Where would you buy (Location, location, location...) ??

I often consider a vacation property investment "up north". I am interested in a discussion of the pros and cons of locations you own, or have considered, or any other thoughts you may have. To frame the conversation, there will be a tension across the following desirable conditions:

1. Lake front, or close to lake front, or with right-of-way
2. Close to good hiking, preferably "in the Whites"
3. Close to good skiing (both downhill and XC... Waterville, Bretton Woods, and Jackson are the big XC centers of interest)
4. Close to good cycling
5. Would prefer a "house" to a "condo".

There are not an abundance of lakes IN the mountains. If one goes to the Lakes Region, then one is further from the skiing and hiking, and the traffic makes cycling less desirable, especially on weekends when I would use it most.

Likes or dislikes about any place in the general area that you currently own are also interesting.

Tim

Mercedes Sprinter, w/4x4 & camper conversion.

TEO said:

Mercedes Sprinter, w/4x4 & camper conversion.

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Wife says... BZZZT.

Tim

I have a friend that owns a place in Franconia that I've stayed at a lot. It's not on a lake, but it has plenty of biking, skiing, and hiking nearby. They live full-time, but some people in the area have the houses as as part-time residences. Pros are it's right off 93, so it's a great location for both nearby stuff (Franconia Notch) and a great staging point for other goals (~ an hour to Wildcat).

The obvious downsides of a house is it can cost more to operate, and if you're not there a lot, you might not catch a big problem before it's a real issue. A condo generally has a maintenance company and other users that keep an eye on things, and help share costs (such as plowing). Sharing walls can help save on heat, but can also limit the sense of privacy. For me, I'd go with a condo at this point in my life, but a house if I could afford it.

bikehikeskifish said:

I often consider a vacation property investment "up north". I am interested in a discussion of the pros and cons of locations you own, or have considered, or any other thoughts you may have. To frame the conversation, there will be a tension across the following desirable conditions:

1. Lake front, or close to lake front, or with right-of-way
2. Close to good hiking, preferably "in the Whites"
3. Close to good skiing (both downhill and XC... Waterville, Bretton Woods, and Jackson are the big XC centers of interest)
4. Close to good cycling
5. Would prefer a "house" to a "condo".

There are not an abundance of lakes IN the mountains. If one goes to the Lakes Region, then one is further from the skiing and hiking, and the traffic makes cycling less desirable, especially on weekends when I would use it most.

Likes or dislikes about any place in the general area that you currently own are also interesting.

Tim

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Some general ramblings

The normal rule of thumb is don't buy more than 2 hours drive from home. that really limits folks options. The concept is any farther and you will use it less. I93 tends to make that 2 hours stretch out to a farther distance. Lets be generous and draw a 140 mile radius from your home.

Lake front, good luck anything 2 hours away from southern NH is prime, plan on 1 to 3K per foot of frontage plus the cost of the house. If you are willing to consider river front land the options are a bit better. Taxes will typically be high for waterfrontage.

Good cycling, possibly the Maine side of the WMNF, there are a lot of fairly flat rural roads aligned with the Saco river and the old course of the Saco up to Kezar lake. North Fryeburg and Lowell but a long drive to skiing as the slopes tend to be on the NH side with no good east west roads. Kezar lake is beautiful but it has along been a very rich lake, rarely do you see anything less than 500 K.

Houses cost more and require more weekend time eaten up by maintenance, less time to play.

Hiking is a problem, no matter where you locate, you will get "bored" of the local mountains so no matter what you will eventually drive. I.E. I can climb Madison without getting in my car but I drive all over the whites to do other peaks.

Other things to consider

Taxes - Big difference in what towns to look at, house payments in theory build long term equity while taxes are just a yearly drain. Pay more for a house in a low tax town and look at overall out of pocket.

Services - Figure out what you need for services, if you don't need a lot look for a small town that adjoins a larger town just in case those services are needed. Some towns don't have trash pickup and dump hours are restricted. To some folks it means bringing their trash home with them.

Carrying costs - getting a driveway plowed in the winter can be $40 to$50 a plow and it adds up. I budget $1.5 K Unless the house is truly seasonal you need to heat it and many homes may look modern but not built to any energy code. Unless you are creative plan on $1000 to $2000 per year just to keep the pipes from freezing. Draining the water is not as easy as it seems an thermal cycling from hot to cold really beats up the interior.

For years the notches were the borderline for vacation homes. The Franconia Parkway and completion of I93 changed that with many folks going north. Littleton's rankings drew in a lot of folks and the prices show it. Franconia has always had a vacation component, land cost are high and I would not rate it high for bicycling. Bethlehem has some nice areas but the taxes traditionally have been high plus the landfill is an issue with some.

Whitefield and Jefferson may be some towns to look at, Property is available with views and the valleys have some flatish rural roads that dont get a lot of traffic. Ski areas are not close but you have Bretton Woods, Cannon Mtn and even Wildcat within an 1 hour. Hiking access is good for much of the whites. No real waterfront except for few ponds. The wildlife refuge is grabbing up much land in the area so overdevelopment may not be an issue.

A thinking out of the box pick is Shelburne NH, low taxes, access to Sunday River and Wildcat, plenty of hiking and a nice stretch of river. Folks forget the pulp mill is long gone so the water quality although not crystal clear due to upsteam bogs is good and the shoreline is mostly undeveloped, you would need to buy an existing home on the river as the town has locked out any new development. The river is managed as trophy fishing waters with a fairly large native trout habitat. Some cycling on North Road but its limited. The big plus is within 1 to 2 hours the western Maine mountains, and the Me side of WMNF and the northern Presidentials are nearby as well as several large undeveloped lakes north on RT 16 (Umbagog, Richardson and Parmachenee).

As for price, the market is coming back in the region, there were some super deals last year but they are mostly gone and most were not vacation homes. Land isn't cheap up north as there isn't a lot of it for sale. For a vacation home plan of 250 to 400K with some selling higher. The markets are definitely split, there was an overbuild of higher end vacation homes built and priced for the out of state market and then there are the in town homes that are working class, these homes are cheap as the jobs have left the area but I don't think anyone would buy them for vacation homes. Realize that the real estate agents tend to overprice vacation homes as they expect a down state client will try to get a perceived deal. Many of the higher end homes stay on the market for awhile so if you see something you like look at comparable sales in the region and make a offer far lower than asking. The agent will act like its an insult but they are getting a commission so its to their incentive to keep the price high.

NNEREN.com is handy and you can look at the actual selling prices of homes (unfortunately you cant compare list versus sale). Many real estate listings list the book and page number of the deed, you can learn a lot including what the prior owner paid and when they paid it for the home by going to the Coos country registry of deeds website and figuring out the tax stamps on the deeds.

Most folks wont go north of Berlin as its too far from the whites. Dummer is nice but its 45 minutes plus north of Gorham.

Good luck

peakbagger said:

Houses cost more and require more weekend time eaten up by maintenance, less time to play.

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Of this I am painfully aware. "Condo" is less unpopular than "camper/trailer" but still not embraced. I know this is not going to be easy as I (we) have been thinking about it on-and-off for several years. My wife grew up on Lake Sunapee (summers on an island cottage) and so the lakefront is important to her, but the island concept severely limits winter use and cycling access.

Tim

If good skiing is important, consider looking in Vermont. If you're near the I-91 corridor (St. J., Lyndonville, Barton, etc.), then you'll have easy access to Jay (good snow), Burke & Cannon (less now), & you'll be relatively close to Stowe (the best). You'd also be close to great road & mountain biking, and some nice small lakes/ponds. Quick access to the Whites, too, not to mention the Greens. You could even look a little further West, say along Rt. 15, East of Morrisville.


P.s. Great nordic skiing in Stowe, Hardwick, & Greensboro.

Have you tried using Cyberrental and trying some condos. My wife is not big on condos thinking of nosiy neighbors but some are better than others. At one point we quickly thought and now unthought of this possibility too.

Would you opt for near the NH VT border and opt for CT river view instead of lake? Lancaster area would be better price wise and some flatter terrain for biking. A bit north of the Notches should be better/more chocies. I'd make it three hours but that is based on my driving about four everywhere now. I assumed road biking, Burke has good mountain biking I understand.

if buying, taxes might be an issue, NH should be good, not sure about VT. Is buying land & building an option?
Do you need to owm outright? Another couple as partners, might help with getting more if you have only 26 weeks a year? Big townhome Condo maybe best so you don't lose friends or partners over how long you keep the grass or if you prefer Dogwoods over Maples & Birches.

My problem while employed was thinking of a spot, without any ties anywhere, Greenfield MA area would have been a good spot, VT & NH close. Not too far from MA Pike to get to NY and both Catskills and ADK and then down to the NJ Shore. Wife would probably push Catamount area as easier shore access & a local ski hill, makes SKills and ADK and Taconics easy, more work for NH and ME.

Let me toss out another clarification - I do not find hills to be an impediment to cycling, so the comments about "flattish roads" are not important. Most of the time, on the longer weekend rides, I prefer the longer, hillier rides. 50-100 miles and 5-10K is not only acceptable, it is desirable. VT has great potential in this regard.

Tim

bikehikeskifish said:

Let me toss out another clarification - I do not find hills to be an impediment to cycling, so the comments about "flattish roads" are not important. Most of the time, on the longer weekend rides, I prefer the longer, hillier rides. 50-100 miles and 5-10K is not only acceptable, it is desirable. VT has great potential in this regard.

Tim

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Knowing that you used to race, I almost said something. After all, who likes flat roads? Another reason to live in Vermont: the LAMB ride.

Are you interested in/willing to rent when you're not using it yourself? If you are, proximity to downhill skiing and/or lakes might become more important. Obviously it'll cost more, but you'd be able to charge higher fees (from my experience as a renter, proximity to XC facilities, while highly desirable to me, don't command the same premium)

I will preface this by saying I'm just a hiker in NH. I do not ski (nope, no, no way, no how ) I do like to bike but I have never brought my bicycle up there. That being said: My family has a place on a little lake in Ossipee. I love the cabin and learned how to swim in that lake, but with my current desire to get on the trails early in the morning it is honestly still a little too far from the mountains for my liking. It takes me an hour and a half to get to Crawford Notch and closer to 2 hours to get over to Franconia Notch. I may as well just stay in my own comfy bed, rather than spending the time opening the house. If I had my druthers I'd find a small condo in North Conway, one that I didn't have to spend any time opening up, but would just be a place to rest my head in between hikes ... and keep a bicycle

I will speak from my personal experience in owning a second home.

We are three hours from home, when travelling with our family of four, this is right on the edge of tolerable. With just myself or with my wife, three hours is a snap. We have owned our second home since our second child was born and she is now 17 so we went through the whole gamut of travelling experiences.

I grew up in a family with a second home, also in Maine. My wife & I used that house for many years before we searched for our own house; my family's was on a seasonal road and it was not winterized. We eventually opted to build our own house as nothing we could find matched our needs as we perceived them. We now have a house on a smaller pond (180ac) in Southern Oxford county Maine. This is a smaller, year round house on a private dirt road. Our taxes are not too bad as there are a couple of larger lakes in town that support a great portion of the tax base in town. When we bought, a comparable lot on one of the larger lakes was 2x the purchase price with 2x the taxes in the same town. My guess is that smaller lakes still cost less.

Location.....a lot of considerations here. This issue is one big compromise for us. The various factors for us included waterfront, skiing, snowmobiling and hiking. We are 45 min to 1 hr from skiing. 1 hr from N. Conway, 1 hr from the ME/NH RT 2 border. We can snowmobile from the yard. I have also learned that being reasonably close to services is also very helpful. It is awfully nice to have most everything we need available to us in a 7-10 mile drive from home. This includes food shopping, hospital, lumber yard, Wal-Mart, Tractor Supply and most other services that I could possibly want; over the years, this has become surprisingly important. Also, more important with time, is the proximity to the highway. I have many different ways to go from the highway to my house, each has their own benefits. If you are going to be a frequent traveler, to me, it is a big disadvantage to have a long drive off highway as a regular part of your trip (think bad weather)

Costs; I get my driveway plowed for $15, by the same Co. that plows our road. My heating bill is about $1000 per year (temp at 50° or we heat with wood when we are there) I have a temp alarm that calls me if the temp were to drop below 40° You do need a network of friends or a caretaker to feel most comfortable. We are in a small development with some full time residents and some from away as we are. I enjoy the work around the house, sometimes that is my excuse to go to Maine while the family stays home. We did build with simplicity and low maintenance in mind. Heat with hot air, it has the quickest recovery and it is not susceptible to water freezing or leaking. Assume that you will lose power and you may freeze the house. If you can, build the plumbing to drain. All of our plumbing is concentrated on the first floor, in one small area over an unfinished portion of our basement. The basement even has floor drains.

Gear/toys: The big surprise for me has been the amount of gear that we have accumulated. We have dedicated a surprising amount of storage for this gear; do not underestimate this need. Alpine ski gear, nordic ski gear, snowmobile gear, hiking gear, skates, pond toys, snowmobiles, kayaks, canoe, sailboat, ski boat, bikes, boat trailers, snowmobile trailers and all of the accompanying clothing

Buying: research and patience...We completely changed our focus through our initial search many years ago. We started looking further north in the mountains of Maine. Ended up on a pond 1 hour closer to home. Look, look and then look some more. Do your due diligence, one of my favorite tips is to use a fishing guide to look at the quality of the body of water. There is a pond local to us that has over 200ac of surface but the depth is only 8' and it is supported by a beaver dam. Over the last 10 years, they have developed 50% of the shoreline on that pond by selling to people out of state, buyer beware. Also, be cautious about road associations including covenants that might be part of any deed; often covenants were used to make up for a lack of zoning. We have continued to add to our land and in each case, the transactions have benefited from our patience; we have assumed that we were in the drivers seat for each transaction and each time worked that angle to our advantage. Most agents do not know crap about what they are selling, at least in Maine. Our experiences have been comical including buying property that the agent never even set foot on and also buying property from a listing agent that didn't even know that they were listing the property. We did all of the leg work in each of our transactions, leaving no stone unturned. Learn about the seller, in 2 cases we bought from distressed sellers and in the third case, the seller was living in Switzerland and we dealt with him directly. Knowledge is power.

Most importantly, install a washer/dryer right from the start!! No excuses, leave the vacation clothes in the vacation home. No going home early to do laundry!!

We do not use the house as often as I would hope over the last few years. However, this has been due to the various things that my kids have been engaged in at home. This was not much of an issue when the kids were younger and it will become less of an issue as our kids get older. It is simply the stage of life that we are in right now.

I often fantasize about not owning the second home, it would be so much easier to rent in different places throughout the year. But, in the long run, I have come to truly enjoy the flexibility afforded by owning our own vacation home. It is pretty sweet arriving on a friday night with nothing much to unload other than a cooler of fresh food for the weekend.

You've been to our place in Twin Mountain Tim - $20 a plow - $1200 a year in propane and we are up there every weekend and many of them long ones - 1:50 door to door with easy an easy drive - fairly cheap taxes - snowmobile trails for skiing for free - tons of hiking - good cycling loops - Moore Reservoir for ton's of boating options - numerouse rivers for fishing!

Also, consider looking FAR ahead. If you like it enough, you may retire there. We did. Our second home (in Keene, ADKs) was about 1:20 from the primary. Last year, we sold the primary and now live in Keene. Make sure the place is designed / located / equipped so you can easily enjoy being there as you reach older ages, and maybe the hilly 100 becomes the moderately hilly 30...

OK, I will expand on this a little more.

My wife, for the majority of her life, has had access to a family cottage on an island on Lake Sunapee. It is beautiful, but has some drawbacks - the season is short, it requires a boat to get there, and a boat to leave. The cycling is nice, but either I take the boat and leave them "stuck" on the island, or they have to drive me over and then pick me up. Sunapee offers downhill skiing (very crowded), but is impractical as a hiking base or a XC skiing base as there is no longer (since Norsk went under) a local XC area. To top it all off, it still belongs to her father, and we have been privileged to use it for vacations for sweat equity.

That, my friends, is the baseline I am competing with Bob & Geri's place is perfect "for me" as I don't have the attraction to the lake. So, to be more specific, I guess I am looking for lakes on the smaller side that are between Manchester and the Whites, keeping the 2 hour or less guideline in mind is appropriate, and understanding that I will still have to drive to hike and ski. So, let's minimize that time, have good out-the-door cycling, and have a clean, clear lake or pond that is appropriate for swimming and kayaking.

Oh, and since I skate ski, we're talking groomed corduroy and snowmobile trails don't quite cut it. The roads near the more popular lakes in the Lakes Region are heavily traveled, reducing the appear (increasing the danger) of cycling.

I appreciate the general tips - they are helpful.

Tim

Although we kind of fell into our current property (it was my wife’s grandparents’ home) we are quite happy where we are. We have a nice piece of property on the Mad River and I am maybe 5 miles from Waterville Valley, which offers skiing and has five 4,000 footers nearby. I can also walk to Welch/Dickey, being all of 2.2 miles from the house. The longest drive to one of the 48’s is about 1 ½ hours to Cabot. However, we bought the house in 1996, so we did the 10 years of owning two homes and the 4 hour drive from CT each weekend. Now that we live here full time, things are a little easier, both financially and logistically.

Have you considered buying your father-in-laws cabin and a second boat?

Tom_Murphy said:

Have you considered buying your father-in-laws cabin and a second boat?

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Actually, Tom, I'm trying very hard to come up with an alternative to buying / inheriting / co-owning the cabin It is not useful for skiing, it is not close to the Whites, and slips are very expensive. I've considered a float boat and tow vehicle so we can visit any lake we want, but storing both has drawbacks... and my wife can't launch said boat by herself.

Tim

Perhaps you need to find a way to covert the wife to be a mountain gal!