Vacation Homes

[med1287]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering what people have done to afford vacation homes (lake house, beach house, etc)? I am a long ways away from being in that position (just finishing med school), but it is a goal of mine to have a place on a lake someday, even if it is a small cabin. Did you buy a less expensive primary house knowing you'd be purchasing a second property? Did you pay down a first mortgage before buying a second house? Did you/ do you rent out your house?

 

One of WCIs recent podcasts talked about investing in properties for Airbnb, anyone have experience using vacation homes as Airbnb properties?

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the 4th!

[G]

I dont have a vacation home, but I'll Airbnb yours.

This may be one reason why I seem to be significantly wealthier than age-matched peers. Purely anecdotal.

[Lordosis]

I know a doc selling a vacation home on the lake.  Never has time to use it.

I am in the Rent your lifestyle camp.  VRBO Airbnb and hotels work fine for me the 1-2 weeks a year I get a chance to take off.

To rent a boat on the nearby lake cost $400 a day.  Sounds like a lot but much better then buying a 30K boat and feeling like I need to use it twice a week to make it worth it.

[FIREshrink]

Our vacation home is a great sleepover spot for the kids and their friends, serves as a second home office, is a guest room when family stays over, and has even stood in as a dog kennel in an emergency.

It has been a lake cabin near Mt. Adams, a ski chalet on Mt. Hood, a rainproof hiking base in December in the Willamette Valley, a convenient hotel for various soccer tournaments, an off grid cabin in Mt. Rainier, a lakeside cabin in the Olympics, and a home base for five in the heart of Yellowstone. This summer it will be our home away from home in the Redwoods and Crater Lake as well as an oceanside cabin on the Oregon Coast.

Also it can ferry six to dinner or a soccer game, haul two tons of river rock in the bed, or pick up a new king size bed for a friend.

Best of all the whole rig cost well under six figures, and packs enough torque to pin me to the seat even at 70 mph going uphill.

[CordMcNally]

Unless you're planning on making your vacation home your retirement home (although there are still plenty of caveats), I would just plan on VRBO'ing or AirBnB'ing your vacations. Much cheaper in the long run and you get to visit whatever places you desire.

[DCdoc]

I don’t like owning a house. Owning a second house sounds even worse. I wouldn’t want to maintain it. And I don’t want to vacation at the place every time year: air bnb for the win. You can rent a nice home in different places and not worry about the cost or hassles of owning another home

[wonka31]

Your preferences may change, I don’t own a lake house but always wanted to. I could, but the maintenance is cumbersome.

Assuming you go into a decently lucrative field, you can afford this if you want to. You just need to punch your numbers and figure out what works best. Some people like cars, vacations, a nice primary home, etc. Everyone has there preferences. To answer your question, if you really want this, you’ll probably have to cut back in some other areas. As long as you’re willing and able to do that you should be fine.

[jfoxcpacfp]

FIREshrink wrote:

Our vacation home is a great sleepover spot for the kids and their friends, serves as a second home office, is a guest room when family stays over, and has even stood in as a dog kennel in an emergency.

It has been a lake cabin near Mt. Adams, a ski chalet on Mt. Hood, a rainproof hiking base in December in the Willamette Valley, a convenient hotel for various soccer tournaments, an off grid cabin in Mt. Rainier, a lakeside cabin in the Olympics, and a home base for five in the heart of Yellowstone. This summer it will be our home away from home in the Redwoods and Crater Lake as well as an oceanside cabin on the Oregon Coast.

Also it can ferry six to dinner or a soccer game, haul two tons of river rock in the bed, or pick up a new king size bed for a friend.

Best of all the whole rig cost well under six figures, and packs enough torque to pin me to the seat even at 70 mph going uphill.

Click to expand...

I give up - is it a monster truck?

[SValleyMD]

You’re not going to find many favorable responses for a second home on this site, which is understandable because it’s nearly always a horrible financial decision

We own one as it was always my goal/dream, I absolutely hate traveling and prefer to spend every free min there, it’s under 1.5 hours from my home and I’m 99.9% sure I’ll retire there unless there was an extenuating circumstance.

A few things:

- never plan to rent vrbo because city/hoa laws can change/ban them. I didn’t even think to check but our hoa but it bans it. We had contemplated on just renting 3-4 weeks a year though that never sat well either

- avoid any hoa if possible.. esp resort condos can kill u with 500-1000 bucks/mo hoa fees

- although you might want to spend every vacation or free day there good chance your wife and kids don’t

- if your kids play sports you’re not going anywhere

- I would keep under 2 hours drive from primary residence

- I would try and keep it as simple as possible

- I would only do it at a 4 season type location. Lake house only used in summer seems like even more of a waste.. lake house near a ski resort sounds more fun.

[Panscan]

Why not have your primary house on a lake?

[G]

Panscan wrote:

Why not have your primary house on a lake?

Click to expand...

I love the idea...but around here, this would mean I have to work full time until I'm about 137!

[burritos]

Owning a vacation home is a romantic notion and sometimes people will conflate that as an investment(or even worse, a timeshare). Invest(even a rental if you must own property), use the revenue to rent out other people's dream vacation homes. There are so "dream vacation homes" to go to, why fix yourself just to one place?

[ddswifey]

we are in same camp as SValleyMD..... our 2nd home is my husbands dream place .    very small cabin in the woods (tons of wildlife, hunting,  places to roam, 4 wheelers, and no cell service)...we use it year around, and possibly will retire there.  Its a chance for us to give our kids something we had as kids, but they do not have bc we life in a suburb.      We will not rent it out.    We live very simple in our primary and both mortgages are 1.1x income.  However, be aware they are HUGE time commitments so you aren't just looking at "can I afford this?"....You need to know "do I have the time for this?"       This place is like a hobby for my husband---a place to unwind and have stress relief.  And its only 2 hours from our house.

You are going to find two very different camps on this idea ....as with anything else "personal" finance. And it all ties into your personal investment goals. We plan a traditional retirement age of 65 (and slowing down by 55) while many here want to be retired by 50.   I would say know what you envision as part of your lifestyle and see if owning or renting is the option----     you can't Airbnb or rent what we have our 2nd place for so I don't consider that "renting the lifestyle".  If it was lake-property, then yes, you can rent that.    And we also do regular vacations.   Time, more than money even, is the biggest thing you could overlook when thinking about the idea of 2nd home.

 

[CordMcNally]

Vacation homes are kind of like pools. You don't really want one yourself but you want to know someone that has a pool or vacation house.

[Jack_Sparrow]

Just a though, you might consider going in with other 2-3 other families, even consider co-workers. (When he/she is on call one weekend your not and can use the house.). Depends on your personality but when you go in with 2-3 people, you share the maintenance load, the costs, etc. When you have 3 folks going in you can get a bigger house and maybe instead of a 3 bedroom lake house you can expand and go for the 5 bedroom lake house increase furnishing, etc. Allowing you more options to host more friends and family. Maybe a house that can fit 2 families.

I know some glass half full folks will point out there is potential for drama, and somebody always ends up doing all the work, someone's family doesn't clean enough, broke the boat before we went down, blah blah blah. All this aside, you find the right people it will be worth it and you'll have someone to spend some time with at the lake every now and then.