Anybody bought a second home in SC/GA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My colleague just bought a house in Seabrook Island a couple of months ago. We are only in the office 3 days a week so they go back and forth. They don't rent it. They will retire there.

DC to Seabrook every week?? God that is a trek. My in laws live there and while it’s beautiful, I will only visit twice a year because of the hassle.

[Anonymous]

I am from there and was planning to buy a second place there because I have so much family there. But it is too darn hot there now in the summer. Just constant brutal heat--worse than it was in my childhood. I'm going north now in the summers. I'll still go down there for the holidays.

[Anonymous]

My parents just bought a second home in Charleston and tell me the second home tax there is insane, so much so that they are considering switching their residency from MA to SC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My colleague just bought a house in Seabrook Island a couple of months ago. We are only in the office 3 days a week so they go back and forth. They don't rent it. They will retire there.

DC to Seabrook every week?? God that is a trek. My in laws live there and while it’s beautiful, I will only visit twice a year because of the hassle.

They don't go every week, but they go every 2 to 3 weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am from SC and I think it's not a good idea to retire there unless you are from there and that's where all your family and friends are. It's a medically underserved area and at risk for hurricanes which are hard to evacuate from.

It's especially a bad idea to retire on the coasts with the higher hurricane risk. It's hard to evacuate when you are old and disabled.

Don't do it

I agree that this is a medically underserved area. I lived in North Myrtle Beach. My husband had an on the job workers comp injury in which he broke his ankle. The ankle was set at the hospital in Myrtle Beach. My husband's followup appointment was in Conway SC at the orthopedist's office. Adults in the waiting room at the doctor's office were not wearing shoes. I'd never seen that before. I think we were the only people in the waiting room that had bathed within 24 hours.

In some areas there is resentment about rich yankees buying up all of the property and displacing locals who have hunted and fished on the land for generations.

If you buy in an area with only wealthy people you will have tough getting maintenance work done. Generally locals will forgo the work if they have to drive an hour each way to paint your home etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s wise to live in a hurricane prone area as seniors, especially one without great hospitals. There is also an evolving insurance crisis that would prevent me from looking at owning anything coastal in the southeast. What is happening in New Orleans and Florida is going to happen to everything south of Virginia. I lived in the south for decades until recently and personally would not plan on such a place for retirement.

I do think there is a coming insurance issue. What that will mean is that there will be no insurance. So only rich people will own those properties. Why? They can rebuild if wiped out. That would be the plan going in.

So it all depends on what you want. I would do it in a heartbeat.