Can You Still Benefit From A Vacation Home Even If You Don't Use It Often?
There's no arguing that owning a vacation home is a pretty sweet deal, with benefits ranging from the occasional weekend getaway at the beach to fun outings with family and friends. However, vacationing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reaping the benefits of a vacation home. There are a bevy of financial, logistical, and familial benefits that stem from owning a vacation home. Here are four such benefits and what they can do for just about every aspect of your life.
Equity
Vacation homes, especially in super lucrative markets like southern California or Florida, for example, can include some serious equity that can serve as a way to hedge against financial difficulties or pursue your financial goals. What's great about borrowing against your equity in a vacation home is that you can afford to be a little more risky with these finances than if you were borrowing against your year-round home, leaving you more free financially than if you didn't have a vacation home. Talk to a professional, like Lori Cordero - South Bay Residential Real Estate, to see which housing markets would suit your needs.
A Backup Plan
A vacation home can be a godsend should disaster strike or you have to leave your year-round home for one reason or another. This means that if a pipe bursts in your home, you still have somewhere else to go for the time being; and, more importantly, somewhere that's familiar to you and your family. This can save you some serious money in hotel costs, if you can get a hotel in an emergency.
Passive Income
Passive income is commonly cited as a major key to financial prosperity, since it's a way to get more than a week's worth of income out of a week. Passive income is a blanket term for investments and sources of income in which the earner is not materially involved. One of the most common sources of passive income is renting out a vacation home, since this money doesn't require hardly any input from you (other than a weekly cleaning, perhaps) but money can still come in from vacationers for a good part of the year.
A Starter/Old Age Home
A vacation home that's placed conveniently near a city or town (i.e. not one that's twenty miles into the wilderness) can be a fantastic way to help a young adult child get used to living on their own right out of college. The ability to give your child a place to live after college can be a great saving opportunity to prepare any young adult for the real world. On the flip side, this benefit can be extended to a parent or grandparent, especially since so many Americans are running into problems with outliving their saved money. Using the leverage given to you by a vacation home can act as both springboard and safety net when a family member needs a home for a while.
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