How to Choose a Vacation Home: Everything You Need to Know

According to CNN, face masks and hand sanitizer weren’t the only items flying off the shelves in 2020 — vacation home sales were up by 16 percent on the year. As such, nobody would blame you for being swept away by summer vacation home hype.

Even so, however, when you choose a vacation home, it’s not enough to tick off for the property to tick off a few boxes. You really have to do your due diligence.

What should you be looking for? Read on to see our hottest tips on finding and buying vacation homes.

Do Some Soul Searching

Vacation homes are like pets or kids. Paying off the mortgage and maintaining the property will require serious commitment and will often come with tax implications.

As such, you’ll want to ask yourself questions like:

• Is the seller’s market really the best time to buy?
• Can you afford to purchase a second home right now or will the new property cause financial strain?
• Does the vacation home purchase make sense for your lifestyle?

If you’re financially well off and you’re tired of competing with renters while looking at homes for summer vacations, you might not need to think too hard about this. But it’s a process worth doing as you explore your options.

Make a Plan for Your Future Vacation Home

Let’s say that you’ve decided to go through with your vacation home purchase. The next step is to figure out what you’re going to do with it.

To that end, the obvious answer here might be, “Go there whenever I have vacation time.”. But in practice, things aren’t always so simple.

Are you planning to rent out the home for additional income when you’re not using it? While that rental money may give you a nice windfall, you don’t know how the tenants will treat your property. And if you’re the type of family that likes to take spontaneous vacations, the rental strategy might not be a good fit for your circumstances.

Either way, however, it’s better to clarify your intentions before you commit to the new mortgage.

Create a List of Must-Haves

Okay. This is the part where you get to start comparing home prices and vacation home designs.

Is it important to you that the property has easy access to the lake? Are you concerned about making sure that you have incredible vacation home amenities or is the whole cabin-in-the-woods concept more appealing to you?

Sometimes people look at properties and they fall in love at first sight. But it never hurts to have a solid sense of what you’re looking for as you go into your property search.

To that end, companies like Top Guns Realty can help you filter and sort through your vacation home options

Choose a Vacation Home the Easy Way

When you’re looking to choose a vacation home, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options available to you. Should you buy the place with the swimming pool? What kind of a kitchen are you interested in?

Luckily, finding suitable summer homes doesn’t have to be complicated. All you have to do is be thorough while taking your time.

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