We live on the west coast now and have a place in the mountains that is 55 minutes away from our house. We don’t rent it out and spend ~25 weekends/year there plus random longer stretches. Reasons we bought it, in case it is helpful:

1. Space: Primary house is small but the amount we spent on 2nd house would get us only an additional ~300 sq ft in the city. We use 2nd house for off-season storage, space-consuming activities and hosting groups of guests who wouldn’t fit in our city house. We can host one small family at our city house, but 3-4 families and packs of kids in the mountains.

2. Kid activities: It is in a ski area that we went to already and one of the kids’ winter activities is skiing. Having an activity at the 2nd house helps increase the days we are there, although inevitably birthday parties, other sports tournaments, and religious stuff complicate our mountain weekends.

3. Flexibility: We ski a lot but it was annoying to have to rush back to let the dog out or hire a dog walker on ski days. It is really nice to just walk home and take a shower and not race back through traffic. We often leave for the city at 7 am on a Monday if we feel like it. Since we don’t rent it, it’s nice to leave perishables in the freezer and not have to pack or put away our personal items.

Nothing about our purchase is especially rational or financially sound. We don’t plan to retire there and aren’t really sentimental about the house. It can be a pain to hire people in the mountains and we deal with power outages, avalanche danger, and wildfire risk. There isn’t trash collection and it took us years to get internet. Sometimes we leave something important at one house or the other and have to drive back in the middle of the night or during the week. We feel wasteful booking trips to other places when we have a perfectly lovely place to go to that we’ve already paid for. But we’ve also found that we entertain more spontaneously and happily in the mountains and get to experience a different side of our kids and their friends when we’re there together.

We have a house in Ocean City, New Jersey. Bought in 2016 when the market was much calmer. At the time it seems like a rash purchase but it's doubled in price so perhaps it was a good investment (who knows---we have no idea what the market will do and we're not currently selling).

One of our teenagers worked there this summer and we alternated living there with her. I did most of the time since my job is more flexible. Let me say, it was a great summer. I am more relaxed then i've been in a long time. DC is just STRESSFUL un many big and small ways that I didn't notice when i was here full time, year round. We're now in DC but going back for 2 more weeks on Wednesday.
This is the first summer we've spent that much time there.

it's 3 hours door-to-door. Holiday weekends can be rough if you attempt to travel during prime hours. Going up is easy (we travel late on a Friday evening). Coming back can be hard--you want to avoid the Monday afternoon of a 3 day weekend if at all possible. Monday mornings or late Monday night are usually fine.

We own a cottage on the Vineyard, Inkwell and we go twice in the summer and once in the fall for Thanksgiving. It was my Grandmother's cottage and I assumed her home as was in her will. To honor her, we have family come up in the fall. I sometimes let me cousins use it as we like to vacation elsewhere most of the summer and I am just not that into the house and location. I want to buy a river home ini Maryland or W. Virginia. I want a shallow, tubing and swimming type of river to visit most warm weekends so I can do what I love most.

We’re looking at buying a second home on Smith Mountain Lake. We live in a western exurb of DC, so the drive down wouldn’t involve any of the major interstates that are disasters in the summer. We WFH most of the time so our thought is that we would definitely spend the majority of the summer there and long weekends in the fall.

I assume people with homes on Cape Cod have family/roots there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We want a house on cape cod. Been looking for a few years now but market is insane. Plus the drive is 10 hours. We spend 6 weeks there every summer though and rental prices are insane that we should just buy.

We are on the Cape, luckily bought our 1st house more than 15 years ago. No regrets, we get a ton of use and enjoyment from it.

We spend all summer on the Cape so don't rent.

The Cape is overcrowded, overrated, too snooty, too far away, and the water is too damned cold for swimming.

No way.

plus great white sharks.

We previously had a vacation home in OBX and now have one on Hilton Head.

We also have a condo in Miami.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We want a house on cape cod. Been looking for a few years now but market is insane. Plus the drive is 10 hours. We spend 6 weeks there every summer though and rental prices are insane that we should just buy.

We are on the Cape, luckily bought our 1st house more than 15 years ago. No regrets, we get a ton of use and enjoyment from it.

We spend all summer on the Cape so don't rent.

The Cape is overcrowded, overrated, too snooty, too far away, and the water is too damned cold for swimming.

No way.

Anonymous wrote:We want a house on cape cod. Been looking for a few years now but market is insane. Plus the drive is 10 hours. We spend 6 weeks there every summer though and rental prices are insane that we should just buy.

We are on the Cape, luckily bought our 1st house more than 15 years ago. No regrets, we get a ton of use and enjoyment from it.

We spend all summer on the Cape so don't rent.

We have a house in rehoboth. Dh and kids spend the entire summer there. I do 2 weeks and back and forth on the weekends. It’s close enough to be doable but far enough that by the end of summer I’m ready to stop doing that on the weekends. The kids have weekend activities here so we only go 2-3 weekends off season in the fall and another 2-3 in the spring.

We don’t rent. For $800k you can get a nice condo although probably not oceanfront. We used to have a place in Mariners court. Great location and pool.

We have a house in Rehoboth that we go to 8-10 times a year. We rent it out a few weeks during the summer, but we don't rely on the rental income. The main reason we bought it in the first place was b/c H has family there.

It's a great place to take the kids, who are still small. But if it weren't for the family there, we'd preferred to have a place on the west side of the bay, south of Annapolis. We love being on the water, kayaking, sailing, fishing, crabbing, you name it, and the bay is a great place for all of it. It would be much easier for quick weekend trips. An hour away and you're in a totally different world.

Anonymous wrote:We want a house on cape cod. Been looking for a few years now but market is insane. Plus the drive is 10 hours. We spend 6 weeks there every summer though and rental prices are insane that we should just buy.

We are on the cape and are considering buying something. Agree prices are crazy and also the predictions for climate change are scaring me even though we wouldn't be buying right on the coast (prefer near the rail trail).

Anonymous wrote:I always thought somewhere on in the Great Lakes area would be nice.

This is what I want to do. We spend about 2-3 weeks in MI every summer. I’d love to spend the entire summer there.

We want a house on cape cod. Been looking for a few years now but market is insane. Plus the drive is 10 hours. We spend 6 weeks there every summer though and rental prices are insane that we should just buy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rehoboth, don’t rent.

For me personally, it needs to be close enough for an easy weekend trip, so that it gets enough use without feeling obligated to spend longer vacations there.

Also, the beauty of having a place is being able to leave all your stuff there, and not having to pack.

We shied away from Rehoboth because it really isn't close enough for an "easy" weekend trip. It sure isn't an "easy" every weekend trip. No friggin way.

Exactly. Our friends won’t even visit their own house on holiday weekends because the traffic is too much. They only go on regular weekends. No thanks. I also don’t want to deal with repairs and maintenance - it’s annoying enough at our primary.

I predict that within ten minutes we will have somebody respond who insists that it's an easy 2 hour drive to the DE beaches from DC even in the height of summer. Liars.