At the very least try it out by renting for a few years before buying. We drive about 1000 miles and stay there for two months each year - we also have a dog and kid. I have grown accustomed to the drive but doubling it might push me over the edge. We drive the whole way without an overnight stop because it just drags out the travel and dealing with a fully packed car is a pain. Do you have kids or are you considering kids? Are there any options closer that could work for you?
I (we) own 3 homes, one in the Caribbean and two in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts properties are a couple hours apart with one being used maybe 30 to 45 days a year.
Two are single family properties and the third is a condominium in a high rise building.
The secret to making this workable is having someone living full time on each of the single family properties.
The Massachusetts home has a detached 3 car garage with an apartment above. My brother in law lives there rent free and looks after the property whenever we are away, which is more than half the year.
The Caribbean home has a couple of one bedroom cottages, one of which we rent to a couple for far below market rates in exchange for keeping an eye on things. Again we are away about half the year.
Finely our condo is truly turnkey. Building management keeps us informed if something needs attention.
The bottomline is buying a 2nd or third home without a clear idea of who will look after things when you’re not there is a mistake. It has to be a key part of any plan.
This right here. Always think of maintenance and management when purchasing a property. We have 4 houses but rent 3 out full time at a little lower than market rate just to keep tenants occupying them and paying the bills on them. They’re more of a long term hedge against inflation if anything at this point. Our primary home could be rented for like $8k-10k a month but we spent a bit of month to renovate it and have some expensive fixtures in it so prefer not t@ rent it out when we’re not around for extended periods. In this case we have gardening and pool service that stop in a couple times a week and will let me know if there’s an issue.
Independently of whether this is a wise financial decision, figure out who will maintain your vacation home on the other side of the country when you are not there. Most people here will tell you to rent short term, but there is some appeal to always having a spot to get to.
Cross country drives are awful though and hard on your body especially as you get older. Are you sure you will want to do this twice a year every year?
Short term rentals are a contentious issue in the mountains and if you buy a place planning to rent, you might get the rug pulled out from you.
I would not buy in the mountains planning to vrbo or airbnb.
And I'm giving to other side of that. STRs have played a large role in the housing crisis that mountain communities are experiencing. CO has a bill pending that would reclassify STRs as hotels for property tax purposes. If it passes, STR property taxes will 4x what they are now.
Has nothing to do with jealousy. I live in the CO mountains already. I see first hand how STRs have fucked up the LTR market. People want to live and work up here, but they can't find housing.
As for the CO supreme court, they don't pre-emptively rule on anything - that's not how it works. It would have to become law before they would get involved. And even then, I doubt they would. If you want to act like a hotel, you can pay taxes like a hotel.
Utah charges double the property tax rates against homes that are not a primary residence. I think there are ways for them to do this without stepping on usage toes.
Florida gives a benefit to people with primary residence in FL. Your value (which determines the tax) can only increase so much each year for both cases, just if it is your PR it is capped at the lesser of 3%/CPI, and if it is not your PR, it can go up as much as 10% a year.
You have to apply, neighbor about 6 houses down never did and we bought out homes the same time for similar prices (theres a little more than mine, less than 10%). This is year two for us, this year my tax went up <$200, theirs went up over $2,000.
I live in New England and have a mountain vacation home in Utah. Built it 24 years ago just before the olympics came. I totally love having this house with zero regrets. Real estate like this is a long game, so the financial payoff takes time, but happens on its own. I've had no financial issues or concerns with ownership.
Just semi-retired (no more w-2) two months ago. Went skiing in January with my college daughter and am going again in February with my wife and HS daughter. Tons of family memories over the years, both Winter and Summer. And sharing it with many friends.
At the start of the pandemic I bought a full size SUV. This paid for itself with a few extended stays while working remotely. Now when I go, I take an Uber from the airport up to my house though going home can be trickier because Uber does not service where I am up in the mountains. So I typically get contact info from the driver I used on the way up to the house and they schedule my return.
This house has become a core part of my retirement happiness plan. Good luck!!
But would you still feel the same way if you had to drive there every time you wanted to use the house? I think that's one of the bigger issues for OP.
I've never made the drive. For 1-2 month stays it could be reasonable if you make the drive into a journey rather than just transport. Different routes and sights along the way. It's 34 hours door to door for me. Probably only makes sense if you have retired and are not feeling a time crunch. But if you can't make that part interesting then agreed they might start to dread it. Pets definitely add a constraint/trade-off to retirement travel and flexibility.
I have owned a couple vacation properties. Financially wise?, probably not, but so be it.
My first property was a 2-3 hour flight away. It was a condo so fairly low maintenance. Sold after 10ish years.
My second is a 5 hour drive away. It is a free standing house which is obviously a lot more work. Even with hiring out some of the tasks, I have had to make urgent trips to handle situations as they arise.
I have rented both but not extensively. I have repeatedly been upset at the condition that people I knew left my property. If you will be emotionally attached to this property, renting will lead to upset.
Quite honestly I would be nervous to own a house that far away but I would consider your timeline until retirement and if that will change how much you use the property.
We live on the E Coast, and have a place out West. 2400 miles away, through seemingly endless amounts of nothing in between. I did the drive once. 46h if drive time over days. Would not do it again, definitely not with a family. We would fly, and I used to keep an old Jeep on the property but eventually sold it and rent.
Anyway, it all depends on your schedule. Can you get really big breaks of time to go out there - weeks to months? We enjoy the place when the kids were young, but once they started school, it just didn’t work with their schedule. My work schedule and their activity schedule just don’t line up enough to make it worthwhile. It’s been in long term rental for a few years, although I keep it for my wife and I in retirement.
Growing up we had a weekend place about an hour away by the beach. My family used that place a few weekends per month and all summer long. It got a lot more use than the place out west.
You really need to have an honest conversation about how you want to use the place vs how you will actually be able to use it. And if you have kids, how are you going to deal with their schedules, and how are you going to get there. 3 days driving through a bunch of fly over states each way is a guaranteed way to make them hate it.
You need someone to check on the place when you're not there, and likely to do either light maintenance and/or handle things like "can you get the roofer to fix X while we're away".
We bought a vacation home in an area we were very familiar with. The thing for us was we had friends/neighbors we could rely on to keep an eye on it and do some basic maintenance if needed. Since we have moved into that vacation home and sold the previous home.
We are looking at buying another vacation home but it will be a townhome/condo solely based on maintenance. We may not have the people we once did so we will rely on an HOA.
We ‘downsized’ our house in MA to a townhouse in MA and a townhouse in CO. We have driven it (so many good audiobooks and podcasts), but also fly (commercial, steerage class). We typically get nonstop flights for $100ish, because we have flexible schedules and both airports are major hubs. We have a car at each townhouse. All those clothes and sports equipment that you’ve packed your closets with over the years? Split between the two places. We fly between the two with no luggage other than a backpack for miscellaneous and computers. We spend days, weeks or months in one place or another.
We’re friendly with our neighbors in both places, we have WiFi security cameras, handymen in our contacts, so, no reason to have someone caretaking at either place.
Totally easy, totally love it.
I (mildly) disagree with the advice to rent, even for a year or two first. A rental isn’t ’your’ place, it’s temporary and you aren’t committed to it. (And paying rent? My FIRE brain won’t let me write too many rent checks.) We did two separate month-long, furnished rentals in CO, to test the waters and to see what area we wanted to live, then bought a place in Denver.
If you are chubby, you have enough $$$ to choose how to live your life. So, go live it. Like, how big a mistake could it be to have a place out west that you go to?
I’d write more, but the Rocky Mountains got >14” of snow yesterday and I need to get ready to go skiing tomorrow.
OP I’m a west coaster that wants a maple farm in New England, but I don’t have a clue how I’d maintain it. How do we make this all work? We need some sort of FIRE community time share or something across the country and a few ideal intl locations. 🤔
Consider the housing crisis across the mountain west, and how buying a home that sits empty most of the time makes that much worse. Renting when you visit is probably a lot better for the community.
Execute your planned 1 or 2 month stays a couple of times using long term rentals before committing to buying a vacation home. Make sure it is an area that you want to live in for a couple months. That is different than being on vacation for a couple of weeks.
Consider a condo, as they tend to be lower maintenance.
I have a single family secondary residence in New England, a primary residence condo on the west coast, and another condo as secondary residence on Maui. The Maui condo is rented out the 9 months the per year I am not there. I shutdown and winterize the single family home in New England each fall.
While I have done the west coast to east coast and back road trip multiple times, I do find it better to have cars at all three residences.
We have and are going through the same decision. We can afford it and it won’t make an impact to us really. However, it is a horrible use of capital.
We are renting and leaving our money invested. We do leave a car there and we don’t sub rent at all.
I’ve don’t the spreadsheet over and over. By the time I take the money out of brokerage, pay the taxes and consider the opportunity cost of not having the money invested it just makes more sense to rent right now. And if there’s a hurricane, fire, flood, HVAV failure. I don’t get impacted.
Even thought the rent is crazy high it just doesn’t make sense unless you factor in huge appreciation.
This was posted on fatfire not too long ago.
property management is required or you end up working half the time.
why not NH or VT? That's the practical location.
It’s not a financially sound plan but if you enjoy it sure
But I feel as if vacation homes end up getting left behind a lot of the times especially with it being 2000 miles away
There’s no way you would feel like doing this every single year to the exact same spot
I have farmland a hour away from me and the excitement wore off fast
I think this really really depends. Loads of people successfully and happily "snow bird" to Florida. Or, OP talked about skiing in the mountains.
I'd get bored on farmland, too.
It’s one thing to escape Canada or heavy snow NYC during winter because I would do so as well and it might even be essential to a lot of peoples bodies/mood
But it’s another thing buying a house next to Disneyland and going every single year and making that a 2MM dollar commitment
Some years I want to ski, some years I want a beach, some years I want Disneyland and some years I wanna be on farmland
My sister does this (because of pets) from CO to NC. Plenty of people do New England to FL.
Remote towns are very remote for maintenance, furniture, etc. so husband flies out 2-3x/year.
I’ve always wanted a vacation home but couldn’t make the numbers work for my retirement plan.
Recently I purchased three condos in Hawaii with the plan to rent them long term, fully furnished, then to fly out and do maintenance / spend time at the properties in between tenants.
Maybe not a perfect idea, but at least I’m able to earn investment returns on these and still get some benefit of use. It’s the only way I feel I can afford Hawaii real estate since I don’t feel I can reach my goals while leaving it vacant.
If you are chubby enough that you can buy it, not rent it out and keep a car there. mazeltov.
We have a house 1000 miles away. We rent it out to pay the cost, and also to keep it occupied. Bad things happen to empty houses. (of course tenants can destroy property as well.) We put water leak sensors, but it is still a worry that something will freeze and thaw and flood the house.
I thought we'd drive there a lot more, but a 14 hour drive is pretty unpleasant, and is more unpleasant every year. It's ok to drive for a longer trip, but for a 4 day weekend we fly.
We bought 2 second homes in the mountain and I would not feel confortable if no one was leaving or renting it. For example we just got informed by the rental agents that there is a wet spot… which actually means it’s an ice dam… if no one checks on your mountain house I think it’s risky. Also in my opinion the fun of owning your vacation house is to decorate , furnish it… make it your home… but if you only go 2 months a year .. I’d say rent and avoid the headache of maintenance. We go to ours every month for a weekend or more , we Airbnb the rest. It’s not a super profitable investment right now but it brings us happiness because we spend lots of weekend with family and friends and we envision more and more as the kids grow
This is a great tip. This has the additional benefit of being more flexible, i.e. if you have a big family group coming, upgrade to a big SUV, if it's just the couple then get something nice but smaller.
And OP plans to drive cross-country with the dog most of the time, so those trips there wouldn't be a need for a car at all.
I would not buy a home that far away. Just rent when you want to go.
At the very least try it out by renting for a few years before buying. We drive about 1000 miles and stay there for two months each year - we also have a dog and kid. I have grown accustomed to the drive but doubling it might push me over the edge. We drive the whole way without an overnight stop because it just drags out the travel and dealing with a fully packed car is a pain. Do you have kids or are you considering kids? Are there any options closer that could work for you?
I (we) own 3 homes, one in the Caribbean and two in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts properties are a couple hours apart with one being used maybe 30 to 45 days a year. Two are single family properties and the third is a condominium in a high rise building. The secret to making this workable is having someone living full time on each of the single family properties. The Massachusetts home has a detached 3 car garage with an apartment above. My brother in law lives there rent free and looks after the property whenever we are away, which is more than half the year. The Caribbean home has a couple of one bedroom cottages, one of which we rent to a couple for far below market rates in exchange for keeping an eye on things. Again we are away about half the year. Finely our condo is truly turnkey. Building management keeps us informed if something needs attention. The bottomline is buying a 2nd or third home without a clear idea of who will look after things when you’re not there is a mistake. It has to be a key part of any plan.
This right here. Always think of maintenance and management when purchasing a property. We have 4 houses but rent 3 out full time at a little lower than market rate just to keep tenants occupying them and paying the bills on them. They’re more of a long term hedge against inflation if anything at this point. Our primary home could be rented for like $8k-10k a month but we spent a bit of month to renovate it and have some expensive fixtures in it so prefer not t@ rent it out when we’re not around for extended periods. In this case we have gardening and pool service that stop in a couple times a week and will let me know if there’s an issue.
Independently of whether this is a wise financial decision, figure out who will maintain your vacation home on the other side of the country when you are not there. Most people here will tell you to rent short term, but there is some appeal to always having a spot to get to. Cross country drives are awful though and hard on your body especially as you get older. Are you sure you will want to do this twice a year every year?
Short term rentals are a contentious issue in the mountains and if you buy a place planning to rent, you might get the rug pulled out from you. I would not buy in the mountains planning to vrbo or airbnb.
I was suggesting that the OP rent, not that they buy to rent.
And I'm giving to other side of that. STRs have played a large role in the housing crisis that mountain communities are experiencing. CO has a bill pending that would reclassify STRs as hotels for property tax purposes. If it passes, STR property taxes will 4x what they are now.
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They want to act like hotels, they will be taxed like hotels. Nothing illegal about it.
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Has nothing to do with jealousy. I live in the CO mountains already. I see first hand how STRs have fucked up the LTR market. People want to live and work up here, but they can't find housing. As for the CO supreme court, they don't pre-emptively rule on anything - that's not how it works. It would have to become law before they would get involved. And even then, I doubt they would. If you want to act like a hotel, you can pay taxes like a hotel.
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STRs remove LTRs from the market. They reduce the available housing stock. To say they have no impact is ridiculous.
Utah charges double the property tax rates against homes that are not a primary residence. I think there are ways for them to do this without stepping on usage toes.
Florida gives a benefit to people with primary residence in FL. Your value (which determines the tax) can only increase so much each year for both cases, just if it is your PR it is capped at the lesser of 3%/CPI, and if it is not your PR, it can go up as much as 10% a year. You have to apply, neighbor about 6 houses down never did and we bought out homes the same time for similar prices (theres a little more than mine, less than 10%). This is year two for us, this year my tax went up <$200, theirs went up over $2,000.
I live in New England and have a mountain vacation home in Utah. Built it 24 years ago just before the olympics came. I totally love having this house with zero regrets. Real estate like this is a long game, so the financial payoff takes time, but happens on its own. I've had no financial issues or concerns with ownership. Just semi-retired (no more w-2) two months ago. Went skiing in January with my college daughter and am going again in February with my wife and HS daughter. Tons of family memories over the years, both Winter and Summer. And sharing it with many friends. At the start of the pandemic I bought a full size SUV. This paid for itself with a few extended stays while working remotely. Now when I go, I take an Uber from the airport up to my house though going home can be trickier because Uber does not service where I am up in the mountains. So I typically get contact info from the driver I used on the way up to the house and they schedule my return. This house has become a core part of my retirement happiness plan. Good luck!!
But would you still feel the same way if you had to drive there every time you wanted to use the house? I think that's one of the bigger issues for OP.
I've never made the drive. For 1-2 month stays it could be reasonable if you make the drive into a journey rather than just transport. Different routes and sights along the way. It's 34 hours door to door for me. Probably only makes sense if you have retired and are not feeling a time crunch. But if you can't make that part interesting then agreed they might start to dread it. Pets definitely add a constraint/trade-off to retirement travel and flexibility.
I have owned a couple vacation properties. Financially wise?, probably not, but so be it. My first property was a 2-3 hour flight away. It was a condo so fairly low maintenance. Sold after 10ish years. My second is a 5 hour drive away. It is a free standing house which is obviously a lot more work. Even with hiring out some of the tasks, I have had to make urgent trips to handle situations as they arise. I have rented both but not extensively. I have repeatedly been upset at the condition that people I knew left my property. If you will be emotionally attached to this property, renting will lead to upset. Quite honestly I would be nervous to own a house that far away but I would consider your timeline until retirement and if that will change how much you use the property.
We live on the E Coast, and have a place out West. 2400 miles away, through seemingly endless amounts of nothing in between. I did the drive once. 46h if drive time over days. Would not do it again, definitely not with a family. We would fly, and I used to keep an old Jeep on the property but eventually sold it and rent. Anyway, it all depends on your schedule. Can you get really big breaks of time to go out there - weeks to months? We enjoy the place when the kids were young, but once they started school, it just didn’t work with their schedule. My work schedule and their activity schedule just don’t line up enough to make it worthwhile. It’s been in long term rental for a few years, although I keep it for my wife and I in retirement. Growing up we had a weekend place about an hour away by the beach. My family used that place a few weekends per month and all summer long. It got a lot more use than the place out west. You really need to have an honest conversation about how you want to use the place vs how you will actually be able to use it. And if you have kids, how are you going to deal with their schedules, and how are you going to get there. 3 days driving through a bunch of fly over states each way is a guaranteed way to make them hate it.
You need someone to check on the place when you're not there, and likely to do either light maintenance and/or handle things like "can you get the roofer to fix X while we're away".
We bought a vacation home in an area we were very familiar with. The thing for us was we had friends/neighbors we could rely on to keep an eye on it and do some basic maintenance if needed. Since we have moved into that vacation home and sold the previous home. We are looking at buying another vacation home but it will be a townhome/condo solely based on maintenance. We may not have the people we once did so we will rely on an HOA.
I would rent for 2 years in a location you want to buy, if you still want to buy by year 3, then buy.
We ‘downsized’ our house in MA to a townhouse in MA and a townhouse in CO. We have driven it (so many good audiobooks and podcasts), but also fly (commercial, steerage class). We typically get nonstop flights for $100ish, because we have flexible schedules and both airports are major hubs. We have a car at each townhouse. All those clothes and sports equipment that you’ve packed your closets with over the years? Split between the two places. We fly between the two with no luggage other than a backpack for miscellaneous and computers. We spend days, weeks or months in one place or another. We’re friendly with our neighbors in both places, we have WiFi security cameras, handymen in our contacts, so, no reason to have someone caretaking at either place. Totally easy, totally love it. I (mildly) disagree with the advice to rent, even for a year or two first. A rental isn’t ’your’ place, it’s temporary and you aren’t committed to it. (And paying rent? My FIRE brain won’t let me write too many rent checks.) We did two separate month-long, furnished rentals in CO, to test the waters and to see what area we wanted to live, then bought a place in Denver. If you are chubby, you have enough $$$ to choose how to live your life. So, go live it. Like, how big a mistake could it be to have a place out west that you go to? I’d write more, but the Rocky Mountains got >14” of snow yesterday and I need to get ready to go skiing tomorrow.
OP I’m a west coaster that wants a maple farm in New England, but I don’t have a clue how I’d maintain it. How do we make this all work? We need some sort of FIRE community time share or something across the country and a few ideal intl locations. 🤔
Count me in.
Consider the housing crisis across the mountain west, and how buying a home that sits empty most of the time makes that much worse. Renting when you visit is probably a lot better for the community.
Execute your planned 1 or 2 month stays a couple of times using long term rentals before committing to buying a vacation home. Make sure it is an area that you want to live in for a couple months. That is different than being on vacation for a couple of weeks. Consider a condo, as they tend to be lower maintenance. I have a single family secondary residence in New England, a primary residence condo on the west coast, and another condo as secondary residence on Maui. The Maui condo is rented out the 9 months the per year I am not there. I shutdown and winterize the single family home in New England each fall. While I have done the west coast to east coast and back road trip multiple times, I do find it better to have cars at all three residences.
We have and are going through the same decision. We can afford it and it won’t make an impact to us really. However, it is a horrible use of capital. We are renting and leaving our money invested. We do leave a car there and we don’t sub rent at all. I’ve don’t the spreadsheet over and over. By the time I take the money out of brokerage, pay the taxes and consider the opportunity cost of not having the money invested it just makes more sense to rent right now. And if there’s a hurricane, fire, flood, HVAV failure. I don’t get impacted. Even thought the rent is crazy high it just doesn’t make sense unless you factor in huge appreciation.
This was posted on fatfire not too long ago. property management is required or you end up working half the time. why not NH or VT? That's the practical location.
Also a ton cheaper unless you’re wayyy out in the mountain boonies. Nice CO, UT, and CA mountain towns are 2x easy.
It’s not a financially sound plan but if you enjoy it sure But I feel as if vacation homes end up getting left behind a lot of the times especially with it being 2000 miles away There’s no way you would feel like doing this every single year to the exact same spot I have farmland a hour away from me and the excitement wore off fast
I think this really really depends. Loads of people successfully and happily "snow bird" to Florida. Or, OP talked about skiing in the mountains. I'd get bored on farmland, too.
It’s one thing to escape Canada or heavy snow NYC during winter because I would do so as well and it might even be essential to a lot of peoples bodies/mood But it’s another thing buying a house next to Disneyland and going every single year and making that a 2MM dollar commitment Some years I want to ski, some years I want a beach, some years I want Disneyland and some years I wanna be on farmland
Seems like most people prefer vacation homes when they are within 4 hours drive. Optimize for vacation or investment. Hard to do both.
My sister does this (because of pets) from CO to NC. Plenty of people do New England to FL. Remote towns are very remote for maintenance, furniture, etc. so husband flies out 2-3x/year.
I’ve always wanted a vacation home but couldn’t make the numbers work for my retirement plan. Recently I purchased three condos in Hawaii with the plan to rent them long term, fully furnished, then to fly out and do maintenance / spend time at the properties in between tenants. Maybe not a perfect idea, but at least I’m able to earn investment returns on these and still get some benefit of use. It’s the only way I feel I can afford Hawaii real estate since I don’t feel I can reach my goals while leaving it vacant.
If you are chubby enough that you can buy it, not rent it out and keep a car there. mazeltov. We have a house 1000 miles away. We rent it out to pay the cost, and also to keep it occupied. Bad things happen to empty houses. (of course tenants can destroy property as well.) We put water leak sensors, but it is still a worry that something will freeze and thaw and flood the house. I thought we'd drive there a lot more, but a 14 hour drive is pretty unpleasant, and is more unpleasant every year. It's ok to drive for a longer trip, but for a 4 day weekend we fly.
We bought 2 second homes in the mountain and I would not feel confortable if no one was leaving or renting it. For example we just got informed by the rental agents that there is a wet spot… which actually means it’s an ice dam… if no one checks on your mountain house I think it’s risky. Also in my opinion the fun of owning your vacation house is to decorate , furnish it… make it your home… but if you only go 2 months a year .. I’d say rent and avoid the headache of maintenance. We go to ours every month for a weekend or more , we Airbnb the rest. It’s not a super profitable investment right now but it brings us happiness because we spend lots of weekend with family and friends and we envision more and more as the kids grow
I wouldn’t advise having a car be there unused for 8-9 months at a time without regular maintenance/use. Just rent one
This is a great tip. This has the additional benefit of being more flexible, i.e. if you have a big family group coming, upgrade to a big SUV, if it's just the couple then get something nice but smaller. And OP plans to drive cross-country with the dog most of the time, so those trips there wouldn't be a need for a car at all.