Summer Home Mistakes

The latest tale of real estate brilliance, vacation home style, comes courtesy the Wall Street Journal. The good intentioned Wall Street Journal published an article called 10 Summer Home Mistakes, and introduced us to a presumably sweet couple from California. This couple, caught up in second home lust that only a lifetime of hard work can induce, purchased an idyllic vacation home just a couple of years ago. They love this vacation home, as well they should, since they have roughly $2.8MM into the place. Unfortunately, this summer home is proving to be too much work for this tender couple, and for that, we should all be sad. Only three years after purchasing and renovating this charming vacation home, they have decided to sell it. It’s too big they say. No one comes to visit them. The gardens need maintaining, and the house needs heating, and it’s all too much. And they recently decided that at 73, they’re just not getting any younger. The dream of a vacation home can be exhausting- particularly once accomplished. The horrors of owning an expensive vacation can indeed crush even the most well intentioned buyers.

All of these things are particularly true when you live in California…and buy a house in MAINE. I never capitalize letters like a high school kid on Facebook, or like Oprah on Twitter, but I pushed that shift button to further drive home the point of how ridiculous this couple is. Why would anyone buy a vacation home on the other side of the country? Why own a place that requires a full, exhausting and expensive day of trans-continental air travel just to make sure the gardener weeded around the Hydrangeas like his bill said he did? And how on earth can it be conceivable that such a vacation home will ever provide enough joy to offset the ridiculous inconveniences of the ownership? News flash to all those reading along both here and on the Wall Street Journal: If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife- no, that’s not it. Right. If you want to be happy for the rest of your vacation home loving life, never buy a vacation home more than two hours from your home. Follow that simple Dave Curry rule, and you’ll never run into the sorts of problems that our naive friends from California encountered.

It’s this same sort of absurd buying behavior that has spawned the HGTV life sapping House Hunters International. You’ve probably seen this show before. Some sweaty couple flies to Roatan or some other far flung tropical locale and buys a villa there. They’ve made sure to pack their sandals and socks ensemble, so they’re ready to go house hunting. They walk through houses or condos with strange Realtors, and they comment about how nice things are. That ugly kitchen? It’ll work, they say. That chain link fence dividing their new villa from the impoverished locals? That’s nice privacy. They talk about the company that they’ll entertain. And how this place is nice because it’s close to the beach or how that place is nice because it’s close to town. They look at this real estate, and then, as if facing eternal damnation as the only other choice, the buy something. HGTV rings the doorbell a couple months later to check in on this couple, and it’s all smiles and brown paper packages tied up with strings.

This is what they’d have you believe, but our silly friends from California already told us what happens when you buy real estate that isn’t easily accessed from your primary residence, and they’re not the only people warning us. Some of the most staunch opponents of vacation home ownership are those people that have owned them before. I went out last summer with a couple who brought along another couple to look at Lake Geneva vacation homes with them. This other couple annoyed me to death. They were anti-vacation home. While I regaled my clients with tales of vacation home splendor, their friends only told stories about how little they used their own vacation home. You’ll never use it, they’d say. This is nice, but it’ll become a deeded noose around your financial neck. I filled with contempt for this couple. As steam shot from my ears and my head neared explosion, I learned why this couple didn’t understand the vacation home. I learned why they were so negative, and why they counted their own vacation home experience as a complete loss. It turned out that they, living near Chicago, had purchased a vacation home on a lake in northern Wisconsin- a lake that was nearly 5 hours from their home. This couple didn’t hate their vacation home, they hated driving 5 hours to get to it.

And so it goes, well meaning individuals and families seeking out their own slice of vacation home heaven, looking for real estate that looks pretty online and in magazine ads, never fully understanding the single most important factor in vacation home ownership is location. I’m not saying that beautiful sand beaches with turquoise Caribbean waters teeming with Bonefish doesn’t sound like a vacation paradise, but unless I can load my two kids into a car and get there in less than two hours, I’m not buying a vacation home there. My cost per night requirement won’t justify the purchase on some tropical isle, just like it won’t work if I look at vacation homes even four hours from my home. Two hours or less is easily accomplished, even with my horrible children in the back seat. Five hours in a car with those kids and I’d hate whatever vacation home I arrived at too.

The Wall Street Journal’s article featured 10 common summer home purchasing mistakes, but buying within easy proximity of your primary home is the only one that matters. Don’t buy in Roatan. Don’t even buy in Door County. And it goes without saying that you shouldn’t make a Michstake and buy in Michigan. It’s obvious that aside from the abounding natural beauty of Lake Geneva, the biggest advantage of this sparkling destination is indeed the proximity to your home. Beware- the WSJ article does contain one bit of bad advice- it says not to befriend your Realtor. That bit should be ignored. Trust me, I’m a Realtor.