Buying on Winnipesaukee: An emotional decision or a logical one?

[jetlag100]

Times a tickn'....just do what your gut tells you to do! There's nothing that will replace lost time....get moving!

[stynx55]

My wife and I bought a small house in a community with water access. From my driveway to the boat ramps exactly a mile. I work weekends and my wife works from home. I have no regrets about the our purchase. I rode 1600 miles this winter on my snowmobile right from my backyard, we just got a wave runner and look forward to the lake in summer. We golf and are near several courses. If you buy the house there's plenty of things to do all year.

[ishoot308]

It's also a GREAT reason to buy a boat!!

What are you waiting for!!

Good luck!

Dan

[Merrymeeting]

More than 40 years ago, my parents struggled with your question, realized that the logic didn’t make any sense at all, given 4 small children, mortgage, upcoming college tuitions, etc. They went ahead and did it anyway. My dad argued that it would be the place that kept the family together.

I spent my teens, working with my dad and siblings, building and finishing the house, learning skills and things that I would do and enjoy the rest of my life. I also worked on the lake every summer into my twenties, solidifying my love of being here.

My siblings and I grew older, started having children ourselves, and went our various ways as life and the demands of work and family pulled us in different directions.

But despite living in 3 different states, we all returned to our parent’s lake house almost every summer weekend to enjoy the lake and mountains. During nights around the campfire, siblings and in-laws became some of our best friends, while the cousins and other friends played kick-the-can, flashlight tag, and enjoyed the company of their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and extended family of lake friends.

Eventually, our parents’ house was creaking at the seams as too many of us wanted to share the same precious place. My wife and I made the same agonizing analysis as you are making, and our parents had made, and despite a financial plan that was on the edge, we bought our own place on the same lake.

As Island Girl described, I experienced the joy of watching my kids live summers in t-shirts and bathing suits, making lifelong friends on the lake, whose weddings they now attend as ushers and attendants. I refer to it as their Mayberry RFD summers. Two of my siblings now also have places of their own here.

I was blessed to be able to move here full-time a few years ago, and I’m enjoying the view of life that my parents had when they started.

Did it make sense financially? Absolutely not. But quality of life? Priceless!

I just happy that my dad lived long enough to see and experience how much his vision has kept the family together.

[SAB1]

Like above, its all in the heart not the brain. If you can swing it financially (including getting those three kids thru college) it is a great experience especially if you want to live there in retirement. I think you would end up spending well over 12 weeks there. The lake is great April-October and if you like winter all the better. Each month brings changes from ice out, to pure peace in May/June (except for the black flies), the summer chaos when vacationers arrive and lake floods with watercraft, to pure peace in September/October again when the majority of people are gone. I have never regretted it. It is however a good deal of work owning two homes and maintaining them. There are plenty of weekends when I get back to work on Monday having worked my butt off all weekend and had little time to relax. Good outweighs the bad though...........

[boat_guy64]

Buying a lake house will ruin your life. Ten years ago we purchased a lake house in Meredith. That first summer was kind of weird. New house, new friends, new place to put the boat, lots of odds and ends jobs and the people at the hardware store knew me by name and knew my phone number for their rewards program. What did I get myself into? In previous years, I valeted my boat and came and went in the same day.

By the end of the summer, my wife had started to stretch her weekends and take the kids to the lake on Thursday. Then, she decided with her new found friends that she was going to abandon me and take the kids and live at the lake the entire next summer.

The next summer, three hours after the kids got off of the bus, they were at the lake….and I was living alone.

The kids made about 10 new friends (we live in a community in Meredith) and can you believe this….they took off with their friends every day. They went fishing, swimming, played games and only came back when they got hungry. My wife and her friends decided it was okay to have daily picnics on the beach and plan fun things for the kids…..and I was living alone.

Then, the wife and her friends decided that the boat was too much work for them to uncover and manage, so they decided that they needed jetskis. Then came the jetski tubing, knee boards and wakeboarding with my wife and her friends….and I was living alone.

But alas, weekends and vacations came I was reunited with these strangers. They had the gall to beg me to take them out on the boat and do things with them all weekend. They wanted me to go tubing, to go swimming and play games with the other dads who were… living alone during the week.

That summer came to a close and my wife had the nerve to tell me she and her friends….they were going to do the same thing next year. (and for the next 8 years and counting)

The following winter, we walked down to the lake and saw 10 snowmobiles crazily go whipping by us. What a bunch of crazies. I’m not even going to go into how I ended up buying 2 of them and my son and I spent every winter weekend for the next 8 years and counting riding all over NH. (and yes, we are now on snowmobile 4 and 5)

Now, my kids are in college and I’m thinking that I’m home free. Peace at last. Do you know what those kids did? They got jobs in the lakes region and spend every darn summer at MY lakehouse.

So, buying a lakehouse will ruin your life. You’ll crave for Friday to come, you’ll save up every minute of vacation to spend your time there and you spend lots of extra time planning on how you’ll make it your permanent home. You’ll get addicted to watching for ice out every year, if you become a snowmobiler, you’ll be begging for snow like when you were a little kid. You’ll never get rid of your kids. From what I've seen in my neighborhood, the older kids and grandkids show up almost every weekend. You’ll never guess the things they do when they get to the lake…

[CaptT820]

Anything you buy cannot be described as a logical purchase unless it does one of two things for you. It needs to make you money and appreciate, so you can sell it for a profit or it needs to provide a value to you over its lifetime that warrants the price you paid for it.

The first value is easy to assess, if you buy something to make money on and it appreciates, you sell it at a profit and move to the next object.

The second value is where the emotion kicks in. Emotion, Value, and Logistics usually don't end up in the same place with one another. People buy things and make decisions with strong emotion that they would never do if there was no emotion involved.

Buying a car is a great example. Worst decision we can all make, because it is guaranteed to depreciate as soon as you drive it off the lot (assuming it is not a collector car, rarity, etc.). Unfortunately we all need a car (or most of us do) to get to work, school, etc. We need a first home. We don't NEED a second home, lake home, mountain home.

When buying any primary first home the best real estate agents will have you consider three factors: what do you absolutely need, what do you want, and price. Where the triple point is of these three things is the box you need to stay in to stay disciplined on such a large financial decision. When you get out of the box, is when emotion gets involved. A second home is a want, not a need, so it becomes an illogical decision and an emotional one.

To enjoy a lake home, take the finances out of the logical part of the argument. It is impossible to financially quantify downtime, relaxing, and whatever non physical aspects go into your decision. Also remember that real estate is one of the few things you can buy that will actually appreciate over the long run.

My wife and I have been looking for island property for nearly three years now and have sacrificed a lot of sweat equity in our house to allow the purchase of a second one. In the end when we do settle on a property, it'll be all worth it. We are both scientists and don't make any illogical decisions if we can help it, but for us it came down to a quality of life factor that is monetarily impossible to measure over a lifetime.