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Does anyone here have 2 homes - weekend vs work week home

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If I had to live in a big city that's probably something I'd consider. A bottom of the barrel cheap apartment close to work where I just go there to sleep and have very minimum stuff, and a decent house further away in a nicer area.

For stuff like water pipes freezing, you'd want to have a half decent monitoring and control system so you can get alerts for stuff like temperature, fire, flood etc. Maybe even have cameras so you can login to check on stuff. One thing I want to do one day is a rover, that would be fun. 😛 Totally just login to that and play around with it during night shifts and bother the cat haha.
 
OP, you could always "totally not legally at all" rent out your rented apartment on the weekends that you aren't there. I wouldn't advise that, though, because no one in LA does this ever...
 
The wife wants me to build a weekend cottage on the back corner of our property - it's down a side road from the road we live on. For a few years, I've been pretty "meh" about the idea. Looking for lake property instead for a weekend cottage, particularly at a lake about 5 hours from me.
 
zinfamous said:
OP, you could always "totally not legally at all" rent out your rented apartment on the weekends that you aren't there. I wouldn't advise that, though, because no one in LA does this ever...
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I thought about that but I have trust issues.
 
DrPizza said:
The wife wants me to build a weekend cottage on the back corner of our property - it's down a side road from the road we live on. For a few years, I've been pretty "meh" about the idea. Looking for lake property instead for a weekend cottage, particularly at a lake about 5 hours from me.
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What is her logic? Not understanding an additional home on your current property...but maybe I'm missing something (does it take 4 hours to drive across your property??).

We have a mountain condo that we use as our city escape. It's 2.5 hours away which seems to be the perfect distance (far enough to keep the crowds away, but close enough to make it a weekend getaway).

We use it a lot. It actually has been making us money through VRBO with little hassle. Not the best use of our money financially, but a great lifestyle choice.

We live in a great city neighborhood where I can walk to the light rail for a short 15 min commute to work. All the walk ability that comes with a city (coffee shop at the corner, lots of restaurants/bars, only own one vehicle). Fantastic primary school for our kids 2 blocks away. Having the condo provides a relatively stress free getaway where we can getaway from the city just about any weekend we want...but still have all the advantages of the city.

Going there after work tomorrow...last 2 weekends the slopes are open.
 
We use it a lot. It actually has been making us money through VRBO with little hassle. Not the best use of our money financially, but a great lifestyle choice.
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How do you handle keys and whatnot via VRBO? Or post-visit cleanings to the property?
 
DrPizza said:
The wife wants me to build a weekend cottage on the back corner of our property - it's down a side road from the road we live on. For a few years, I've been pretty "meh" about the idea. Looking for lake property instead for a weekend cottage, particularly at a lake about 5 hours from me.
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We bought some land about 40 minutes from us on a private lake about 4 years ago and built a cabin on it a few years ago. Unfortunately, we don't get there as often as we'd like even though it is that close. My point being...the further away it is, the more of a chore it is to go there. I would look for something closer because in the long run life gets in the way.
 
Ns1 said:
How do you handle keys and whatnot via VRBO? Or post-visit cleanings to the property?
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In my experience renting through VRBO for work events in the past, the property can be managed by a local agency (and I think the owners can do this directly themselves).

either way, keys are usually in a lockbox on or near a main entrance, and you simply send the lockbox code to the renters via email a few days before they are supposed to arrive. keys go back in once they leave, else it's part of a deposit loss.

Deposits can be made refundable if the tenants agree to some pre-checkout cleaning, or just have them pay for a simple cleaning service through deposit.
 
Ns1 said:
noted, and expands my options significantly.
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A couple of other points:

the applications are reviewed by the owners, who often detail specific limits to groups: no pets, maximum party size, no smoking, etc.

I often sent detailed descriptions of who we were and what we were doing: often renting fancy-shmancy Tahoe homes for our lab annual retreat. So, I explained that we were super smart nerd people--post docs, grad students, etc that just wanted to spend a weekend talking about boring science nerd stuff--to allay any fears that we were dillhole fratboys just looking for a place to trash. Now, we tend to party hard with food and alcohol, but always left the place super clean.

If this sort of thing appeals to you, I'd advise to tailor pricing (high) and property (more appealing to adults), as well as your own review process to weed out the scum.
 
^^

:thumbsup:

guess I gotta do the math to see what would be more advantageous, a live/work situation (for tax purposes) or a part time airbnb situation.
 
Ns1 said:
How do you handle keys and whatnot via VRBO? Or post-visit cleanings to the property?
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Keys are in a lock box...we change the code once a season). Grounds are kept up by condo association. I pay a cleaning service (in my case an individual person who gives me feedback on condition of condo in case there is an issue).

There is certainly potential for an issue. We try to be proactive with maintenance and we are only 2.5 hours away incase there is a problem I can't handle remotely. I also have friends in town that I can call for help as a backup.

We mostly just rent it out during ski season. We still end up going a lot during ski season, but the month of March is generally completely booked (as well as the holidays). I am cool with that as by the end of ski season we are already at a profit and then we make it more "difficult" (high rate/long min. stay) for summer so that we can use it all summer which is our favorite time to be there (mountain biking/hiking/fishing/etc).
 
Ns1 said:
^^

:thumbsup:

guess I gotta do the math to see what would be more advantageous, a live/work situation (for tax purposes) or a part time airbnb situation.
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While I can't confirm it, I have a feeling that using a second place as a tax break will make you more susceptible to an audit.
 
madoka said:
While I can't confirm it, I have a feeling that using a second place as a tax break will make you more susceptible to an audit.
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No more or less than any other legitimate business expense I have.

Primary home (buy) = outside the city, tax breaks via home interest deduction
Secondary live/work office (rent) = inside the city, lowering taxable income via legitimate business expense

Taking it to the next level, if real estate is cheap enough I could rent another office next to the primary home outside the city, and then structure some excuse to make bi-weekly travel from office 2 to office 1, and thus writing off the commuting expense too.

i gotta figure out how to make this work!
 
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ponyo said:
I'm thinking about buying a house to use as business storage. I'm running out of storage room in my two rented public storage spaces. I really need a small warehouse but I think a house can work. I just have to be careful and not have neighbors complain about using the house for commercial use in residential area.
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Hey, I'm not alone!

I still have 5 storage units that are packed with stuff. One of them as a dozen or so copies of New Mutants 98 (intro Deadpool). I need to go find them and have them graded.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Mutants...354871?hash=item58d79a97b7:g:RE8AAOSwoudW7c0s
 
ImpulsE69 said:
We bought some land about 40 minutes from us on a private lake about 4 years ago and built a cabin on it a few years ago. Unfortunately, we don't get there as often as we'd like even though it is that close. My point being...the further away it is, the more of a chore it is to go there. I would look for something closer because in the long run life gets in the way.
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I live on a lake full time and a friend asked me to help find an affordable weekend house in my neighborhood for him. As it turned out, the best place was next door to me 😀 The builder had health issues and it ended up taking him over 5 years of work - it was listed at $700K at one point (unfinished) then the economy crashed. My friend got it for about $260K though he did have to put another $25K to finish it up - great house.

Anyway the point is that he only comes up maybe 5 or 6 times during warm weather season and a couple times during cooler weather, and it's only about a one hour drive for him. Like you said, life gets in the way though I don't think OP has children.
 
Just call the second house either a cottage or vacation property. We bought a cottage and had no issues with bank or anyone... It feels good being able to go there and know it has nothing to do with work- good stress reducer. We only spend maybe 40 nights there a year though because it is 2.5 hours away and across a 45$ toll bridge.
 
Feneant2 said:
Just call the second house either a cottage or vacation property. We bought a cottage and had no issues with bank or anyone... It feels good being able to go there and know it has nothing to do with work- good stress reducer. We only spend maybe 40 nights there a year though because it is 2.5 hours away and across a 45$ toll bridge.
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What? $45 to cross a bridge???
 
zinfamous said:
I was assuming something like the Keys or Chesapeake Bay bridge. I've never been on those, but I assume they are rather expensive to cross.
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there are no tolls down in the keys, other than the toll road that gets you to the road that leads to key largo.

chesapeake bay bridge is like $6 or $8 cash i think, or was at one point but the price went back down. you only pay when crossing one direction though, not going back the other way. the bridge used to be $1.25 each direction long long ago.
 
ImpulsE69 said:
We bought some land about 40 minutes from us on a private lake about 4 years ago and built a cabin on it a few years ago. Unfortunately, we don't get there as often as we'd like even though it is that close. My point being...the further away it is, the more of a chore it is to go there. I would look for something closer because in the long run life gets in the way.
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With my schedule as a teacher, I'd be able to spend a few weeks there during the school year, and much of the summer. So, I prefer a lake that I really, really like. We did try to purchase a property at auction a couple years ago on a local lake; we were the back-up bidder. We went up to about 6 times the assessed actual value of the property (which wasn't really a lot of money). The reason for a cabin - right above a really nice stream, secluded, maybe 2 cars per day. And, we could rent it out during hunting season, or even for a few weeks during the summer, since the location would only be about 100 yards from 7500 acres of state land - just a few years would pay the expense of building it.
 
purbeast0 said:
there are no tolls down in the keys, other than the toll road that gets you to the road that leads to key largo.

chesapeake bay bridge is like $6 or $8 cash i think, or was at one point but the price went back down. you only pay when crossing one direction though, not going back the other way. the bridge used to be $1.25 each direction long long ago.
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Interesting. I need to check out the Chesapeake area now that I'm local.

...so where the hell is a $45 toll bridge? Perhaps that guy is not in the US?
 
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