Living in Nova & Owning in Rehoboth. Practical? (Chincoteague: renters, HOA)

[Caladium]

My husband and I are toying with the idea of buying a house in Rehoboth Beach. The idea is to rent it out for 4-5 years and then eventually move there for retirement. Right now we need to stay in Nova since we aren't yet retired--so the plan is to rent it out during the spring and summer, and use it ourselves for weekend trips in the fall and winter.

I know people in Nova do this, and I was wondering if anyone on our forum has tried this and can talk about the pros and cons of this sort of arrangement. Also, if we want to rent it out to fellow Northern Virginians, are there good local places to advertise it besides Craigs List? (I'm thinking of things like HOA newsletters, for example).

Did you find you were really able to spend much time there, or was the travel back and forth too much hassle. Is it ok to be a long distance landlord (we're thinking of using a local management company).

I'm also posting on the Delaware forum, but thought this might be a good question on Nova forum too.

[Fern435]

Absolutely. If that's the place you know you'd like to be, I think it's a great idea to look now and be ready to buy the right place when it comes along, even if it's a few years ahead of your move. We did that with our home in Maine, and it felt good to have the plan in place. Less stress when the time arrived to leave.

You'll find a great place!

[ChristineVA]

My coworker owns a home at Bethany and my cousin owns a condo in Ocean City, MD. Neither of them rent it out though.

My cousin's daughter has a 1 BDRM loft in Ocean City and she rents it out through word of mouth.

If you want to rent on your own, I suggest using the site www.vrbo.com (http://www.vrbo.com - broken link) (Vacation Rentals By Owner) and I use that site for myself to FIND rentals. I like it a lot.

[Caladium]

Christine--have either of them talked about what their condo complexes are like off season? I understand there are a fair number of people who do live in the beach cities year round, but I imagine some complexes are ghost towns. Even though I like the idea of condo living, I guess that's something to determine before moving into one--it would be creepy to spend 6 months in a building with no other tenants.

[ChristineVA]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Christine--have either of them talked about what their condo complexes are like off season? I understand there are a fair number of people who do live in the beach cities year round, but I imagine some complexes are ghost towns. Even though I like the idea of condo living, I guess that's something to determine before moving into one--it would be creepy to spend 6 months in a building with no other tenants.

Well, my co-worker owns a townhouse about a 3 mile drive from the beach in Bethany. It's like a regular neighborhood; however, I got the impression that it is mostly summer people that own them.

My cousins' condos are in smaller buildings so they aren't "complexes" in the true sense but, yeah, mostly they aren't used in the winter. Ocean City is a real ghost town in the winter but my cousin still goes up there in the winter and spends EVERY weekend. The happen to like it there, even when it's dullsville.

Personally, I think the Delmarva shore area is fantastic in the summer but a tad depressing in the off season. Just not enough to do. I know two people that have retired in that direction. One went to Berlin, MD and she travels the country all winter and my in-laws who retired 15 minutes south of Chincoteague. They don't care for it at all. The biggest complaint from both couples is lack of good medical specialists/hospital facilities (important when you get older) and no real good places to go for them that are close. But these are people who spent their whole lives in the DC area and are used to that pace. My inlaws actually first planned on retiring in Asheville and were living there. They really, really regret leaving there.

But, Delaware is a good state to retire in. So long as you're okay with a quieter life in the off-season, it's probably fine.

Another thing, my cousin points out is that spending entire summers at a beach resort wears really thin after awhile. It's a nice place to visit but 3 months with the crazy beachgoers really gets to them.

[saganista]

We thought about such a thing, then we spent two weekends there in October and November and decided against it.

[statecollege]

My only advice: After 4-5 years of renting, be prepared to spend thousands on rehabing when you are ready to move in permanently.

[michgc]

I don't have any personal experience, but my good friend has a townhouse in Sea Isle, NJ. They rent it out in the summer, and they use a rental company to help them. The hard thing about beach rentals is that they are usually on a weekly or sometimes bi-weekly basis. After each tenant, there has to be a cleaning service that comes in and cleans up the place. Sometimes things get broken, need to get replaced, etc. There are weeks when they have no renters (and they go down and use it). It can be a lot of headache if you try to take things on yourself or you pay quite a lot to have the rental/management company/cleaners handle everything for you. You'd have to find out from people in your specific complex what the vacancy rates are like as well as the true expense it will cost and how much you can expect to bring in.

Another thought to consider is that if this is a "dream place" that you are planning to retire to, do you really want tenants in there for 4-5 years prior messing up the place? I agree with statecollege that you will probably end up replacing and spending quite a bit of money after renting it out - bathrooms, kitchen, carpet, etc. So unless you expect prices to dramatically increase at the beach in the next 5 years, it might be worth it to wait to buy.

Lastly, you have to be very careful about finding a place that isn't full of just seasonal owners. Another friend of mine's in-laws bought a place (in Bethany, I believe but I could be wrong about that) for their retirement. They hated their development because it was empty in winter. They ended up selling and finding a different development that had a higher percentage of year-round owners. The problem I see with your plan is that if you want to live in a place with more year-round owners, I don't know how likely it will be that you can rent it out for weeks at a time (or even if it's allowed). And you might have a hard time finding people who want to for the whole summer or even a month. On the other end of the spectrum, condos that are relatively easy to rent out will probably be full of tourists/short-term renters, which is probably not what you want.

One final word of warning - be prepared for the Delaware jokes. Delawhere? is a common one. Yes, there are some people who have never heard of our country's first state. I lived in northern Delaware for four years - one interesting aspect of living in the second smallest state is that it seems like everyone knows everybody else. It's a very small world up there - much different than the DC area, in my opinion. And you can't beat the tax-free shopping! :-)

[CAVA1990]

Why buy one now? You could save a ton of money by renting something when you want to go before you retire and then decide if you still want it in 4-5 years. Why lock yourself in to something? You'd probably feel guilty every time you went somewhere else instead of there. They're not going up in price anytime soon so that's not the factor it used to be for buying pre-retirement. I know a lot of people with second homes and have concluded it's not worth the headache.

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by saganista

We thought about such a thing, then we spent two weekends there in October and November and decided against it.

That's our plan,too. We've been there a few times in October and like it--so we're going to book a week in mid January and see how it goes. I figure that's probably the deadest of the dead times. And, if we like it, it should be easy to find a local realtor who won't mind taking us around to a few properties.

I think the point about renting the property is a good one--you never know if you're going to get party animals who would really be rough on the place.