homes right now since they are in high demand. Those markets tend to have more variability, so I wouldn’t want to buy at a peak.

[ssmjlm]

I have a vacation home 2 hours away. I wouldn't do much more than 3 hours myself, but road trips are not my thing.

We have close friends at the beach who are 5+ hours away. I know the trip back and forth wears of them.

I love it, I love having it. But it costs money and there is some need to "use it." That said, we tend to travel during Thanksgiving week for other trips, so it's not an issue.

We were just there for mother's day. $500 to open the pool and it was turning green. So a call to the pool company twice to see why the chemicals were off. Hot tub is on the fritz. There's no more fixing at this point. If it goes, we're just hauling it off and hoping the pool deck underneath is usable. Probably the most expensive cost is insurance since we're not immune to hurricanes. It is paid in full, no mortgage.

[notsopicky]

Wow, I'm late to this thread, but we bought one in October 2020, 90 minutes from where we live. We weren't on board with anything further away--we want to go there regularly and traffic is notoriously bad where we live. It's a "beach" house, but not on the ocean. It's waterfront (w/ rights to build a dock) with a pool. We bought it as an investment, plus a pretty fly place to spend the summer. It was destroyed (the previous owners did not take care of it), so we've had to sink a metric shit-ton of $$ into it. We've still never stayed there overnight in the 7 months we've owned it (which is bananas to me), b/c the work is going slow; we didn't even have assembled beds until last weekend. We could rent it out, but we don't have any plans to do that at this time. The house 2 doors down is a little bit bigger, also with a pool (plus a dock); it gets $750/night and it's rented out for the entire summer!

I recommend a) the closer it is to your primary residence, the more you will use/go to it, b) be prepared to sink a lot more money into it than perhaps first appears, c) decide first whether you will rent it out (you will make different furniture choices if you plan to rent it out then if you don't). I wish that we had considered that more before I purchased all of the furniture. For example, we bought an expensive leather couch for the property, not thinking that maybe our plan would change re: renting it out. Finally, re: buying one in general, think about how much you will actually use it. I have 10 weeks off in the summer, so at least my son and I will spend many weeks there in the summer. If that wasn't the case, I might not have been on board.