Pros/cons of buying a second home

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have HS aged kids?
I'm surprised they want to spend every weekend/holiday/teachers work day going to the cottage with you. Maybe an occasional trip, but every weekend?

No school projects, prom, football games (in the Fall), SATs, AP exams/work, PT job, hanging with friends, and the like?

They have other stuff going on of course they do. But the area that we're looking at is not an old folks home. It's a fun area for teens/twenties, too.

If they came with us they would likely go out and do stuff w/o us just like they do when they are home. One of the kids is driving and the other one is learning to drive. They are independent but they don't mind hanging out with us, either, at times. Guess we're really lucky?

[Anonymous]

We have an ocean front beach house. We've had it since I was pregnant with my 2nd son. My kids loved it when they were little, like wanted to be there all the time, digging in the sand and riding the waves. Once they hit about 12 they complained and belly ached about going there unless they could bring friends. They wanted to stay back in our "boring" suburb and hang with their friends. Depite the fact that we had a home at a "fun" beach with a lot to do. We now rent it out all summer, except for 4th of July week and use it here and there in the off season.

I've never known teens who enjoy spending every school holiday, teacher workday and weekend with their 50 something parents. Maybe OP has some sort of unicorn teenagers.

[Anonymous]

We've had a small cottage for about 5 years now. It costs about $11-12k a year for regular maintenance, and we've had 2 big items @$20k a piece. It needs roof repairs now.
Costs are approx:
Taxes $2600
Mowing $2000
Pool $3000
utilities $1200
Bugs $400
minor repairs/maintenance $2000

We have pool and mowing service because, as folks pointed out, we don't want to spend our time doing that while there, we want to relax. ALSO it's nice to have those folks out there and maintaining the house in case we don't get there for several weeks. I do keep a garden out there that I take care of, because I love to garden.

It's not an investment. The property value has not increased.

Not being there regularly means that mice and other critters sometimes think it's their home, which can be an unwelcome surprise for all involved. Also, if there is a problem, like a water leak, sometimes it goes on for a while without detection. We do have very nice neighbors who let us know if there is something really wrong. It's been broken into once, but nothing was taken since there isn't anything really valuable there - just furniture, books, plates, etc.

It's about an hour away from our regular house, so we go a few times a month. More in the summer than the winter. It's a nice place to invite friends to.

[Anonymous]

I think if you really think over the pros and cons and can afford it go for it. Another option would to just find a few dog friendly rental cabins and use those for your quick getaways.

[Anonymous]

We have a summer house (Cape Cod, so we don’t go a lot in the off season). No regrets and we feel like we use it enough to make it totally worthwhile. Our kids love it and have worked there during high school and some college summers (super easy to get a summer job in a summer season location).

We have had houses there for about 15 years. Surprisingly few issues. We do have a caretaker and outsource landscaping and cleaning. So we spend some time on home related projects when we are there, but not much. It’s not cheap though. Utilities, insurance, landscaping, caretaker, etc. The recent nor’easters cost us maybe $600- had to take out a couple of trees that blew over, lost food in the fridge/freezer from a week of power being out, and cost to pay the caretaker to deal with it. That’s the first time we’ve had storm damage like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, we have rented vacation properties where we have discovered maintenance issues and had to call the management company to send someone out to fix something. Just because you rent does not mean that you won't have your vacation disturbed by a maintenance issue.

True. But having the problem isn't as big an issue as getting it resolved. If I have a rental, I call the owner and just work around it until they send someone to fix it. Or ask for a refund. If I'm the owner, I have to find someone who can fix the problem when I'm going to be there, make the arrangements, and pay for it. A little different.

Another issue that I forgot about is one someone mentioned above -- you lose time to deal with stuff at your main residence. You get home on Sunday night, and you have laundry to do, no food in the refrigerator for breakfast the next day, you need to pick up the dry cleaning....the list goes on. Again, if you're someone who has time to get all of that done during the week, it can be great, but if you both work, it can make the week days more stressful. After we got rid of the second home, it seemed like such a luxury to be able to run errands on the weekend.

We decided that it made more sense to invest the $$ we were spending on a the second home one nicer home near our jobs. I would own two homes again, but only if I were retired or semi-retired and could spend long stretches of time at each house (and had time to deal with the maintenance).

The other issue was when we added up what we were spending on the second home, we realized that we could take some REALLY nice vacations multiple times a year and still come out ahead. VRBO and Airbnb have been a game-changer. It is so much easier now to rent, and you're not stuck in one location.

[Anonymous]

We love our second home. It has truly changed our lives and I'm sure extended my husband's life by being able to relax and get away from it all.
The extras are things like higher insurance, and for us we had to have a hardline phone for the security and fire alarm service to call the fire department automatically (required by our county for second homes)

Do it and ignore the naysayers! If you love it, you'll use it!

[Anonymous]

Op, you seem unwilling to realize that the cottage will have all the problems that normally occur in a house, and usually more because periods of no use alone can cause problems. If you don’t want to spend your weekends waiting for a plumber or hitting the hardware store, you need to budget for some type of maintenance service. You’ll also have to grocery shop or pack tons offood every time you go. My parents bought a beach house when i was an adult, and my brother was in middle school, about an hour from main house. It was chronically underused, even though we had been vacationing in this town for decades. My dad got bored with it, and my mom didn’t want to go alone. They did make a decent profit when they sold it but mainly because they had bought one of the last remaining empty lots, and built a custom home. Now, in retirement, my parents refuse to buy a second home because of the first experience— it os a ton of work. Go into it with your eyes open, you have romantic notions that seem incompatible with the work involved in maintaining 2 jomes.