Should we buy a vacation home?

[waverly]

A small vacation home in the right location has come up. DH will look at it. Would you purchase one? The location is very ideal. On water for boating, not sure if there is swimming but also only 20 minutes from the beach if we want to swim. Only a 2 hour drive for us, so realistically we could go every weekend.

We aren’t super fans of camping and a camper doesn’t seem to be in the picture. The main con would probably be expenses.

[sdlaura]

I think with what you described, I would.

For me, personally - my main hesitations are whether we'd have time to go to a vacation home regularly, and whether there would be enough to do there for us (our kids) to want to go there a lot, and feeling like we had to go there instead of someplace else we may want to go. Also I worry that I wouldn't feel like I was on vacation/able to relax if I owned the place and needed to take care of house projects while I was there. So we just decided to have two more kids than most people and spend all our money on childcare instead of a vacation home Kidding...

My parents own a place near me that sits empty most of the year, but they love the psychological factor of it being their own place and being able to have it be exactly as they want it and leave stuff there, get to know their neighbors, etc. I can totally see the appeal of that.

[mustardseed2007]

Would this be something you could put on VRBO to cover expenses?

In Texas my concerns about owning a beach house have always been the cost to own and maintain and insure and rebuild (because hurricanes are quite common here). If you're able to list it and rent it out when you're not using it, it could be nice.

We've been renting beach houses more regularly recently and I'm starting to get the appeal more, but because of the costs I mentioned before, I know DH would really not go for it.

[waverly]

mustardseed2007 , We could. But it would be easier to just have it as a vacation property rather than rent out. However, if we needed the money we could do that.

It is on a river not a beach. I wouldn't think it would flood. Actually it looks far back from the river, but I guess that should be one of our first questions.  Does this river typically flood and if so are we in a flood plain?  Hurricanes are not an issue here.

The river goes to a damned lake with a beach, so I guess beach via driving would be about 5-10 minutes. Lake Michigan looks to be about 35-40 minutes away.  ETA- It seems reasonably priced, so we are trying to figure out what is the catch, except for the fact that it is small.  

[186momx]

waverly, would you use it year round? I know your DH loves to have projects would this turn into one of his projects?

Most of my clients that have vacation homes have them in Arizona or Southern California and spend most of the winter there. No idea if they winterize for the summer or pay some one to check on things when they aren't there for 6-9 months. I know they all love having their own place to go down to and always complain when they come back and it is cold and rainy.

[waverly]

186momx, yes, it does have heat so we could use it year round. That is part of the appeal although to be honest some winters the weather would be too poor to get there. Typically for winter trips, I plan directly around the weather, so if there is a winter storm we would definitely not go that day and skip that weekend. But opening up and closing up are such a pain at my mom's vacation place (which is too far for us to use often hence the idea to get one closer). It would be great to skip the whole open up and closing thing and just go there. Of course that means you have to pay heat and electric all winter. But heat could be turned down.

Yes, I was wondering about the projects and associated costs, so I told DH you cannot turn this into one big project and he agreed. But, I expect him to test that agreement a lot because that is his personality.

[vasc]

We wouldn’t want to have money tied up in additional property and then also feel obligated to exclusively or near-exclusively vacation at it. We like to see new places. Owning a vacation home is not on our bucket list.

[supertrooper1]

I like to go to different places and not be tied down to one area, so I don't think I would. But I know a lot of people that have vacation homes and like going to the same place. If you're ok going to the same place, have the money to afford it and it checks your boxes, you should do it.

[phdmomma]

As someone who has to spend a great deal of time fixing up the "family" vacation home, while still not being allowed to throw out decades of crap that lives there, I would say yes, as long as you are able to do the projects it will need. I would love to throw out all of the very sentimental junk that no one wants to deal with at the "family" one and make it more usable.

[waverly]

The family one would have been fine for our needs had we not moved away. Also, the entire time we are there, DH complains about it. It is a trailer from the 1960's maybe it was replaced in the early 80's, I don't know. And DH is fancy. I mean not super fancy, but he likes nice things (which can often be a separate issue in terms of money). The lake has duck itch (google it) which is at it's peak when we usually go. We are not allowed to change anything. The upside is no maintenance or costs to us. But is is 6.5 hours of straight driving which means 8 hours with bathroom breaks and meals. The one time DH even mentioned the pontoon boat, my mom ripped his head off saying she hates pontoon boats which makes no sense since she hates it. Anyway, we asked for the pontoon boat and she said yes you can have it. It's also from the 1960's, but a new one would run you 50K.  

This place is new 2017, basically a clean slate, nothing in it. We could decorate it how we want, and it is much much closer.

In terms of the going other places, I grew up with a vacation home. My grandparents owned it, and we visited all the time. But we also went other places. So I don't see them as mutually exclusive. Maybe we didn't do expensive vacations. But my grandparents paid for us to go to Florida every year. Every year we did a camping trip. And twice we did a great American road trip. Maybe it was because my grandparents owned it and not my mom. But also my grandparents and mom who had a bigger budget then us did several Europe trips as well.  Maybe because the family lake house was super cheap and they didn't put a ton of money in it, or maybe because they were always saving their money and frugal, they were able to also do other vacations. But, I can definitely see the appeal of skipping the vacation home and just not doing it.  

[waverly]

Well DH looked at it and said no. Lol.

It’s on a floodplain good call mustardseed2007.

[sdlaura]

waverly I googled duck itch. Yuck! Sounds not fun.

[mustardseed2007]

Jun 22, 2021 16:08:55 GMT -5 waverly said:

Well DH looked at it and said no. Lol.

It’s on a floodplain good call mustardseed2007 .

Boo. 

Sorry but at least you know! 

[sandandsea]

Sounds like this one has already been passed on, but I’m generally not a fan of vacation homes We like to visit different places and do new things every chance we get so I’d have FOMO going to the same place repeatedly. It’s generally way cheaper to rent someone else’s house when you want to use it than it own your own.

I’d be paranoid about something happening there and is not knowing for months. We’d have to pay a property manager to keep it up (mow/ plow//check in/winterize/etc) as I wouldn’t want to spend half a day every time we used it cleaning it and dealing with repairs/maintenance.

I’m not thrilled about the Airbnb idea and having lots of strangers use it or mess it up. And id have to have someone manage this as well since we have no time/energy to deal with it.

Vacation markets are generally the most volatile, so Covid happens and the market is red hot, then a small dip in the economy and they’re a bargain. A rental house near your own house would be more profitable.

I know they work great for some and look fabulous in movies but it wouldn’t work for our life. That being said my grandparents rented the same cabin for three weeks every summer on the boundary waters and were thrilled with that vacation annually for probably 25 years.

[erbear]

I agree with sandandsea. I’d be worried that if I had a vacation home, I would feel like we always had to go there and we love to travel to new places.

[dglvrk2]

waverly, How old are your kids? I ask because we purchased a second home/vacation home about 11 years ago. We had DD1 the following year and DD2 three years later. Having one vacation home was great when the girls were younger and travelling was never not a challenge once they were crawling. Now that they're older and we can do more adventurous travel with them, a vacation home is not as desirable. My take away- ask how it will fit your life for the next ten years or so. If it would, I'd keep looking. It worked great for us for about this long.

We made our vacation home our full-time home last year and are not looking for another one.

[waverly]

I feel like in general a vacation home (with water/ boating) would fit our lives better now the kids are older because they can swim and help out. As opposed to be worrying about them falling off a boat or something as a toddler. They always do wear life jackets. Anyway, the real estate agent seemed to think our price point was a bit low for the area, and I’m not wanting to move it up at this point so it may not be in the cards for us.

[mae0111]

waverly, I was thinking along the same lines as dglvrk2.

We've been thinking a lot about a beach or lake house for the past couple of years. A few things stopping us...

1. DH is a tinker/worker guy. He's constantly working around our house here. If we got a second house, he would never just leave things alone and enjoy it. He'd constantly find things that need fixing/improving. And there are certain things that he doesn't want to hire out to do.

2. Would we feel obligated to make this place our destination for every vacation? We don't really travel much - DD1's behavior has made that really difficult in the past. But as she matures and her meds level things out, I'd really like to travel more. If we had a house, I feel like we'd just end up there all the time. DH is a creature of habit - he likes to do the same thing every year. It take a lot to break him out of "tradition" (ruts).

3. Now that the kids are older, their activities have really ramped up. Club soccer, travel basketball, etc. take up a ton of time, and most of our weekends in the fall, winter and spring. Sprinkle in town rec sports (basketball, soccer, and softball), tournament weekends, etc., and I don't know when we would be able to go anywhere...

[waverly]

Yup we have the same problem #1.

2. I think we would feel obligated to use it more weekends, but not take every vacation there. But I think DH and I like the idea of going new places but also creating traditions. We both grew up with a tradition of going to Florida every year, for example, and that didn't bother us. We like knowing where to go and where places are, and can still do other vacations.

3. The activities are more of a problem in terms of weekend games. We are still playing rec so we don't mind missing a game or 2, but anything more than that with a short season is not fair to their teammates.