Whenever we catch a break, we all want to get away sometime to a place where work and other responsibilities won’t bother us. For some, owning a vacation home where they can stay for two or three months during summer and winter vacation provides the perfect escape without the hassle or uncertainty of looking for a hotel. If you’ve thought that it might be time to invest in a vacation home for your family, here are some reasons to convince you.
A place to get away
Everyone wants an escape from everyday life. In a vacation home, you can do just that, but you don’t have to sacrifice the comforts of home in the process. A vacation home gives you the comfort and security of your first home while giving you the benefit of being in a completely different place. So you still feel like you’re on vacation, but you don’t feel too homesick or too unsafe when you’re far from home.
When the everyday monotony of life starts weighing on you, you can pack up and move to your second home without having to book a hotel room in advance or worry about the place you’re going. If you keep coming back to your vacation home year after year, you’ll eventually build a rapport with your neighbors or familiarize yourself with the place so that you don’t feel like a stranger even when you’re somewhere else. It’s essentially a home away from home.
A place to beat the season
Everyone loves summer and winter vacation until it gets unbearably hot or cold, respectively. Buying a vacation home where you can beat the heat of summer or the chill of winter is ideal and functional. You can go someplace colder during the hottest months of summer or someplace warm and temperate during the coldest days of winter. While being amid snowy mountains certainly doesn’t scream summer and nor does being at the beach scream winter, staying at a vacation home where the season isn’t very pronounced could be ideal.
A place for more storage
Even if you’re not staying there year-round, a second home does allow for more storage space. Decor and furniture that you can’t fit into your first home can find a new home in your vacation house. Other than that, any non-essential objects or mementos can be stored all year long in your vacation home. If you have a lot of stuff to bring over, calling long-distance movers to help you transport them shouldn’t be too difficult as long as you’re moving them within the country.
Potential retirement home
You can use this opportunity to think ahead towards the future and think of this vacation home as a potential retirement home. Investing in a retirement home this early could save you a lot of time and effort in the future. That is if you do plan to retire in your second home. You might not want to build your whole retirement plan around it, though, to give yourself more room to consider more options if anything ever happens in the future. But at the very least, you already have one plan laid out and one option taken care of.
Rental income
When you’re not using the house or can’t travel for whatever reason, you can rent it out to friends or other vacationers. You might even want to set it up for an Airbnb. It’s extra income in your pocket, and it’s one way to make sure that the house doesn’t stay empty for too long and gets some good use even when you’re not around. Especially if it’s located in a prime location that gets a lot of tourists and visitors, renting out your vacation home can be very lucrative.
Tax breaks
Any homeowner might tell you this, but you can take advantage of tax breaks when you own, maintain, and rent out a secondary property. You can get deductions for things like mortgage interest, operating expenses, property tax, and repairs. It lessens the load of owning a second home a little and, in general, is more money in your pocket.
Resale value
If you maintain your home and if it’s in a prime location, you might be able to sell it for a lot in the future. If you manage to build equity in your home or its value appreciates over time with enough maintenance and care, the property’s resale value might increase, and you might be able to sell it for a lot more than you bought it for. If you ever plan to sell it in the future, take note of what you can do to get more than what you paid for.
Buying any home, whether for a primary residence or vacation, is always a big step. When considering buying your own vacation home, always think about why you’re doing this and what you can afford. Whether you’re looking for better opportunities, alternatives to other vacation destinations or another way to earn income, investing in a second home might be the thing that you’re looking for.
