Social/career implications of buying a beach house for SAHM

[Anonymous]

Have you thought about renting your current house and buying another house in a family friendly neighborhood with a neighborhood pool? You could spend summers at the pool instead of driving to the beach.

[Anonymous]

Invest in your family's everyday lifestyle. Put that money towards a better neighborhood for your primary residence. Rent a beach house for the season if you still have the beach bug.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like it would be better to take a loss on your house & move locally than put $300k into a house your use maybe 1/4 of the year.

OP here. We put 200K into renovations on this house, and we over-improved for the neighborhood, my husband says we could only sell for about 50 K more than we paid for the house, so we would be losing about 100K when realtors fees and closing costs are taken into account. He does not want to lose this money nor does he want to go through the hassle of moving especially with young kids. He also likes the location in general and has very specific requirements for his commute (his commute is currently 45 minutes each way and he doesn't want that to increase). I like the location in general too, but I don't like our neighborhood at all. Also he doesn't want to downsize and move to an older house, which we would end up doing if we moved closer in to his job. Overall he is very against the idea of moving. He is also against the idea of leaving the area and moving to a new area with lower cost of living. We live here in the DC area, in a distant suburb. We just have no ties/sense of community here. It bothers me every day, and it doesn't bother him at all because he's never home. I feel like he just doesn't understand how much our lack of community bothers me because he's not a SAHP. We're in a non-walkable area, so have to drive to everything, and there are no kids in our neighborhood, just empty nesters mainly. Neighbors are unfriendly and downright nasty towards us. I'd love to move but he is not willing to. Hence, the beach house would appear to be a good compromise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you thought about renting your current house and buying another house in a family friendly neighborhood with a neighborhood pool? You could spend summers at the pool instead of driving to the beach.

OP here. There is a house in our neighborhood that is a rental, the owners have a lot of difficulty finding renters because the rent is so high. It sat empty for a year until they got new renters in. This is a neighborhood of $1 million houses so it would not be easy to find renters.

Our neighborhood has no amenities, no neighborhood pool, no neighborhood park/playground. I guess that's because most houses have pools in their backyards and large yards.

[Anonymous]

OP, just curious, where do you live that is a distant suburb of DC with $1m older houses? (since you said you needed to put $200k of reno into your house, I am assuming the house is older)

I am with many of the other posters in saying that you need to focus on your unhappiness with your home/life here first - owning a beach house may be amazing for you but it won't erase the primary 75% of your life spent in your primary home. I would have some more serious talks with your spouse about moving - you have expressed multiple times on this thread your profound dislike for and unfriendliness of your neighborhood, and that you are stuck in that neighborhood with young kids without your spouse around most of the time - I'd say that outweighs taking a financial hit on a sale of your home. There must be family friendly neighborhoods with some kids, playgrounds, etc within 45 min of your spouse's job! In fact I know there are if you are in the DC area. I also suggest you re-think your child's preschool choice - there are many preschools with friendly welcoming atmospheres for parents - you expressed that the one you selected has primarily 2 working parents - find another school with a mix of sahm's and working ones, so you can find people to connect with - don't go to one that has aftercare, as those tend to be mostly used by full time worming parents - do look at co-ops and ones in churches and synagogues, as those tend to have some stay at home parents.

Once you are happier with your life here, then by all means focus on a beach home and enjoy it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Where is this? Ours is great - all kids of all ages, and our kids bring friends, too! Plenty of fun to go around

Cape Cod (that's why we don't use it much in the off season).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like it would be better to take a loss on your house & move locally than put $300k into a house your use maybe 1/4 of the year.

OP here. We put 200K into renovations on this house, and we over-improved for the neighborhood, my husband says we could only sell for about 50 K more than we paid for the house, so we would be losing about 100K when realtors fees and closing costs are taken into account. He does not want to lose this money nor does he want to go through the hassle of moving especially with young kids. He also likes the location in general and has very specific requirements for his commute (his commute is currently 45 minutes each way and he doesn't want that to increase). I like the location in general too, but I don't like our neighborhood at all. Also he doesn't want to downsize and move to an older house, which we would end up doing if we moved closer in to his job. Overall he is very against the idea of moving. He is also against the idea of leaving the area and moving to a new area with lower cost of living. We live here in the DC area, in a distant suburb. We just have no ties/sense of community here. It bothers me every day, and it doesn't bother him at all because he's never home. I feel like he just doesn't understand how much our lack of community bothers me because he's not a SAHP. We're in a non-walkable area, so have to drive to everything, and there are no kids in our neighborhood, just empty nesters mainly. Neighbors are unfriendly and downright nasty towards us. I'd love to move but he is not willing to. Hence, the beach house would appear to be a good compromise.

Your husband sounds kind of bossy and selfish. Since you are the one at home all day, it seems what you want should be weighed just as much or more. The only thing he should have a dominate day in is commute.

[Anonymous]

Wait- you SAH and think that a beach house will impact your career? I'm all for staying at home- but it's not a career.

Unless you are still pretending that you are going to head back to work. You won't. No one would if they didn't have to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, still the PP, I'm not sure how easy it will be to find a location in such a family friendly place for 300k...are you in DC? Is this Rehoboth? I could be wrong but I tend to think of a lot of those new developments as appealing to retirees. We would love to buy a house in rehoboth but the location I like is within blocks to the beach and homes are easily about $1 million for a fairly simple house, so not in the budget for a second home. And, oh yeah, DH and I LOVE the beach, but the kids don't

PP again. I did not realize OP was limited to 300k. That will be too difficult, IMHO, OP. I don't know where you want to be, but $300k is unheard in our beach community. I assume you want to be within walking distance to the beach? Also, consider that some areas have private beaches, where you have to be an owner in order to use the beach. Whatever you do, do NOT rely on Google to tell you this - as this is one of those "local knowledge reigns supreme" items! At the very least, you need a realtor that is very familiar with each specific area. GL.

OP here. We're not looking for walking distance to the beach, our budget won't accommodate that. Once you get further out, 300K is realistic (at least in the research I've done so far) for an updated townhouse that's about a 10-15 minute drive to the beach. We're fine with that. We just hope to find a family friendly community that we can afford.

So you would be going to the public beach. Virginia Beach is worth checking out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like it would be better to take a loss on your house & move locally than put $300k into a house your use maybe 1/4 of the year.

This. Move to a better neighborhood and take the loss. Or go back to work part time to get your community. Life is too short to be so unhappy. Even when your kids are old enough to go to school think about how much time you will spend driving them around living in such an isolated area - that's what won't be compatible with going back to work, not the beach house.

[Anonymous]

So he is okay moving out of state, but reluctant b/c of jobs. But doesn't want to move locally b/c of losses on the house? But willing to gamble on a crappy beach townhouse??

Too weird. Something else is wrong; was the beach house his idea? Does he want you out of his hair for 1/4 of the year?

[Anonymous]

OP, I remember you - you had a couple of long posts during and after the storm about living in some way-out VA suburb and disliking your neighbors, right? I think this was one of them: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/529080.page

If that's the case, I think the PP who asked what you're running away from is spot on. I don't know what the best solution is, but I don't think a beach house is going to fix what's bothering you. My own experience is that if you're unhappy and feel alienated and lonely, you have a couple of choices, none of which are mutually exclusive: get busy with something that takes your mind off your dissatisfaction; get some professional help (therapy, meds, yoga, whatever) to give you a greater sense of peace with your life; and/or make a concerted effort to find people to connect with.

Oh yeah, and try to count your blessings; if all you have to worry about it some cranky neighbors, you're really lucky. Someday you may confront some real problems, and you're going to look back and wonder why you spent so much time feeling unhappy with your life when things were good.

Fwiw, we have a family beach house, which we mostly love for its familiarity, but if you have angst at home, you'll have angst at a beach house. Time to work on what's really bothering you rather than just house hunt your way out of the problem.

[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.

Consider ocean pines. My parents have a house there, grew up going, and it is an actual neighborhood. They even have have a swim team. I'm there this weekend and just ran by a beautiful fully furnished house right in your price range. They also have a great beach club you can drive and park at.

[Anonymous]

OP, you are essentially looking for a second home - not necessarily a beach house (I say this since you are willing to be 15 minutes from the beach). It does seem like you are running to whats easier, which is buying a second home to find nice neighbors since your husband refuses to move. I agree you should just sell your house and move to a better neighborhood. If you stay, what about putting a pull and nice playground in your back yard?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like it would be better to take a loss on your house & move locally than put $300k into a house your use maybe 1/4 of the year.

OP here. We put 200K into renovations on this house, and we over-improved for the neighborhood, my husband says we could only sell for about 50 K more than we paid for the house, so we would be losing about 100K when realtors fees and closing costs are taken into account. He does not want to lose this money nor does he want to go through the hassle of moving especially with young kids. He also likes the location in general and has very specific requirements for his commute (his commute is currently 45 minutes each way and he doesn't want that to increase). I like the location in general too, but I don't like our neighborhood at all. Also he doesn't want to downsize and move to an older house, which we would end up doing if we moved closer in to his job. Overall he is very against the idea of moving. He is also against the idea of leaving the area and moving to a new area with lower cost of living. We live here in the DC area, in a distant suburb. We just have no ties/sense of community here. It bothers me every day, and it doesn't bother him at all because he's never home. I feel like he just doesn't understand how much our lack of community bothers me because he's not a SAHP. We're in a non-walkable area, so have to drive to everything, and there are no kids in our neighborhood, just empty nesters mainly. Neighbors are unfriendly and downright nasty towards us. I'd love to move but he is not willing to. Hence, the beach house would appear to be a good compromise.

You absolutely cannot afford to buy a beach house. You need to save this money or pay down a substantial portion of equity on your current residence. You also may need to consider getting a job.