We started out as 'snow bunnies' back in 1995 when we bought a house on a canal in Ft Lauderdale. We'd drive down from Boston and open the house Columbus Day weekend, leave the car and fly back and forth a few times, close it in mid May and have the car shipped north. It was our 'escape house'... (it was so nice to only fly with carry on luggage)...it was truly like going on vacation (albeit when the airline stewardess call you by name you know you're flying too much). We duplicated EVERYTHING in the kitchens to make it easy. The shoulder seasons were the best for us and over time we wanted to be in FL more often at that time of year. In the summer my wife worried about the place in FL especially during hurricane season (did we close it up well enough). In 2008 we became more like 'snowbirds' as we both had careers that allowed us to work virtually, It became really easy to open/close the FL house, but it seemed to become more challenging to prepare the northern house for the fall/winter and to reopen the pool in the spring, get the gardens prepared etc. The kids were all grown/married/parents, so our pool was no longer 'the place' that it had been, nor was there much help with yard projects. Once the last of our parents passed away in 2015 we decided to simplify our lives and sell the two houses that we had up north and become FT Floridians (the back and forth travel had gotten to us). We extensively remodeled/expanded the house in FT Lauderdale and began living the good life. Not having a 'second or third home' to maintain/worry about made seeing the rest of the world a lot easier. By 2017 the traffic congestion in Ft Lauderdale had gotten to us. We looked up and down the coast and finally visited a cousin who lived in TV. Before leaving that weekend we had put money down on a house. Dealing with the summer FL heat is just mirror reverse from dealing with the winter cold in the north. We can escape the summer heat whenever we choose to. We no longer wake up that first morning after repositioning to 'the other house' and pause to remember which cabinet the coffee mugs are in, or get confused about what is the freezer in this house vs. the other house. BTW, Airbnb makes it easier to escape for a reasonable amount and the tax law changes now would have eliminated itemizing our multiple real estate deductions. Having one house works a lot better for us now that we're retired. Being this close to Disney increases the chances that family will travel to see us too!
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