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The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vaca
by snowwrestler 1y ago
The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vacation home. That’s why so many vacation homes are near old major cities like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. In the summer, families with money escaped to the mountains or the beach, where it was much more pleasant during the hot months.
I would guess that another huge factor has been the decline in the real cost of air travel. It’s now cheap enough that people with money can reasonably expect to fly somewhere for every vacation they want to take. You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.
In fact, I feel buying property in one vacation spot is starting to look more like an anchor than an escape hatch. Keeping capital in securities instead is more liquid and less expensive (stocks don’t have roofs or plumbing). Let someone else own the hotel or AirBnB or VRBO. I’ll fly in and rent it just for the vacation. This mindset may partially explain why vacation home ownership has not “kept up” with the growth in real wealth.
- MrDarcy 1y agoThis is a win win win for all involved, owner, renter, and Airbnb. I converted stocks into a vacation home on puget sound and rent it out when we aren’t using it. Demand is high enough that we don’t need to rent it out months in advance so we still feel like it’s mostly ours and we’re not just another guest fitting into Airbnb’s schedule. To your point I liked the liquidity of equities but it has been nice to do something with it beyond just watching a number in a spreadsheet. If we want a change in scenery it’s a wash to rent our own place out and stay in another.
- yieldcrv 1y agoLiquidity is a major factor for me thats kept me out of real estate in the past, have the money burning AI buyers helped make home trading more liquid?
- mancerayder 1y agoSupply and demand makes investments liquid. If there's no demand you're stuck trying to sell. If there's no supply you'll overpay. Why AI?
- yieldcrv 1y agoI am referring to the speed of buying and selling even when there are buyers. In crypto and the stock market its minutes to one day to both sell and get cash in your bank account that can be used for anything else. For real estate its weeks to hundreds of days even if there are many buyers. The AI buyers accelerated that. I’m asking about people’s experience in a world where AI buyers have already existed for 3-5 years. You’ll have to take a time machine to debate that.
- mancerayder 1y agoFor price discovery and matching buyers and sellers? Maybe. The financial considerations still control decisions. Without much technology needing to be involved, you still have insane bidding wars in hot markets and decisions have to be made quickly (hence cash/no financing contingency being so popular). And if there's too much inventory or an area where people are exiting from, the opposite.
- apwell23 1y agoi am guessing an agency manages your airbnb? how does that work out financially?
- DANmode 1y agoJust google "property manager profit split".
- ericmay 1y agoWell, arguably it’s a win except for local populations in some areas where enough housing is converted to vacation housing that they complain and don’t like it for various reasons. There is a balance to be struck. I’m sympathetic to that complaint a bit but it’s also a bit like NIMBY. Generally I think the cheapness of travel has been an unsung net negative for humanity as a whole.
- ausbah 1y agoyeah seriously there isn’t enough housing in major cities so the little new construction that isn’t rentals has a good chance of turning into an “investment property” via someone buying the mortgage and immediately turning it into a rental unit or airbnb unit. I really think that cities should either outlaw these type of units or tax them heavily and divert all new funds into new housing construction, or just incentivize so much new housing it turns into a losing investment source: i live in seattle and my partner owns property where 1/4 of their neighbors are landlords in a new construction complex
- mancerayder 1y agoNYC has outlawed them more than 30 days (unless it's just a room and you're in the unit). NY state has legally created a registry and now smaller towns are requiring permits. But Seattle and NYC Airbnbs aren't second homes, it's investments people were trying to play with. A vacation home is more a seasonal spot near a beach or a lake or mountain. That sort of stuff doesn't steal some middle class family's chances of renting something cheaper by pulling a unit off the rental market.
- ericmay 1y agoPied-à-terre is a thing in places like NYC, London, etc. Certainly you are right that there are differences and different cities have different features which attract different folks with different ideas. But I think vacation home can include not just a season spot near a beach or lake or mountain - people buy vacation homes in Mallorca, or Venice, or Provence, or wherever too. I am not really opposed to them or anything like that, I just wanted to point out there are some harmful effects for some places. The travel industry and the ease of travel is probably more of a concern, because instead of having a family buy a vacation property on a beach somewhere, you've got an entire industry turning that vacation spot into a zoo and for the number of people that do live in that vacation area it hollows it out a bit of any sort of meaning. The whole thing becomes a simulation of a vacation spot.
- apwell23 1y ago> You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter. lodging at a ski resort is still very expensive though. I think i makes sense to buy one if you ski ~100 days/year and airbnb out rest of the time. Lots of ski resorts now have summer activities like mtb and hiking too. and ski resorts usually are sentimental purchases.
- ghaff 1y ago100 days/year is a huge amount. I don't really downhill any longer but I'd have very little interest in getting a place for a lot less than that for the purposes of stashing my gear.
- yieldcrv 1y agoI’ve been to many old mansion estates, and in hotter climates the maid staff would have the upstairs rooms with potentially the best rooms. (Although the rooms were designed to be afterthoughts for maids.) I found that interesting, whats desirable has completely flipped based on our ability to make it comfortable.
- anon7000 1y agoI mean, attics and top floors with no AC often get swelteringly lot because heat rises
- arccy 1y agoplus heat transfer from the sun through the roof
- yieldcrv 1y agoYes, you explained the comment AC makes it comfortable if you have it
- bobthepanda 1y agoi think the confusing thing about parsing your comment is calling the maid's quarters the best rooms
- yieldcrv 1y agookay. let me clarify: penthouses and top floor rooms are the best rooms now because they can be kept cool, and have views. in the past the top floor rooms were the worst rooms because couldnt be kept cool, while also having views. in older estates, its interesting to see that the lowest ranked personnel were living in areas that are now coveted for the highest ranked personnel. due to their current ability to be kept cool.
- ashdksnndck 1y ago
- ghaff 1y agoI came to that conclusion years ago. I guess that for a family or group of friends, a ski condo could maybe make sense--or for literal snowbirds that migrated with the season. But the conclusion I came to years ago was that who wanted to be tied down to a particular location or urban location for vacation. Yeah, it's not cheap but more-so than owning and having to deal with a second home.
- throw0101d 1y ago> The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vacation home. One of the (main?) reasons why the Bretton Woods Conference [1] (that determined the post-WW2 financial/currency regime) was held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire [2] was because no one wanted to be in Washington, DC, in July when it was schedule to take place because of the oppressive heat and humidity that tends to occur in DC during the summer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods,_New_Hampshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods,_New_Hampshire
- ashdksnndck 1y agoIf you treat days of the year as fungible, the math on owning a ski condo looks bad. But if you want the ability to look at the weather forecast, see that it is about to dump, then drive to the mountain before the storm arrives and set up shop before they close the highways, you are not going to pay a lot more than the standard nightly rate.
- sokoloff 1y agoI would expect that people with that mindset would be willing to pay quite a bit more than the standard nightly rate to have that experience.
- ashdksnndck 1y agoSomehow I left an extra “not” in my comment. A lot of people come to the conclusion that the best way to achieve it is to buy a condo. So you don’t have to do a research project to pick which of the few unbooked places on Airbnb are acceptable before you can go skiing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DANmode 1y agoGood plan in theory until you get to the first AirBnb you've pre-booked for 1-4 weeks and it's destroyed with mold. But, then again, some people don't notice marginal increase in neurotoxins.
- mancerayder 1y agoHigh property taxes and insurance costs are another factor that's changed the equation. I'm not sure how profitable it is to operate a second home as a business anymore, unless it's very special and very well marketed. If anything it feels like a personal luxury.