Social/career implications of buying a beach house for SAHM

[Anonymous]

Choose your beach neighborhood carefully. Our first beach house was in a neighborhood with year round residents and summer rentals. It was hard to make connections in the neighborhood. Our current one is in a neighborhood with almost no rentals and mostly families who are there for the summer. Lots of social activities and friends in the new 'hood. It's made a huge difference.

We use it in the summer (2-3 months) and maybe a couple of weekends during the off season. Be realistic about it once your kids hit school age.

Op if you can afford it go for it. If it ends up not working out as you expected or being a burden then sell it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The people that claim to be telecommuting full time, what do you do?

To the OP's point, you may want to look into renting a beach house for a year and see how you like it before buying one.

I work in the insurance industry. 100% telecommute. I can move my office anywhere for the summer.

[Anonymous]

I would 100% buy the house- grew up going to a beach house in the summers and off season and loved it. Bring friends and do activities there and meet people.

[Anonymous]

I think this has been brought up already, but just be aware that once your kids are older, spending a ton of time at any vacation property will be difficult. For example, mine are 12, 7 and 4. In the summer, they are very focused on swim team and tennis team and then they do a 3 week day camp in August with their friends that they enjoy. In the spring and fall, the weekends are filled with soccer games ( and a lot of birthday parties!). I think it would be hard to pull them away to a beach house for the amount of time it would take for me to feel like it was a good investment (unless maybe I rented it out and only went out a handful of times a year. If it were me, I would just use the money instead of rent properties for when I'd actually be out there. I also have a friend who has a vacation property and they're constantly having to go out their for a day to get work done and do maintenance. That seems like a nightmare to me. For less money, just rent a great place when you're going to use it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find that people who don't have beach houses sure do seem to have a lot of opinions about them. I have one, so let me chime in:
- Don't buy a house as a financial investment. Not a beach house and, in most circumstances, not any house. If, however, you have extra income (we do) and have schedules that allow you to use it frequently (we do), consider it as an investment in your life and memories. You live once. Can't take the money with you when you go. We have made amazing memories in our home.
- Don't necessarily assume the whole "a beach house with kids is a bad choice because of weekend / summary blah blah blah" is true. It may be for some. For us, we choose family time. We don't do summer swim team. My kids aren't going to the olympics anyway and they swim in the beach house neighborhood pool with their beach house friends. We go to birthday parties with close friends, but we don't feel tied to every party or activity just because we are invited. Our friends understand, our kids have friends at the beach so they don't feel like they are missing out.
- choose carefully where you buy. Be prepared for expensive insurance, maintenance, etc. at the same time, there are plenty of beach communities where the houses are perfectly protected from flooding. Think a mile from beach, but perfect biking. Think more recently built homes on pylons with hurricane proof.
- make sure you are comfortable losing money (see point 1). If our home washed away -- extremely unlikely per point above -- such is life. We haven't invested our next egg into it. We are financially comfortable if we lost it tomorrow.
-make sure it fits your vacation style. We take one big extravagant vacation elsewhere, and then spend summer at beach (month of July, most weekends, leave Thursday night come back Sunday night). We are lucky because our jobs afford us this flexibility, and we would never be traveling elsewhere these times absent the beach House. We also spend other holidays there.
- there Are some really great neighborhoods that can make it feel like your second home and not just your second house. Ours is in a great community with tons of little kids who ride their bikes in the streets, walk to the pool together, etc.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Ditto this (the bolded). People without beach houses in this thread have all sorts of negative things to say about them. We do have one and it completely works for our family. It's a magical place.
I'm one of the previous owners in this thread.
The "birthday party every weekend" phase peaks in about kindergarten. By third grade, no one is inviting the whole class to every party. Really, it usually tapers off by first grade.
My kids each have about 4-6 close friends. Plus not everyone even has a yearly party (beyond just family) after about age 8. It's not an issue.
Also the sports seasons are surprisingly short. Rec soccer and little league baseball are 8 weeks. Travel soccer and travel baseball are about 10. I have kids in both.

I'd also like to address the financial issues. We don't view our beach house as an "investment". We frankly don't view our primary DC house as an investment. Our primary house is a necessity, our beach house is a luxury or how we chose to spend our money. We've had countless friends in DC (we're now in our early 40's) put giant additions on the backs of their DC houses (costing as much or more than our second home). We've chosen not to. We live in a small house here. We've put this "spare" money towards owning a second house instead. Other friends of ours in DC drive luxury cars. We don't. Others ski in Colorado yearly. We don't. Ours use private school. We don't.
If we lose the entire cost of our beach house (which we won't as it's fully insured), so be it. We lose money each year we own it (if you compare what we would gain if we put that money in the bank). But you know what? We don't care. We care far more about making family memories than increasing our net worth. We both work in health care. We see people's lives cut short all.the.time. We are responsible savers but we don't live with the mindset of many on here that we "must squirrel away every last dime". Life is short. I can barely believe how fast the last decade has gone and I anticipate the next decade will go just as fast. If I'm only going to get one chance at this, I'm going to spend as much time somewhere I love--in my case the ocean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this has been brought up already, but just be aware that once your kids are older, spending a ton of time at any vacation property will be difficult. For example, mine are 12, 7 and 4. In the summer, they are very focused on swim team and tennis team and then they do a 3 week day camp in August with their friends that they enjoy. In the spring and fall, the weekends are filled with soccer games ( and a lot of birthday parties!). I think it would be hard to pull them away to a beach house for the amount of time it would take for me to feel like it was a good investment (unless maybe I rented it out and only went out a handful of times a year. If it were me, I would just use the money instead of rent properties for when I'd actually be out there. I also have a friend who has a vacation property and they're constantly having to go out their for a day to get work done and do maintenance. That seems like a nightmare to me. For less money, just rent a great place when you're going to use it!

It depends what types of sports your kids end up doing. Mine don't do tennis or swim team. Hence they don't have summer sports obligations. I agree that if your kids are on a summer swim team then beach house ownership is probably not a good idea.
A typical school summer is 12 weeks (private) or 9 (DCPS) or 10 (Montgomery pubic schools). My kids spend 6 weeks at the beach each summer and still do 3 weeks of camp with their friends in DC. We're able to fit both in. Plus the weeks when we're in
DC for the summer all the rest of their friends are cycling in and out of town on their own summer vacation schedules. It's not like you're pulling your kids out for 6 weeks during the school year and the rest of their friends are hanging out without them.
During the summer when we leave for 6 weeks most of my kids's friends are gone as well for a good amount of this time.

[Anonymous]

This is all your kids will ever know, and their extra-curriculars will be decided with this in mind. For all we know, they'll choose beach-oriented activities.

My mother told me "never make a big decision when you're lonely." If you see this as a cure, you're bound to regret it. If, however, you are open to the challenges of essentially moving your life to a new place (e.g. making new friends, finding your place within the community, how to spend your time there), then go for it. It's not a fix, it's an endeavor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this has been brought up already, but just be aware that once your kids are older, spending a ton of time at any vacation property will be difficult. For example, mine are 12, 7 and 4. In the summer, they are very focused on swim team and tennis team and then they do a 3 week day camp in August with their friends that they enjoy. In the spring and fall, the weekends are filled with soccer games ( and a lot of birthday parties!). I think it would be hard to pull them away to a beach house for the amount of time it would take for me to feel like it was a good investment (unless maybe I rented it out and only went out a handful of times a year. If it were me, I would just use the money instead of rent properties for when I'd actually be out there. I also have a friend who has a vacation property and they're constantly having to go out their for a day to get work done and do maintenance. That seems like a nightmare to me. For less money, just rent a great place when you're going to use it!

It depends what types of sports your kids end up doing. Mine don't do tennis or swim team. Hence they don't have summer sports obligations. I agree that if your kids are on a summer swim team then beach house ownership is probably not a good idea.
A typical school summer is 12 weeks (private) or 9 (DCPS) or 10 (Montgomery pubic schools). My kids spend 6 weeks at the beach each summer and still do 3 weeks of camp with their friends in DC. We're able to fit both in. Plus the weeks when we're in
DC for the summer all the rest of their friends are cycling in and out of town on their own summer vacation schedules. It's not like you're pulling your kids out for 6 weeks during the school year and the rest of their friends are hanging out without them.
During the summer when we leave for 6 weeks most of my kids's friends are gone as well for a good amount of this time.

Or you can not revolve your life around your kids. When your kids grow up they can not have a beach house if it's a problem for them.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thank you to everyone who has replied on this thread. You have all given me a lot to think about!

Just wanted to add a few more things. Regarding my husband's vacation time, he does get (and takes) all 6 weeks every year. He does have a very demanding job, but all employees at his office also get and take all 6 weeks, so he's not unique in that. They have to work a lot of weekends so the vacation time helps make up for that (which is part of why I'm so lonely). We don't take all his vacation time as full weeks at a time but use 3 weeks to do a lot of long weekends throughout the year, and then take 3 full weeks per year, most of which we spend at this beach. So he could be at the beach house a lot with us. We are both beach people and the beach is my all-time favorite place. The idea of owning a home there sounds completely wonderful, though I do understand that there is a lot to consider.

Our thought was to spend one long weekend per month, and most of the summer there, as well as all holidays. Right now with grandparents living very far away (one set lives in Hawaii and another set lives on the West Coast), so we don't spend any holidays with grandparents or extended family due to the issues with traveling long-distance with such young kids. Maybe when the kids are in Kindergarten and older we may occasionally travel to spend holidays with family (like every other year), but right now the grandparents travel to us, and since they live so far away they like to come for several weeks, so we were thinking we'd spend time with them at the beach house, because both of them like the beach. Both sets of grandparents are retired so they have plenty of free time to vacation with us at the beach house.

We have 300K to spend on a beach house so that precludes any waterfront properties, and we are only interested in newer/new construction that is fully updated (we have done a lot of renovations to our SFH and don't want to do any updating to the beach house). So to get newer/new construction, the only thing in our price range (even far from the beach) is a townhouse. Our current SFH is older, and needed a lot of renovations, so we're looking for something that's completely different, such as new construction. I have not been able to find any updated/new construction single family homes for 300K or less. We're fine with a townhouse. We lived in several townhouses in the past for many years, and were fine with the concept.

We love the idea of a beach house, but I also want to consider the social/career implications, and what things may be like when our kids are older (since right now they don't have many birthday parties/social events to go to since they're so little, so it's hard to imagine what our weekend schedules will look like 5-10 years from now). However, since we have no local family and so no family events on the weekends, I feel like we can certainly make the time to go to the beach house for one weekend per month year round when the kids are older, and spend all the holidays there, and they will still be able to go to most birthday parties/sports/team events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Choose your beach neighborhood carefully. Our first beach house was in a neighborhood with year round residents and summer rentals. It was hard to make connections in the neighborhood. Our current one is in a neighborhood with almost no rentals and mostly families who are there for the summer. Lots of social activities and friends in the new 'hood. It's made a huge difference.

OP here. Thank you for discussing this, I think it's an important consideration. Was it difficult to figure out which neighborhoods had more summer families? I guess I was thinking that a neighborhood with year round residents would be better for us, since we plan to also use it a lot during the year plus holidays (for instance, spending Thanksgiving, and all of winter break and spring break there).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you to everyone who has replied on this thread. You have all given me a lot to think about!

Just wanted to add a few more things. Regarding my husband's vacation time, he does get (and takes) all 6 weeks every year. He does have a very demanding job, but all employees at his office also get and take all 6 weeks, so he's not unique in that. They have to work a lot of weekends so the vacation time helps make up for that (which is part of why I'm so lonely). We don't take all his vacation time as full weeks at a time but use 3 weeks to do a lot of long weekends throughout the year, and then take 3 full weeks per year, most of which we spend at this beach. So he could be at the beach house a lot with us. We are both beach people and the beach is my all-time favorite place. The idea of owning a home there sounds completely wonderful, though I do understand that there is a lot to consider.

Our thought was to spend one long weekend per month, and most of the summer there, as well as all holidays. Right now with grandparents living very far away (one set lives in Hawaii and another set lives on the West Coast), so we don't spend any holidays with grandparents or extended family due to the issues with traveling long-distance with such young kids. Maybe when the kids are in Kindergarten and older we may occasionally travel to spend holidays with family (like every other year), but right now the grandparents travel to us, and since they live so far away they like to come for several weeks, so we were thinking we'd spend time with them at the beach house, because both of them like the beach. Both sets of grandparents are retired so they have plenty of free time to vacation with us at the beach house.

We have 300K to spend on a beach house so that precludes any waterfront properties, and we are only interested in newer/new construction that is fully updated (we have done a lot of renovations to our SFH and don't want to do any updating to the beach house). So to get newer/new construction, the only thing in our price range (even far from the beach) is a townhouse. Our current SFH is older, and needed a lot of renovations, so we're looking for something that's completely different, such as new construction. I have not been able to find any updated/new construction single family homes for 300K or less. We're fine with a townhouse. We lived in several townhouses in the past for many years, and were fine with the concept.

We love the idea of a beach house, but I also want to consider the social/career implications, and what things may be like when our kids are older (since right now they don't have many birthday parties/social events to go to since they're so little, so it's hard to imagine what our weekend schedules will look like 5-10 years from now). However, since we have no local family and so no family events on the weekends, I feel like we can certainly make the time to go to the beach house for one weekend per month year round when the kids are older, and spend all the holidays there, and they will still be able to go to most birthday parties/sports/team events.

I'm a previous beach-house-owner poster who keeps coming back to post.

If you're buying a brand new town home for $300K, I can't imagine it's too close to the beach. If you're driving distance from the beach and you have young kids I'm not sure what owning a beach house will get you except to have a change of scenery on the weekends. Schlepping babies/kids and beach chairs to the beach in a car does not sound like my idea of fun. Where we own we're a block from the ocean and several blocks from tennis/basketball/ice cream/playground, etc. We didn't spend much more than you but our place is tiny and isn't fancy at all. But we don't drive anywhere and the community is tight knit because we're all out on foot and see each other walking, etc. I picture a new town home development being several miles down a commercial strip in Delaware. I'm not sure you'll get the beach feel that you're looking for with this set up. OR maybe it will be great because that neighborhood will be full of kids. I guess what I'm saying is to make sure to do your homework about the place you're buying. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Your realtor at the beach should be able to tell you about the social dynamics of any particular neighborhood or even of a particular block in a neighborhood. Ours was very helpful in this regard.

At the beach you have 3 different type of situations with regards to homes:

1)owners who rent the house out weekly
2)second home owners who live there all summer or a good portion of the summer.
3)year rounders

You want an area of primarily second home owners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you to everyone who has replied on this thread. You have all given me a lot to think about!

Just wanted to add a few more things. Regarding my husband's vacation time, he does get (and takes) all 6 weeks every year. He does have a very demanding job, but all employees at his office also get and take all 6 weeks, so he's not unique in that. They have to work a lot of weekends so the vacation time helps make up for that (which is part of why I'm so lonely). We don't take all his vacation time as full weeks at a time but use 3 weeks to do a lot of long weekends throughout the year, and then take 3 full weeks per year, most of which we spend at this beach. So he could be at the beach house a lot with us. We are both beach people and the beach is my all-time favorite place. The idea of owning a home there sounds completely wonderful, though I do understand that there is a lot to consider.

Our thought was to spend one long weekend per month, and most of the summer there, as well as all holidays. Right now with grandparents living very far away (one set lives in Hawaii and another set lives on the West Coast), so we don't spend any holidays with grandparents or extended family due to the issues with traveling long-distance with such young kids. Maybe when the kids are in Kindergarten and older we may occasionally travel to spend holidays with family (like every other year), but right now the grandparents travel to us, and since they live so far away they like to come for several weeks, so we were thinking we'd spend time with them at the beach house, because both of them like the beach. Both sets of grandparents are retired so they have plenty of free time to vacation with us at the beach house.

We have 300K to spend on a beach house so that precludes any waterfront properties, and we are only interested in newer/new construction that is fully updated (we have done a lot of renovations to our SFH and don't want to do any updating to the beach house). So to get newer/new construction, the only thing in our price range (even far from the beach) is a townhouse. Our current SFH is older, and needed a lot of renovations, so we're looking for something that's completely different, such as new construction. I have not been able to find any updated/new construction single family homes for 300K or less. We're fine with a townhouse. We lived in several townhouses in the past for many years, and were fine with the concept.

We love the idea of a beach house, but I also want to consider the social/career implications, and what things may be like when our kids are older (since right now they don't have many birthday parties/social events to go to since they're so little, so it's hard to imagine what our weekend schedules will look like 5-10 years from now). However, since we have no local family and so no family events on the weekends, I feel like we can certainly make the time to go to the beach house for one weekend per month year round when the kids are older, and spend all the holidays there, and they will still be able to go to most birthday parties/sports/team events.

I'm a previous beach-house-owner poster who keeps coming back to post.

If you're buying a brand new town home for $300K, I can't imagine it's too close to the beach. If you're driving distance from the beach and you have young kids I'm not sure what owning a beach house will get you except to have a change of scenery on the weekends. Schlepping babies/kids and beach chairs to the beach in a car does not sound like my idea of fun. Where we own we're a block from the ocean and several blocks from tennis/basketball/ice cream/playground, etc. We didn't spend much more than you but our place is tiny and isn't fancy at all. But we don't drive anywhere and the community is tight knit because we're all out on foot and see each other walking, etc. I picture a new town home development being several miles down a commercial strip in Delaware. I'm not sure you'll get the beach feel that you're looking for with this set up. OR maybe it will be great because that neighborhood will be full of kids. I guess what I'm saying is to make sure to do your homework about the place you're buying. Good luck!

OP here. I appreciate your posts! They are very informative and are giving me a lot to think about! With our maximum budget of 300K, new/newer townhouses are not that close to the beach so we would have to drive everywhere (which is fine with us because right now we live in the distant suburbs and have to drive everywhere anyways, so I'm used to that). However, the change of scenery is a big priority for us. Right now going on vacation to other places and staying in a hotel is a huge hassle. It would be great to be able to have that change of scenery, be close to a beach, and not have to pack a minivan full of stuff and stay in an uncomfortable hotel every time we want to go somewhere.

I understand the appeal of living close to the ocean but I haven't been able to find any single family houses within walking distance to the beach that are in our price range. And new/newer is very important to us--not only do we want something that's completely updated, but also want something nicer than our current house, and with all new appliances so we don't have to worry about maintenance on those for a few years. I think we can find everything we are looking for in a townhouse, and but even then there's not much inventory at the beach right now, surprisingly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this has been brought up already, but just be aware that once your kids are older, spending a ton of time at any vacation property will be difficult. For example, mine are 12, 7 and 4. In the summer, they are very focused on swim team and tennis team and then they do a 3 week day camp in August with their friends that they enjoy. In the spring and fall, the weekends are filled with soccer games ( and a lot of birthday parties!). I think it would be hard to pull them away to a beach house for the amount of time it would take for me to feel like it was a good investment (unless maybe I rented it out and only went out a handful of times a year. If it were me, I would just use the money instead of rent properties for when I'd actually be out there. I also have a friend who has a vacation property and they're constantly having to go out their for a day to get work done and do maintenance. That seems like a nightmare to me. For less money, just rent a great place when you're going to use it!

It depends what types of sports your kids end up doing. Mine don't do tennis or swim team. Hence they don't have summer sports obligations. I agree that if your kids are on a summer swim team then beach house ownership is probably not a good idea.
A typical school summer is 12 weeks (private) or 9 (DCPS) or 10 (Montgomery pubic schools). My kids spend 6 weeks at the beach each summer and still do 3 weeks of camp with their friends in DC. We're able to fit both in. Plus the weeks when we're in
DC for the summer all the rest of their friends are cycling in and out of town on their own summer vacation schedules. It's not like you're pulling your kids out for 6 weeks during the school year and the rest of their friends are hanging out without them.
During the summer when we leave for 6 weeks most of my kids's friends are gone as well for a good amount of this time.

Or you can not revolve your life around your kids. When your kids grow up they can not have a beach house if it's a problem for them.

this! am i the only one who foresees major problems for op and her husband? sounds like dh is completely separate from the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your realtor at the beach should be able to tell you about the social dynamics of any particular neighborhood or even of a particular block in a neighborhood. Ours was very helpful in this regard.

At the beach you have 3 different type of situations with regards to homes:

1)owners who rent the house out weekly
2)second home owners who live there all summer or a good portion of the summer.
3)year rounders

You want an area of primarily second home owners.

OP here. Why don't we want a neighborhood of year rounders? Why is that not as good as summer owners? I would think that a neighborhood of year rounders would make it easier to make new friends and really become a part of the community.