Where is your vacation house? Where would you get one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Queens Anne County, Maryland on the Bay. Takes about 1 hour to 1.5 hours to get there depending on traffic. Do not rent it out.

Why not?

Not PP poster, but I would answer b/c the glory of having it is to be able to go for 48 hours on a moment's notice to recharge the batteries.

[Anonymous]

Vacation homes IMO make much more sense when you are fairly sure it’s where you want to retire to, Rehobeth beach town or not.

[Anonymous]

I just can't get over this poster who:

a) Has never been to Rehoboth in the winter
b) Is irate - just furious! - that anybody would enjoy it in the winter.

OP, chill out. Even if it is as bad as you think, some people might just enjoy different things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poster who says it's "same stuff, different location" has obviously never bought a vacation home (or the right vacation home) and never should.

Look on the rivers in SoMD (St. Mary's/Potomac/Pax). Anywhere from 80 to 120 minutes max from NoVA with zero traffic (once you get past the beltway). Are there great beaches? No, but we aren't beach people. Sit on the deck (more comfortable/less sand), watch the sun rise or set, take in the breeze, buy a boat. Be around normal people. It's the best, and is the furthest thing from being home.

I am the poster that said maintenance was basically the same stuff in a different location. We have a house a on Hilton Head. A majority of maintenance on a house is tied to wear and tear. If you are adding wear and tear in one place you aren't in another. We designed the house and landscaping to be relatively maintenance free.

Total bs. The weather on the Mid-Atlantic coast is brutal on homes in the winter. Hilton Head is further south I suppose, so maybe less so. But a beach house anywhere from the OBX north gets killed in the winter. The closer to the beach, the worse it is. And who wants a beach house that isn’t as close to the beach as you can get?

At the risk of starting yet another argument on this thread, I'll say that we haven't found the weather to be too hard on our house.
We're two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean and have owned since 2016. Since then we've painted the exterior trim once.
That's it. It hasn't been a giant pit of repair costs at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poster who says it's "same stuff, different location" has obviously never bought a vacation home (or the right vacation home) and never should.

Look on the rivers in SoMD (St. Mary's/Potomac/Pax). Anywhere from 80 to 120 minutes max from NoVA with zero traffic (once you get past the beltway). Are there great beaches? No, but we aren't beach people. Sit on the deck (more comfortable/less sand), watch the sun rise or set, take in the breeze, buy a boat. Be around normal people. It's the best, and is the furthest thing from being home.

I am the poster that said maintenance was basically the same stuff in a different location. We have a house a on Hilton Head. A majority of maintenance on a house is tied to wear and tear. If you are adding wear and tear in one place you aren't in another. We designed the house and landscaping to be relatively maintenance free.

Total bs. The weather on the Mid-Atlantic coast is brutal on homes in the winter. Hilton Head is further south I suppose, so maybe less so. But a beach house anywhere from the OBX north gets killed in the winter. The closer to the beach, the worse it is. And who wants a beach house that isn’t as close to the beach as you can get?

At the risk of starting yet another argument on this thread, I'll say that we haven't found the weather to be too hard on our house.
We're two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean and have owned since 2016. Since then we've painted the exterior trim once.
That's it. It hasn't been a giant pit of repair costs at all.

+1

Winters at the shore are fairly moderate.

Storms/hurricanes/storm surges (mostly fall) can be bad though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Visiting a beach town like Rehoboth in the off season, particularly in the dead of winter, isn't the same as living there day in and day out. None of you have had that experience other than me. It's not fun.

I agree, our second home is in Bayside (Selbyville). About 20%of the residents live there full time, We have spent a few weeks during the covid years down there in the winter for a change of scenery and I realized it would never be my full-time residence. I do love shoulder seasons from May to the beginning of November at the beach.

[Anonymous]

We live in Richmond and have a second home in Afton. We've owned it since the kids were preschool aged. We belong to the Wintergreen club so we can use the pools and Lake Monocan in the summer. We spend a lot of time there as a family but also hosting guys/girls weekends with our friends.

I don't plan to retire there but to keep a home in each place. My parents summer at the beach and then live in an apartment in the city the rest of the time.

[Anonymous]

We have a house on Kiawah and love it! It’s not that bad a drive to spend a week or two there and we always have the option of taking a short flight instead.

[Anonymous]

My parents retired to Berlin MD - they love it live on a golf course, go to OC or Assateague for short trips and to the DE beach towns for variety in the summer. There is a lot to do all seasons out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last year we wanted to buy a beach house and the one we wanted fell through. Then life got busy and we went on a bunch of vacations so the beach house was on the back burner. We now have 800k cash in a savings account. We still want a vacation home/potential retirement home.

Where is your vacation home?
Do you rent it out? How often do you use it?

Where would you buy one if you could?

Our problem is that between work, school and kids sports, we don’t have a ton of time. We also like to travel to new places so I feel like we may not go to this vacation home enough. I love the idea of having a house where we can bring our friends and my kids could one day bring their families. My kids are in elementary and middle school now.

OUr vacation home is at a lake 90 miles from our main home
Yes, we rent it out - for $500 a night. We use it probably 2/3 of the summer weekends and always Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day.
We also rent it out in the winter - ice fisherman like it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a house on the Chesapeake Bay western shore. It’s an hour away. We come all of the time. Spend the summer here, weekends in the fall, Thanksgiving too. Sometimes I even make the round trip drive in a day. Don’t rent although the income would be nice. Only traffic we hit is 495 so try to avoid DC rush hour.

Same. We have a house in Solomon's Island. We don't rent it out. It's 62 miles from DC. We call it the party house. We have lots of friends who come for the weekend b/c it's so close. We have access to the Chesapeake Bay and Patuxent River. We love it. No Bay Bridge traffic. Super easy to get there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a home in Bethany. The people claiming it isn’t an easy drive to the DE beaches are they knew who don’t own there - one of the huge benefits of owning is that you can time your travel to non-peak times because there is no check-in day or time. Only once this summer did we hit any traffic delay of more than 15 minutes, but we often head there Friday morning and return Monday night.

Yeah people who claim there is a ton of traffic really don’t go there often. I can’t remember the last time we hit any traffic of significance (more than a 15 minute delay) and even then it has been due to an accident.

Maybe true, but it's still a pretty long ride . . . to a mediocre beach.

In Rehoboth now, took us 3 hours to get here on Sunday from Fairfax. Maybe too much for you, but works for us.

And on that note, beautiful day for boating at this mediocre beach, so I’m out….

I actually really like Rehoboth/Bethany, but the difference between 2 or 2.25 and 3 hours turned out to be incredibly important to me when scouting a location for a second home. But I really measure by what feels like a short/easy drive and how bad things get on the worst traffic days. The other piece about the Rehoboth drive that I don't like is that a long part of the last hour is on surface roads - but that may be personal preference.

-my 2nd home is in the foothills of the mountains

Yea, I agree. We did the same thing as you. We bought a really nice place on 7 beautiful acres with a pool about 90-100 minutes west of the DMV just outside of a small historic town. Not only is it far more convenient than the DE/MD beaches, it's a nice area to visit regardless of the season. Unlike a beach town, it's not jam packed in the summer, dead in the winter, and focused exclusively on tourism.

Where did you buy? Sounds great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Visiting a beach town like Rehoboth in the off season, particularly in the dead of winter, isn't the same as living there day in and day out. None of you have had that experience other than me. It's not fun.

I agree, our second home is in Bayside (Selbyville). About 20%of the residents live there full time, We have spent a few weeks during the covid years down there in the winter for a change of scenery and I realized it would never be my full-time residence. I do love shoulder seasons from May to the beginning of November at the beach.

Thank you. Finally a voice of reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a home in Bethany. The people claiming it isn’t an easy drive to the DE beaches are they knew who don’t own there - one of the huge benefits of owning is that you can time your travel to non-peak times because there is no check-in day or time. Only once this summer did we hit any traffic delay of more than 15 minutes, but we often head there Friday morning and return Monday night.

Yeah people who claim there is a ton of traffic really don’t go there often. I can’t remember the last time we hit any traffic of significance (more than a 15 minute delay) and even then it has been due to an accident.

Maybe true, but it's still a pretty long ride . . . to a mediocre beach.

In Rehoboth now, took us 3 hours to get here on Sunday from Fairfax. Maybe too much for you, but works for us.

And on that note, beautiful day for boating at this mediocre beach, so I’m out….

I actually really like Rehoboth/Bethany, but the difference between 2 or 2.25 and 3 hours turned out to be incredibly important to me when scouting a location for a second home. But I really measure by what feels like a short/easy drive and how bad things get on the worst traffic days. The other piece about the Rehoboth drive that I don't like is that a long part of the last hour is on surface roads - but that may be personal preference.

-my 2nd home is in the foothills of the mountains

Yea, I agree. We did the same thing as you. We bought a really nice place on 7 beautiful acres with a pool about 90-100 minutes west of the DMV just outside of a small historic town. Not only is it far more convenient than the DE/MD beaches, it's a nice area to visit regardless of the season. Unlike a beach town, it's not jam packed in the summer, dead in the winter, and focused exclusively on tourism.

Where did you buy? Sounds great!

Ha ha I’d rather not be any more specific and out myself on DCUM to others who I know are on this website. But I will say this: I can’t believe how lucky we were to find this place!

[Anonymous]

If we are dreaming I would want a vacation house on a lake somewhere that is warm enough to swim in the summer and freezes over to skate in the winter and is close enough to go the weekend. I am pretty sure this doesn't exist near here. BUT one can dream.