<p>Yes, it’s wise to look (and listen) before you leap.</p>
<p>"To add: we chose an area we had vacationed in for many years, so our grown kids are programmed to want to visit here. " - Good idea. It will work better if program the future spouses too.</p>
<p>^^^Forget 2nd houses-much more interested in how to program the future spouses !!! I am pretty sure that could be a really amazing opportunity and improve my retiirement,too!</p>
<p>Don’t think this has been mentioned and don’t flame me, but I wouldn’t buy anything in a low coastal area. I think flooding is coming. Heck, we might have coastal property in Vermont some day.</p>
<p>Those flood maps they are showing must be of concern to all who own coastal property up and down the East Coast.</p>
<p>We are in our second summer at our beach house. It’s a mini vacation every time we go – the property is small enough that we mow the lawn with an electric mower in 10 minutes. My H is not handy but has lots of contacts for maintenance issues. It is absolutely a luxury item and worth every penny.</p>
<p>We bought it unfurnished – my deal with H was that the house was tiny tiny and I needed an open checkbook to furnish it because it had to be perfect. And about $12K later, it is and has everything we need.</p>
<p>My husband is working very very hard at the moment and being able to hang at the beach on weekends is helping his stress levels. It’s an hour from our main home, just 55 miles.</p>
<p>Hurricane Irene caused a little stress – with its Cat 2 storm surge. Many of our waterfront neighbors had severe damage. We’re back from the beach a bit and were just sand blasted.</p>
<p>My cousin and her husband from Florida bought a second home in New Hampshire (from her parents estate) and fixed it up intending to eventually live there 3/4 of the year. He “retired” early, they sold their Florida property and bought a big motorhome. In the winter, they either travel for fun, or to work (he works nuclear power plant refits) or park the home at her daughter’s farm in Florida. They love their lifestyle and it worked financially.</p>
<p>We have a summer lake cottage we share with family. As we retire we will spend more time there in spring, summer, and fall, but plan to keep our main house for retirement (with only one kid, we never upsized!) My cousin and I have never considered renting out.</p>
<p>We’ve always wanted a home on the water. We built a second home on a river two years ago in an area very near where we’re from originally . It is 4.5 hours from where we live now. We take some food with us and usually swing by the gro. store after we arrive. I’ve done it so often now that I cn do it with my eyes closed. It’s not a big deal.
Since it’s just DH and I it’s not very work intensive.</p>
<p>We go down every two to three weeks for weekends with longer stays in the summers. We just got back from a weeklong stay and will be going back down for a 5 night stay next week. We absolutely love it and hate to leave and come back home to the rental. We go boating,kayaking, biking,fishing,crabbing and are only an hour and fifteen minutes from the ocean so can easily make a day trip to the beach. </p>
<p>We built it with the plan of moving there permaently in a couple of years. In preparation for that, we sold our home of 23 years in April and are now living in a rental (with yard service included in rent) until we are able to move to the river house permanently. When we sold our old house, we were able to pay off the second home. We are now mortgage free. That was key to our plan for DH to leave his current job in a year or two.<br>
Our youngest just finished college. He hasn’t found a job yet. When he gets a job and is self-sufficient, we will ramp up our timeline for moving. </p>
<p>We decided to go all natural with the yard knowing that as we aged keeping a lawn would be too work intensive. Our neighbors call it the “brown yard”. It’s covered in pine needles and we are adding ground cover and low growing bushes each season. That was one of our best decisions.
The house is all vinyl siding so not much upkeep there. </p>
<p>We bought the land to build the house 14 years ago so we had plenty of time to contemplate our decision/plan. We don’t regret our choice and are glad we didn’t wait until we got too old to be able to make a move.</p>
<p>We have our large suburban Connecticut house where we raised our kids, and last year we purchased a co-op apartment in NYC, while still keeping the Connecticut house. Once all kids are fully launched (done with college, settled somewhere with jobs) we will sell the Connecticut house and move to the NYC apartment.</p>
<p>Plan is to live in NYC apartment until we’re ready for the old-age home. Right now we’re using the apartment on weekends and vacations. We do not rent it to anyone, ever.</p>
<p>Clearly, we’re very busy. Although apartment doesn’t require much upkeep, the “base home” in Connecticut sure does, and since we’re away almost every weekend, the lawn grows too long, the weeding doesn’t get done, etc.</p>
<p>If money is an issue, do <em>not</em> buy a second home. People who have money issues should not own two homes.</p>
<p>Regarding furniture, we used some stuff from CT to furnish NYC, but we also bought a lot of stuff for NYC, because it “fit” better. When it comes time to sell CT home, we’ll off-load excess furniture on kids (they’ll have their own places and jobs, remember?) and sell or donate whatever is left.</p>
<p>Hope this helps. Good luck with your purchase. You are correct, it is a very exciting thing to do.</p>
<p>Bethie–we took rising sea levels into consideration. That’s one reason we’re on the bay side of Cape May County and on high ground–should be able to withstand both higher water and hurricanes–and we don’t have to pay flood insurance since we’re not in a flood plain.</p>
<p>Packmom–we’ve considered selling the first house and renting until we can move to the shore full time–it would really simplify things, and like you, we’d have the second house mortgage paid off. However, we’d have to find rent cheaper than the taxes and other payments on the house. It’s something we need to look into, though.</p>
<p>garland, it is working out well for us. The rental is great…no responsibility except to pay the rent…sort of like when we were first married. DH is very happy to not spend his weekends mowing the lawn. </p>
<p>Our suburb has hundreds of homes for sale. We decided to go ahead and put it on the market in case the house sat for a year with no offers (like the home across the st. from us). DH plans to find a job (we need health insurance) in the area of the river house so we need to be free to move to the river house whenever the timing is right for us and not have to wait around for the house to sell and possibly miss out on a good job opportunity. Luckily, our home sold in 24 days.</p>
<p>We built a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia. It’s for family and friends only, no renters. We really love it but it is kind of a pain to have to spend some of each vacation on matience. I don’t know that we’ll keep it forever but our son has good memories and that was the whole point.</p>
<p>Interesting that this came up. We met with a real estate agent recently. She suggested that financially, H & BIL should talk with their CPA about pros & cons of selling some property they own and figure out what they might want to do with the proceeds. </p>
<p>One of the things BIL is considering doing with funds he gets from any eventual sale of the properties is buying a condo near the shopping center & beach so that he could rent it out most of the year but live in it part of the year as well. It is a hotel/condo he has stayed in for prior visits & he was born & raised in HI, so has a lot of memories here.</p>
<p>When we purchased the house we now live in, we initially rented an apartment first & rented out our house. The tenant lost his job & after we looked at the damage they had done to the home (mostly wear & tear), we decided we didn’t want to rent it out any more but just wanted to live there & stop renting. We have a lot of friends who have not had good experiences renting their homes either, so don’t think we would ever do it again for property we care about. Tenants tend to be hard on property–moreso than homeowners. We would rather rent a place we like in a location we like than being landlords.</p>
<p>For folks envisioning 2 homes far apart in retirement, think about which will be “home base” for doctors. Medical care needs are a fact of life, more and more as people age.</p>
<p>Agree that medical care is an important issue, especially after you or your loved one(s) have diagnosis of chronic health condition. I had a head start & got such a diagnosis 12 years ago, so have always considered proximity of good medical care when we go on vacations or other events. Seems to be a sensible thing to do. Fortunately, it has not been an issue to date, not even for our folks, who are in their 80s.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is handicap accessibility, including whether things are all on one level, whether there are ramps, wide enough doorways, grab rails, etc., and/or whether such aids can be easily added with available resources. Unfortunately, humans do age & need more care as we become more fragile.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for sharing their ideas. I’m back in my hometown and one of my projects for the vacation was to look at condos and think about owning one as a second home. Unfortunately where we want a second home is a four hour plane ride from our jobs. I think I was in bunsens neighborhood today but kept thinking about arriving for a winter weekend and facing steep streets and ice. But this is where all our family is including some of our children…
Not many vacation rentals if we choose not to buy. Currently parents have large home where we stay for weeks each year but they will probably sell in the next few years ( and no, we couldn’t afford a fraction of their market value!).</p>
<p>We were looking for a home on the water several years ago, as a vacation property. But it was so expensive, even just to buy a lot. Then the hassle of building, and going back from one place to the next, then taking care of two properties…so I started thinking, well, why not just live in the vacation property full time? So we sold our house and relocated (really only about 10 miles away) to the vacation property on a lake (already built). Sure, it still gets kind of cold here in the winter, but we can escape to some warm place that we don’t have to maintain, if it makes us too crazy. And we get to enjoy our home all year round. Would you consider just moving to your second home now? It’s far less work, and interest rates make a nicer property affordable.</p>
<p>“I think I was in bunsens neighborhood today but kept thinking about arriving for a winter weekend and facing steep streets and ice”</p>
<p>Bunsen may have steep streets, but it’s really not too often that ice is a problem. That’s pretty much a rarity around here. When we think there might be ice or snow, we park at the top of our hill (maybe a couple of times a year). Plus, there’s the positive of global warming!</p>
<p>No ice and snow to worry about in the sunny south…just an occasional hurricane…luckily our lot slopes steeply down toward the water so the back of the house is well over ten feet off the ground. </p>
<p>We built our second home to be “senior friendly”. There’s only one step up to the front and garage entry doors, the house is all one level (three bedrooms/two bathrooms with one large open living area that opens onto a screen porch and deck overlooking the river). The doorways are wide, all the doors have levers instead of knobs, sinks have separate hot/cold levers (easier on arthritic hands) rather than the single control. Our shower is a walk in with no doors or anything to step over. A wheelchair could be easily pushed into the shower. It’s not large but we don’t need a huge space for the two of us.</p>
<p>We are twelve miles (easy drive,little traffic) from a small town of 14,000 that has pretty much everything we need…25-30 miles from a larger university town with a comprehensive medical center. We hope that if a time comes that we can’t live there, it will be an attractive place for potential buyers looking for a waterfront home.</p>
<p>re Cape May: My family has been vacationing in N. Wildwood for my entire life… in fact I will be going there in a few weeks. “Wa-wa-watch the tram car, please.” :D</p>
<p>We bought a largish condo (3 br, 1800 sq ft) in Myrtle Beach about a mile from the beach. The plan is: rent it out, go there a few times a year, when we are ready to retire, spend the winter there. </p>
<p>One requirement is that there has to be activity all year round, many vacation spots seem to roll up the sidewalks in the off-season. If we change our minds and don’t want to live there, it will be an asset that can be sold to pay for something else. No exterior maintenance issues since it is a condo. There’s a hospital and airport right in Myrtle Beach.</p>
<p>It doesn’t quite break even financially, but we get some pretty good tax benefits because DW is in the real estate industry. So far it is working out.</p>
<p>I think I need to take up golf…</p>