Anyone bicoastal?

[Anonymous]

Not quite a RE discussion but not travel either. We live on the East Coast and travel roughly 3x per year to the West. We love the West coast but are not in a position to fully relocate for another 7-8 years. We’ve been thinking about a bicoastal lifestyle and figured I’d see if anyone’s BTDT. FWIW, we have school aged children and aren’t interested in homeschool (plus I think the kids need a home base), so we’d need to keep that in mind. Would love to hear advice, opinions and experiences!

[Anonymous]

I live on the west coast in an area with a lot of transplants. Our summer weather isn’t great. There are a decent amount of families from our school that go back east and stay at family summer homes or move back with their kids to their childhood homes for the summer- enough that it’s hard to schedule playdates and get-togethers. They put the kids in summer camps and sports out there. The trick seems to be to make sure that both places have the same school schedule. For example, in the Pacific NW, most school schedules match traditional post-Labor day school start schedules in NY or MA. But matching up a CA life with an early August school start with an east coast schedule would make summer awkward for camps/sports/socializing in the other place.

The only people I know who maintain two homes are doing it on the coast and in the mountains. Not on both coasts. But I’m not in LA or Sam Francisco so it might be more common there?

[Anonymous]

Summers are really good n the Bay Area. Even with the crazy heat waves, it wasn’t that bad here and it quickly cools down an hour or two before sunset. You could definitely do something like a long term rental to stay the entire summer here or buy a second home that you spend summers and breaks. If you are looking at very frequent travel back east, it will be more difficult until business travel picks up. A lot f the frequent direct routes back east have not returned. For example, I had to fly SFO to Dulles instead of SJ to BWI. Fine if you’re doing Peninsula to NOVA but a pain if you’re doing South Bay to Maryland.

[Anonymous]

We’re bi-coastal with kids. Kids attend school in the DC area. We travel back and forth to the west coast as a family several times a year and maintain residences on both coasts.

Do you have a specific question?

[Anonymous]

OP - you have kids. This is a pipe dream until they're out of the house.

[Anonymous]

OP-

Where on the west coast? As a practical matter, it ought to be a location with lots of direct flights from the DC area (or wherever you live).

[Anonymous]

I dabbled a little in college.

[Anonymous]

We are the process of figuring this out. I grew up in California and we want to retire near the beach. We’ve been looking at buying now in cheaper beach community and renting out as a corporate rental (14-30 day rentals). The location is very good. We’d use the house for school holidays, our family lives a few blocks away. So we are targeting a very specific neighborhood.

We would retire 20 years from now. Ideally house would be paid off and we could then gut renovate. We’d keep our DC rowhouse.

This is our tentative plan. We are really committed on executing this in the next year or two. I think home prices will soften more. We really should’ve bought 2-3 years ago but we didn’t have a second down payment saved up yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re bi-coastal with kids. Kids attend school in the DC area. We travel back and forth to the west coast as a family several times a year and maintain residences on both coasts.

Do you have a specific question?

+1

[Anonymous]

OP, I’m a current bicoastal family who’s already posted in this thread. In our case my spouse’s job requires us to maintain two residences, so we fly back and forth by necessity.

Since you mentioned having multiple kids, keep in mind that your children’s school schedules may not align as they get older. This is now a problem for us, as my kids’ vacations now only overlap during Thanksgiving, Xmas and summer. Thus, we can no longer travel to the west coast as a family during February or spring break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live on the west coast in an area with a lot of transplants. Our summer weather isn’t great. There are a decent amount of families from our school that go back east and stay at family summer homes or move back with their kids to their childhood homes for the summer- enough that it’s hard to schedule playdates and get-togethers. They put the kids in summer camps and sports out there. The trick seems to be to make sure that both places have the same school schedule. For example, in the Pacific NW, most school schedules match traditional post-Labor day school start schedules in NY or MA. But matching up a CA life with an early August school start with an east coast schedule would make summer awkward for camps/sports/socializing in the other place.

The only people I know who maintain two homes are doing it on the coast and in the mountains. Not on both coasts. But I’m not in LA or Sam Francisco so it might be more common there?

PP - Where in the state are you exactly - because I'm in coastal Southern California and our summers are for the most part, spectacular. Very rarely do we get above 85*, with average temps around 78*-80*. Also I don't know any families that go "back East" for the Summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Summers are really good n the Bay Area. Even with the crazy heat waves, it wasn’t that bad here and it quickly cools down an hour or two before sunset. You could definitely do something like a long term rental to stay the entire summer here or buy a second home that you spend summers and breaks. If you are looking at very frequent travel back east, it will be more difficult until business travel picks up. A lot f the frequent direct routes back east have not returned. For example, I had to fly SFO to Dulles instead of SJ to BWI. Fine if you’re doing Peninsula to NOVA but a pain if you’re doing South Bay to Maryland.

OP here. Funny. The Bay is where we visit. Have family here and absolutely love it. I do miss the direct flights from SJC. Thanks for your input.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re bi-coastal with kids. Kids attend school in the DC area. We travel back and forth to the west coast as a family several times a year and maintain residences on both coasts.

Do you have a specific question?

OP here. Thanks for chiming in! Do own on both coasts? When do you travel west and how long do you stay? How does it work with sports, etc.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are the process of figuring this out. I grew up in California and we want to retire near the beach. We’ve been looking at buying now in cheaper beach community and renting out as a corporate rental (14-30 day rentals). The location is very good. We’d use the house for school holidays, our family lives a few blocks away. So we are targeting a very specific neighborhood.

We would retire 20 years from now. Ideally house would be paid off and we could then gut renovate. We’d keep our DC rowhouse.

This is our tentative plan. We are really committed on executing this in the next year or two. I think home prices will soften more. We really should’ve bought 2-3 years ago but we didn’t have a second down payment saved up yet.

OP here. Thanks for sharing. Your plan is helpful to us as we try to navigate this! Another option I’m thinking of is buying a home on the west with our family (my parents) that lives there. We stay with them in the 4 bedroom home that they rent when we visit. Haven’t stayed for more than a month at a time. Could purchase a larger home together and share the mortgage…

Also thought about purchasing a home and Airbnb-ing it while we’re east. I also like the idea of long term rentals that another PP shared. Thanks again for your input.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP-

Where on the west coast? As a practical matter, it ought to be a location with lots of direct flights from the DC area (or wherever you live).

Bay Area most likely. We do like SoCal also and could consider the burbs of LA. Both have nonstops to the DC area.