Do you think a vacation home is a good investment?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

We only rent it for the weeks in the summer when it commands top dollar and then use it the rest of the time or allow our parents to stay. It’s a beautiful home and I get so happy every time we go. Our property management company keeps the home beautiful and their fees are very reasonable for the service they provide.

We paid $1.1M and a conservative estimate of its current value is around $2.5M. So between the $500K down payment and $115K in repairs, those are just about our only costs since the mortgage, insurance and repairs have been pretty closely covered the summer rental fees. (Except 2020 when we did not rent, but used it as soon as the OBX bridge opened up.) If we were to sell it now, that would be huge gain on our $615K initial investment and would beat the performance of our stock market holdings since 2017.

To the hurricane comment, that’s the case with virtually all ocean front homes. It’s a risk, but that’s the nature of the world. Some won’t be willing to risk and that’s fine for them too.

For us, it was a very wise choice. If we did not have the cash to fix up the home when we first bought it, it would be another story. Having the cash to make the house beautiful and ready to rent at a premium was key.

See, here’s the thing. It’s worth that now, but OBX property values rise and fall with reckless abandon. There is zero guarantee that your house will maintain or increase in value, and an equally good chance that it will decline. And the decline can happen with very little notice.

Sure, that’s part of the risk. Just like any investment. Real estate is no different.

But I’m willing to take this particular risk and if the house declined in value, it’s only a modest portion of our NW. We have plenty of other assets in property and the stock market.

And so far it’s paid off handsomely in our case. $615K of our cash in 2017 for a $2.5M asset in 2023 plus the use of that asset has worked out quite well. It’s fine if others want to make different choices.

You’ve missed my point. I’m not talking about real estate in general. I’m talking about OBX real estate in particular. It’s a lot more volatile. The overwhelming majority of the houses are investment properties. The first downtown in the market and the first rise in interest rates hit there first. Yes, there was a nice covid upswing, but that’s over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

Tons of short sales/foreclosures on OBX - you just have to look for them.

How is this an answer to the question?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends on location, and a host of other factors, OP. To me, it is not worth the investment of my mental energy.

+1. For me its the mental energy specifically. Maintaining our primary home is work enough. I don't need more work. I'll stick to hotels and rentals. If I were uber wealthy and a personal assistant could manage all the property maintenance and contractors maybe, but I'm not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on location, and a host of other factors, OP. To me, it is not worth the investment of my mental energy.

+1. For me its the mental energy specifically. Maintaining our primary home is work enough. I don't need more work. I'll stick to hotels and rentals. If I were uber wealthy and a personal assistant could manage all the property maintenance and contractors maybe, but I'm not.

+1 We sold ours. There's also a huge glut of vacation homes right now since everyone and their brother started doing airbnb/vrbo etc AND insurance market is rapidly changing for areas with climate issues. Insurance for a rental property is always a lot higher. I feel we got out when we should, but I could be wrong. It was nice for about 2 years and then a hassle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

We only rent it for the weeks in the summer when it commands top dollar and then use it the rest of the time or allow our parents to stay. It’s a beautiful home and I get so happy every time we go. Our property management company keeps the home beautiful and their fees are very reasonable for the service they provide.

We paid $1.1M and a conservative estimate of its current value is around $2.5M. So between the $500K down payment and $115K in repairs, those are just about our only costs since the mortgage, insurance and repairs have been pretty closely covered the summer rental fees. (Except 2020 when we did not rent, but used it as soon as the OBX bridge opened up.) If we were to sell it now, that would be huge gain on our $615K initial investment and would beat the performance of our stock market holdings since 2017.

To the hurricane comment, that’s the case with virtually all ocean front homes. It’s a risk, but that’s the nature of the world. Some won’t be willing to risk and that’s fine for them too.

For us, it was a very wise choice. If we did not have the cash to fix up the home when we first bought it, it would be another story. Having the cash to make the house beautiful and ready to rent at a premium was key.

See, here’s the thing. It’s worth that now, but OBX property values rise and fall with reckless abandon. There is zero guarantee that your house will maintain or increase in value, and an equally good chance that it will decline. And the decline can happen with very little notice.

Sure, that’s part of the risk. Just like any investment. Real estate is no different.

But I’m willing to take this particular risk and if the house declined in value, it’s only a modest portion of our NW. We have plenty of other assets in property and the stock market.

And so far it’s paid off handsomely in our case. $615K of our cash in 2017 for a $2.5M asset in 2023 plus the use of that asset has worked out quite well. It’s fine if others want to make different choices.

You’ve missed my point. I’m not talking about real estate in general. I’m talking about OBX real estate in particular. It’s a lot more volatile. The overwhelming majority of the houses are investment properties. The first downtown in the market and the first rise in interest rates hit there first. Yes, there was a nice covid upswing, but that’s over.

New poster here. 2008 was the worst year in decades for housing prices in the US. On average they dropped 16 percent. In the Outer Banks they dropped 40 percent and took nearly 15 years to recover.

No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

We only rent it for the weeks in the summer when it commands top dollar and then use it the rest of the time or allow our parents to stay. It’s a beautiful home and I get so happy every time we go. Our property management company keeps the home beautiful and their fees are very reasonable for the service they provide.

We paid $1.1M and a conservative estimate of its current value is around $2.5M. So between the $500K down payment and $115K in repairs, those are just about our only costs since the mortgage, insurance and repairs have been pretty closely covered the summer rental fees. (Except 2020 when we did not rent, but used it as soon as the OBX bridge opened up.) If we were to sell it now, that would be huge gain on our $615K initial investment and would beat the performance of our stock market holdings since 2017.

To the hurricane comment, that’s the case with virtually all ocean front homes. It’s a risk, but that’s the nature of the world. Some won’t be willing to risk and that’s fine for them too.

For us, it was a very wise choice. If we did not have the cash to fix up the home when we first bought it, it would be another story. Having the cash to make the house beautiful and ready to rent at a premium was key.

See, here’s the thing. It’s worth that now, but OBX property values rise and fall with reckless abandon. There is zero guarantee that your house will maintain or increase in value, and an equally good chance that it will decline. And the decline can happen with very little notice.

Sure, that’s part of the risk. Just like any investment. Real estate is no different.

But I’m willing to take this particular risk and if the house declined in value, it’s only a modest portion of our NW. We have plenty of other assets in property and the stock market.

And so far it’s paid off handsomely in our case. $615K of our cash in 2017 for a $2.5M asset in 2023 plus the use of that asset has worked out quite well. It’s fine if others want to make different choices.

You’ve missed my point. I’m not talking about real estate in general. I’m talking about OBX real estate in particular. It’s a lot more volatile. The overwhelming majority of the houses are investment properties. The first downtown in the market and the first rise in interest rates hit there first. Yes, there was a nice covid upswing, but that’s over.

Okay, it sounds like you and I disagree and that’s totally fine.

My home could lose over 50% of its current value and it still would not meaningfully affect our cash flow. It would simply go back to around our purchase price in 2017. We can ride out a market downswing.

Now, if we lost renters (like we did in 2020) or the rents went way down, that WOULD affect how I view the house. Right now it costs us nothing marginal to own the home since the rental income covers mortgage, taxes insurance, upkeep etc.

Then we would have to cover the $4K monthly mortgage, taxes and insurance from our own funds. We could do it, but I would not be happy about it.

Or if there was a big natural disaster, that would obviously not be great, but that could happen anywhere at anytime and I choose not to live my life worrying about stuff like that.

I get why people would not want to take the risk. But some people have the cash and are willing to jump in. There are some upsides to be aware of as well as the downsides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

We only rent it for the weeks in the summer when it commands top dollar and then use it the rest of the time or allow our parents to stay. It’s a beautiful home and I get so happy every time we go. Our property management company keeps the home beautiful and their fees are very reasonable for the service they provide.

We paid $1.1M and a conservative estimate of its current value is around $2.5M. So between the $500K down payment and $115K in repairs, those are just about our only costs since the mortgage, insurance and repairs have been pretty closely covered the summer rental fees. (Except 2020 when we did not rent, but used it as soon as the OBX bridge opened up.) If we were to sell it now, that would be huge gain on our $615K initial investment and would beat the performance of our stock market holdings since 2017.

To the hurricane comment, that’s the case with virtually all ocean front homes. It’s a risk, but that’s the nature of the world. Some won’t be willing to risk and that’s fine for them too.

For us, it was a very wise choice. If we did not have the cash to fix up the home when we first bought it, it would be another story. Having the cash to make the house beautiful and ready to rent at a premium was key.

See, here’s the thing. It’s worth that now, but OBX property values rise and fall with reckless abandon. There is zero guarantee that your house will maintain or increase in value, and an equally good chance that it will decline. And the decline can happen with very little notice.

Sure, that’s part of the risk. Just like any investment. Real estate is no different.

But I’m willing to take this particular risk and if the house declined in value, it’s only a modest portion of our NW. We have plenty of other assets in property and the stock market.

And so far it’s paid off handsomely in our case. $615K of our cash in 2017 for a $2.5M asset in 2023 plus the use of that asset has worked out quite well. It’s fine if others want to make different choices.

You’ve missed my point. I’m not talking about real estate in general. I’m talking about OBX real estate in particular. It’s a lot more volatile. The overwhelming majority of the houses are investment properties. The first downtown in the market and the first rise in interest rates hit there first. Yes, there was a nice covid upswing, but that’s over.

Okay, it sounds like you and I disagree and that’s totally fine.

My home could lose over 50% of its current value and it still would not meaningfully affect our cash flow. It would simply go back to around our purchase price in 2017. We can ride out a market downswing.

Now, if we lost renters (like we did in 2020) or the rents went way down, that WOULD affect how I view the house. Right now it costs us nothing marginal to own the home since the rental income covers mortgage, taxes insurance, upkeep etc.

Then we would have to cover the $4K monthly mortgage, taxes and insurance from our own funds. We could do it, but I would not be happy about it.

Or if there was a big natural disaster, that would obviously not be great, but that could happen anywhere at anytime and I choose not to live my life worrying about stuff like that.

I get why people would not want to take the risk. But some people have the cash and are willing to jump in. There are some upsides to be aware of as well as the downsides.

Does it stress you out when you go to the house and stuff is broken/missing/dinged up? I'm type A and I don't think I could handle this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

We only rent it for the weeks in the summer when it commands top dollar and then use it the rest of the time or allow our parents to stay. It’s a beautiful home and I get so happy every time we go. Our property management company keeps the home beautiful and their fees are very reasonable for the service they provide.

We paid $1.1M and a conservative estimate of its current value is around $2.5M. So between the $500K down payment and $115K in repairs, those are just about our only costs since the mortgage, insurance and repairs have been pretty closely covered the summer rental fees. (Except 2020 when we did not rent, but used it as soon as the OBX bridge opened up.) If we were to sell it now, that would be huge gain on our $615K initial investment and would beat the performance of our stock market holdings since 2017.

To the hurricane comment, that’s the case with virtually all ocean front homes. It’s a risk, but that’s the nature of the world. Some won’t be willing to risk and that’s fine for them too.

For us, it was a very wise choice. If we did not have the cash to fix up the home when we first bought it, it would be another story. Having the cash to make the house beautiful and ready to rent at a premium was key.

See, here’s the thing. It’s worth that now, but OBX property values rise and fall with reckless abandon. There is zero guarantee that your house will maintain or increase in value, and an equally good chance that it will decline. And the decline can happen with very little notice.

Sure, that’s part of the risk. Just like any investment. Real estate is no different.

But I’m willing to take this particular risk and if the house declined in value, it’s only a modest portion of our NW. We have plenty of other assets in property and the stock market.

And so far it’s paid off handsomely in our case. $615K of our cash in 2017 for a $2.5M asset in 2023 plus the use of that asset has worked out quite well. It’s fine if others want to make different choices.

You’ve missed my point. I’m not talking about real estate in general. I’m talking about OBX real estate in particular. It’s a lot more volatile. The overwhelming majority of the houses are investment properties. The first downtown in the market and the first rise in interest rates hit there first. Yes, there was a nice covid upswing, but that’s over.

Okay, it sounds like you and I disagree and that’s totally fine.

My home could lose over 50% of its current value and it still would not meaningfully affect our cash flow. It would simply go back to around our purchase price in 2017. We can ride out a market downswing.

Now, if we lost renters (like we did in 2020) or the rents went way down, that WOULD affect how I view the house. Right now it costs us nothing marginal to own the home since the rental income covers mortgage, taxes insurance, upkeep etc.

Then we would have to cover the $4K monthly mortgage, taxes and insurance from our own funds. We could do it, but I would not be happy about it.

Or if there was a big natural disaster, that would obviously not be great, but that could happen anywhere at anytime and I choose not to live my life worrying about stuff like that.

I get why people would not want to take the risk. But some people have the cash and are willing to jump in. There are some upsides to be aware of as well as the downsides.

I think it’s interesting that you went from claiming that your OBX investment kicks the snot out of stocks to saying that you don’t care because you’re rich and can afford the lower return. I’m sure that’s true.

All I will say is, having owned a partially rented / partíally personally used OBX house, there are way more expenses than you are letting on. I will say this, though - you did buy at the right time. You have that going for you.

[Anonymous]

Our vacation/second home is about 1.25 hours away so we can go to it often. We do not rent it out. To us, we measure the value in it with the time spent and memories made there for us and our children. Cheesy, I guess but I don't care. We made sure we got a good deal and locked in a good 2021 rate, but we never went into it thinking can we rent it and make money. We still go on other vacations but it has been a godsend for us to have our second house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us, absolutely! We purchased an ocean front house in Corolla, NC in 2017. We got it for a steal and it has a mortgage at a nice low fixed rate. It needed a little bit of TLC with new paint and new furnishings and we redid the bathrooms and decks. The TLC cost about $115K. It was a stretch at the time, but I’m so glad that we took the leap and made it work.

We rent it for 5-7 weeks in the summer and net almost $13,000 per week and it pays for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and upkeep. And we spend the other weeks enjoying the house.

And the house’s value has shot up.

But if we had not had the cash to fix it up and gotten lucky with the interest rate, it would not have been a good move on our part.

Why don’t you rent it the rest of the year? Are you using it! How much did you pay for it?

Tons of short sales/foreclosures on OBX - you just have to look for them.

How do you find short sales/foreclosures? I'm not interested in OBX but am thinking about other places.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homes in vacation areas rarely appreciate like primary residences and are more subject to headwinds in the broader economy. When the economy is weak, vacation property values suffer much more than primary residences.

If you're speaking of a property to rent out when not using it personally, you're speaking of a business and the amount of income you derive from it will depend on your business acumen, the amount of effort you put into it, your overhead, and the strength and consistency of demand for rentals in that location. Whether the ROI will be superior to more liquid investments in the equity and bond markets is difficult to predict, but one consideration is that an individual rental property is a single highly concentrated asset, which iin investment terms is always highly risky.

This is a good answer. We have a vacation home we use a lot and don't rent out. It has appreciated considerably, but we did not expect that...the values in the area just exploded during COVID and seem unlikely to decrease. But our initial criterion was simply likelihood to hold value and wanting a place that we would use.

As someone who basically won the vacation home lottery, I would not recommend one primarily as an investment vehicle. Maybe if you enjoy and are good at property management, but it's still risky. It's a house, so there will be overhead in time and money associated with upkeep. For us, those would not be worth it if we didn't get enjoyment out of the house itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking about getting a vacation home for years. DH got a large bonus this year and we are now sitting on a sizable amount of cash. Our family likes to travel but we don’t necessarily like to go to the same place so it is hard to pick one place for a vacation home. We like the beach but may want to go to Maine one year and the outer banks the next. Same with skiing. We go somewhere different every year. I also don’t want to go to the same beach for 2 weeks. If we go on a long vacation, it would not be to a beach house.

From an investment standpoint, would be just be better off investing in mutual funds vs a vacation home?

We have a 2nd home, but it is not a vacation home. I do not understand the concept of a vacation home. Vacations are vacations, being at your home is not a vacation. No, our 2nd home is not an investment unless you count how much it has appreciated (which indeed has been significant) however, we have to maintain 2 homes so it is expensive.

Not sure why people think owning a 2nd home pervents vacatons.

[Anonymous]

It depends. If it is for rental and you are in a great location and rent it out most of the year, yes it can be a great investment. But if you want to use it during high season and not using a management company, ROI will be a lot less. Return will be from rental income not the real estate itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking about getting a vacation home for years. DH got a large bonus this year and we are now sitting on a sizable amount of cash. Our family likes to travel but we don’t necessarily like to go to the same place so it is hard to pick one place for a vacation home. We like the beach but may want to go to Maine one year and the outer banks the next. Same with skiing. We go somewhere different every year. I also don’t want to go to the same beach for 2 weeks. If we go on a long vacation, it would not be to a beach house.

From an investment standpoint, would be just be better off investing in mutual funds vs a vacation home?

We have a 2nd home, but it is not a vacation home. I do not understand the concept of a vacation home. Vacations are vacations, being at your home is not a vacation. No, our 2nd home is not an investment unless you count how much it has appreciated (which indeed has been significant) however, we have to maintain 2 homes so it is expensive.

Not sure why people think owning a 2nd home pervents vacatons.

Because not everyone is a rich as you and they don’t have extra money for both? You can’t be that out of touch, can you?

[Anonymous]

No