Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisa@AskLisa.net
My husband and I cannot retire for 2 to 3 years. Should we buy now and rent our unit out? If we did this, how much out of pocket would we have to spend? Should we buy new or resale? How important is it to be close to a town center?
Thanks,
Lisa
|
There is no set answer to this. Everyone has their own experience and logic, and you just have to do what makes the most overall sense to you.
We bought a courtyard villa two years ago, knowing that my actual retirement would not occur until April 2009. (was in DC at that time). We did not rent it out, and instead custom-painted it, landscaped and other personal tweaking over that time. We moved down the items we wanted to keep, and then sold the leftover furniture with the DC-area house. Moving from 3700 Sq Ft to 1200 Sq Ft meant that the heavy "northern" stuff stayed north.
During the from-closing (June 2007) to permanently-living-here time frame, we split the time at 10 weeks in DC and hen 1-2 weeks in TV. That got modifield last Christmas, with my spouse remaining in TV and I went back for about 4 weeks (split up) from New Years to retirement date.
We figured the total carrying costs to maintain the TV home at about $1,100 per month during this transition. Since the TV home acted as our vacation address during that time, that tempered the cost issue.
Hindsight being 20:20, we wouldn't have done it different. It became a fun project, getting everything organized for the retirement, enjoying TV as a vacation site during the interim, getting to know many of the neighbors, even the drives back-and-forth were fun.
We know of a few folk who bought and then rented their home out through TV's rental operation, and did not have any complaints. It's just a matter of how you want to do it.