My wife and I are in a similar situation too. We are about five years away from retiring but we are planning on buying a house when we visit in April. I did the calculations and after renting the house out for the winter and the tax deduction for Mort Int., my annual exp is about 3.5% of the purchase price. Even if we think take the anticipated appreacition of 5% annually, I am making money and each year the appreciation should get larger, especially when the builder is finished, there will be much less supply and hopefully the same demand. Seems like a good investment to me.