Does anyone have a weekend house?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are these beach houses? Asking since the outer banks is a haul to go for a weekend.

I would also like to know where it is reasonable to buy a weekend/Lake house within a few hours of the DC metro area.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that there are other phases beyond sports. We have a shared family beach house and the oldest grandchildren are now college age and beyond, old enough to go themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these beach houses? Asking since the outer banks is a haul to go for a weekend.

I would also like to know where it is reasonable to buy a weekend/Lake house within a few hours of the DC metro area.

The Chesapeake Bay is only 1 hour away.

[Anonymous]

If you go in on this house OP, please don’t forget to keep grey poupon in the glove box. I so hate it when I pull up next to someone and they’ve forgotten it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a bit random since my kids are not teens yet, but wanted to get perspective from those with older children.

My parents want us and my sister to go in on a beach house with them. We all rented one together for the summer and had a really great time. My kids are currently 7 (DD) and 5 (DS) and my worry is that we missed the boat because pretty soon they won’t want to be away from friends on weekends, have sports and other activities, etc. My sisters kids are younger - 4 and 2.

Does anyone on have a weekend house and are your kids still interested in going at an older age? If not, at what age did they stop wanting to be away from friends or did it become more challenging with activities and other things going on? Or, if you’ve had it forever maybe it’s a non-issue since they grew up going and look forward to it?

Would love any thoughts!

Sorry, but your perception of kids' FOMO is quite ridiculous.

You won't spend a summer at a beach house b/c of weekend sports and activities? If you're going to put such an emphasis on time fillers in the summer, don't bother spending summers away.

Also, 7 and 5 is WAAAAY to young for FOMO with friends. Spending the summer on the beach will be an AWESOME experience for your kids provided they will be accepting of not having every single weekend mapped/planned out (which it seems like you already do). They can make their own "summer" friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a house on the Northern Neck that we share with my sister and her family. The key for us is proximity -- we can get there in 2.5-3 hours or so, which makes it close enough to go down to for just the day or even only overnight. Pretty much someone is down there every weekend.

We've had the house for about over 15 years, since the oldest children were 5 or so, and the oldest are now in college. Sometimes during the middle school / high school years, travel team sports schedules made it hard for a particular child to get there consistently but it all evened out.

What we found was that in middle school and high school, our kids wanted to go to the River House and bring a friend with them for the weekend or for longer periods during the summer. It always is a lot of fun. Sometimes it is just one friend and sometimes it is more. Our place has a lot of toys and a large outdoors area but the house itself is pretty humble. That has not stopped our kids one bit from wanting people to come down. The older children talk a lot now about bringing their own kids when they have families.

We have cleaners come in once a week and we have a lawn service. Both of those make a huge difference so we don't have to do any chores when we're there. I imagine that you'll get some feedback from some people who found the weekend house didn't work for them but it has been a wonderful place for us and we're glad we took the plunge!

My DH's family has a house on the Northern Neck, too. The proximity is great. Before that they had a house in the Outer Banks.

[Anonymous]

We have a family house on the Eastern Shore. When the kids were younger we would go fairly often in the summer and throughout the winter as well. I always said I wouldn't let sports dictate our schedule but unfortunately as others mentioned - right now they do (my kids are 9 and 12).

Between travel soccer and year round swim (winter and summer teams) - we aren't able to travel on most of the weekends due to meets, tournaments, etc. We have about 3 weeks off in August, Spring and Winter breaks when we can travel - and when we do - we tend to go out West to do something different.

It's hard to predict what your kids' interests are going to be. If you truly think you'd enjoy it - I say go for it and see how it shakes out. Even if you don't use it during the tween/teen years - you can always go back to it down the road.

[Anonymous]

Both my DH and I grew up without a weekend / summer home and we have not bought one as adults. We do own a few rental apartments and use some of that income to rent large vacation homes about once a year for our family to join us. We can rent way nicer places than we could afford to buy plus can go to different places. We’ve done this in Cape Cod, Maine, Vermont, California, and Hawaii. I think it’s a bit of what you are use to. I can see the appeal of having a vacation home but the appeal of goi g to different locations outweighs that for me.

Ps. I guess this may not rellly answer your question about how hard it is to get away with kids schedule. Mine are 12 and 10 and we definitely could do it for a couple of weeks in the summer and a handful of weekends during the year. Also, our kids do still to like spending time with us. It helps they are close in age and interests.