Thought about a place on the river. It's a 45 min. ride. Told the boss I really don't wanna go up there and mow the lawn every Sat. Right now I use the river for free.
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Thought about a place on the river. It's a 45 min. ride. Told the boss I really don't wanna go up there and mow the lawn every Sat. Right now I use the river for free.
I think now is a great time to purchase property, especially waterfront property. If you can pay cash, then do it. Even with low interest rates on homes, you would really be losing money in the long run if you divert funds from real investments.
The only way I could justify a property is to make it a rental. If you can find something that you can rent part of the year and generate income, then this is really a different discussion. As others have mentioned, a second home is expensive. A rental home can help make a nice income or provide the funds to pay for itself over time.
We can possibly use it as a rental if need be. Alot of people that live/rent around the lake are from the greater Chicago area. We can afford the property without touching the money we are investing, we would just have to tighten our belts a little more. I spoke with a guy at work who seems to be an investment guru and he stated that if I can I should wait to see who becomes our next President or at least wait until the start of next year to see if the tax laws change/expire. Basically stated that it is possible that the second home tax credit may or may not be there after this year which will affect how much tax credit I can receive. So I am going to look into that as well. We would use it so much to be perfectly honest I wouldn't care if we rented it out.
We bought ours with the intention of rental income, then with all the hard wok and upgrades we tightened our belt a bit and just used it every weekend, could not come to rent it.
It looked sketchy in 08 an 09 after the purchase in march Of 07, but it has worked out greatand we use it fom April til October...
Lakes are reall nice around IN and MI should be able To get a great deal.
At one point, I owned 6 rental homes. Presidents come and go and tax laws change slightly. I took a position that I needed to break even in monthly costs vs monthly rent to make a purchase (at a minimum). As, over time, the renter is paying for the asset. For my first rentals, they were generating a surplus each month. I saved that money to a minimum that I set and then I used any money over that to purchase more property.
I sold my rentals due to too much moving (military) and to meet other financial goals. I will be buying rentals again soon.