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View Poll Results: Was/is your forever home INFLATION ADJUSTED...
The most expensive home/homes we’ve ever owned 74 45.68%
The same or less expensive home/homes, or the same home (didn’t move) 88 54.32%
Voters: 162. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 10-02-2018, 06:00 PM   #61
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Mid pack - great post! We are currently going through the same issues also.
We moved from a LCOL area to a higher COL area. I new we would be paying more for a house but what I thought would be a good budget may not be enough.
So we are also debating on whether to increase our budget or compromise on our wish list. Can we increase our budget safely, I would say yes. But your comments above (you can never be too rich or to thin ...) resonates with me as we too have always been on the conservative side on home value compared to total assets.
FWIW the new revised budget for new home is now 15% of our assets.
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Old 10-02-2018, 06:10 PM   #62
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Originally Posted by albireo13 View Post
How many are ending up with a mortgage, or a larger mortgage, after doing so?
Cash buy my friend, cash. The benefit of going from a hot HCOL market to a just becoming hot LCOL market.
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Old 10-02-2018, 06:56 PM   #63
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We bought our first and only house 35 years ago. We didn't expect to stay for more than a few years. We've made renovations totaling ~50% of the original cost and are quite happy with what we now have. We probably won't leave until we must.
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Old 10-02-2018, 06:59 PM   #64
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I went over 4x the price of my pre-divorce home and 7x what I'd paid for my post-divorce home for the home I had built as my retirement/forever home. I went overboard partly because I was designing it in the dotcom boom, and fortunately sold enough to pay cash.

I had bought a starter-type home after my divorce and a new job with stock options quickly shot my net worth up. I knew I wasn't going to stay around there once retired and I liked the basic house well enough so I just stayed until I was ready.

No regrets. However I did have a temporary part-time move for a few years where I bought a second home in another city. It was just above a starter home, but I really liked a lot of things about it. If my house burned down today, I'd start with that smaller house plan and add on a few things, rather than rebuild my same house. But I'm not considering a downsize. The view alone would add a lot to the cost, so I wouldn't be looking at 1/4 the price.
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Old 10-02-2018, 07:01 PM   #65
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For the people that noted the size of their homes I am surprised at how many empty nesters have such large houses. No way do I want that much space to clean.
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+1 Me, either. My house is 1500 sf and even so, there are two rooms that I just don't use except to collect dust. I would probably be just as happy in 800-1200 sf.

Some people say they need tons of space for visitors, but I sure don't. Honestly I don't have many visitors other than my DD and DSIL, and it isn't a giant problem for them to stay at a nice nearby hotel or motel (from either their viewpoint or mine).
We have 4500 square feet on 2.2 acres with a pool, spa, deck, and we share a 10-acre lake with 9 other houses. We have a 550 sqft detached living quarter and a 525 sqft detached storage building for outdoor equipment. The garage is my woodworking shop; no cars allowed.

We have 3 spare bedrooms upstairs... one has been converted to a home theater, and another to my music room. The third is a guest bed and also houses DW's "sewing center" and "craft table". Master is downstairs along with a formal living and dining that don't get used very much. The detached living quarter is now a game room with ping pong, video games, darts, foosball, and an old pinball machine.

We clearly don't "need" all this space for the two of us. But for now, the kids and grandkids are close by and they love coming here. And we want them here. If/when they come to visit on a holiday, it's very easy if they decide to spend the night rather than drive home. I don't want my kids and grandkids in a hotel. This is ground-zero for all birthdays, holidays, family gatherings, etc and I would not trade those experiences for anything. This is our home and we want it to be comfortable and inviting for our family.

Yes, we pay an insane amount for property tax, maintenance, insurance, and utilities. We also have a deep backlog of remodeling projects we want to do as well as some deferred maintenance. So it's not cheap. It's also a fair amount of work for routine cleaning and upkeep. Eventually, these physical demands will be the reason we downsize. But for now, it's manageable, and aside from the travel budget, we don't really have any big spending areas. So this is an area we are comfortable with, and it greatly adds to our happiness in retirement.
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Old 10-02-2018, 08:01 PM   #66
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Our current home is 2300 sqft, with two rooms we never use (living & dining rooms), but it has a full basement. I think I could be happy with less than 1800 sqft. The homes we’ve looked at that met with DW’s approval ranged from 2200-2800 sqft (they don’t have basements), and we don’t expect any guests. Whatever she wants...
Maybe you could compromise on, say, 2000 sf, and then suggest to her that later on, when you feel financially ready for it, you could add on to the house. After living in the 2000 sf house for a while, it's possible that she might decide she doesn't need the extra space after all.

Another thought (inspired by what I ended up doing), is to stay in the same location, which is much cheaper than a move. Then buy the more expensive house without having to pay for a move all at the same time.

In my case, after we didn't move I felt a little wistful about it. So I thought a lot about that and figured out that what I REALLY wanted from moving to Springfield, was not living in Springfield (although that would have been nice) - - mostly I just wanted a better house that was physically closer to F's house, and the move would have given me the opportunity to buy something like that. Then in a "lightbulb moment" I realized that that didn't require moving. Buying my dream house here was a terrific compromise for us.
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Old 10-02-2018, 08:11 PM   #67
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For the people that noted the size of their homes I am surprised at how many empty nesters have such large houses. No way do I want that much space to clean.
What make you think we clean the house?
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Old 10-02-2018, 09:31 PM   #68
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Moved the kids from suburban SoFla to a quieter life on the Redneck Riviera after late DW passed. Spent 150% of the the selling price of the late 60's SoFla house on new construction one mile from the beach. Largest, most expensive house I've ever owned.

Would do it all over again, and would probably be willing to pay even more now that I understand the impact the move and the house has had on our lives .
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Old 10-02-2018, 10:58 PM   #69
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Actually we have a lot of guests but easily have room to host them even though our house is not big. We also enjoy throwing parties and have cleaners once a month. Still on a daily basis don’t want a huge area to clean. My folks had a 1200 sq ft house and all 3 of us kids would come home with spouses and 3 kids each and have a blast.
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Old 10-02-2018, 11:00 PM   #70
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Moved the kids from suburban SoFla to a quieter life on the Redneck Riviera after late DW passed. Spent 150% of the the selling price of the late 60's SoFla house on new construction one mile from the beach. Largest, most expensive house I've ever owned.

Would do it all over again, and would probably be willing to pay even more now that I understand the impact the move and the house has had on our lives .
What a happy outcome! It's wonderful to read that your move worked out so well for you and the kids.
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Old 10-03-2018, 01:59 AM   #71
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About 50:50. Interesting, I really didn’t have any idea what to expect.
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Old 10-03-2018, 02:57 AM   #72
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.

I retired in my most expensive home... if you can call it "expensive."

The price of my first home [1100 sqft ranch - 1988 to 2001] was $35,000.

The price of my second/retirement home [2200 sqft ranch - 2001 to present] was $135,000.

Both were paid in full shortly after I bought them. Life is good.
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Old 10-03-2018, 04:03 AM   #73
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For about 10 years, we thought that after RE we would move and build the grand forever home. We even bought acreage in the state we intended to move to. When I did RE, circumstances had changed and we no longer felt like we should do it. We liked the house we were in and had a lot going on in the current area. Also, to do it the way we would have wanted to, the new house would have cost 2.5X the current one, and that seemed like too much money to spend on it.
We are now in the process of remodeling to make this house even better, and will spend about 30% of value on that. We might also redo the siding in another year or two, and that might be another 5-10%.
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Old 10-03-2018, 04:42 AM   #74
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Retiring in less than 8 months in the one and only home we have ever owned. We've spent 26 years in this house and I'm hoping we can spend another 26 years here. Then it's probably the CCRC for us.
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Old 10-03-2018, 05:28 AM   #75
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We downsized 2 yrs ago and made to move too quickly, in hindsight. We had our house listed for 5 yrs off and on and finally had a reasonable offer. Originally we planned to rent while we looked for our next house. Unfortunately, rentals in our area that would handle a family and pets were harder to find than a house!

We bought a nice house, bordering conservation land, in a great town. Several problems which we minimized before but, now they really bother us:
* very little to no storage space. no attic, teeny basement room.
* steep, downhill driveway - nasty to clear in the winter. I expect to take a header someday on it
* too many stairs to get into the 1st floor.

So, now we are looking again and plan to take our time. One last shot at it I think.
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Old 10-03-2018, 05:49 AM   #76
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Staying in our current, paid off home is an important part of my overall strategy, as long as we can take care of it and manage the stairs.
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Old 10-03-2018, 05:52 AM   #77
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We spent an evening with a college fraternity brother and his wife earlier this summer at their new Forever Home. $1M plus price tag, between 4500 to 6500 sq ft depending upon which Real Estate web site you believe, architect designed, interior decorator furnished, lake front property, very complex heating/cooling system (he and I both studied this in college but only I remained somewhat in the field), three stories of living areas but with open stairways and no elevator, multiple Master Suites, etc. I got lost returning from the Powder Room!

Absolutely gorgeous! The wife no longer works and spends all day tending to the home and lot. Their three children all live hundreds of miles away, like ours. Like us they also have no grandchildren.

It it their choice but I worry advancing age will push them out of their dream home far sooner than they expect. At least their Master Suite is on the main floor.

We have lived in our ~1800 sq ft home for nearly 40 years and it has a market worth of about $250K based on recent neighborhood sales. Assuming we move from here into a final or forever home it will likely; be smaller than our current home, be single story, and (if new) will cost more than the sales price of our current home.
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Old 10-03-2018, 06:03 AM   #78
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This is our most expensive home, but only a little more than the previous one, and not really what most would call expensive. It's a condo that is almost exactly the same size as the SFH we move out of, so we didn't have to do much downsizing. The downside of that is that we have a storage room that is crammed full of useless stuff (my opinion) that DW has been unable to part with.

We also moved across a state line, so different property taxes, income taxes, license fees, insurance rates, etc., but all that worked out to a slight decrease. The HOA fees are more than what we were spending on the SFH, but the convenience factor is well worth it.
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Old 10-03-2018, 06:21 AM   #79
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We are moving in 2 weeks to a 3 story townhouse, with elevator and 2 car garage. While larger living space, 2950 vs 2200, itnhas less storage so we did downsize. More floors mean more separation when wanted for privacy, sound, hobbies, etc. This is the first new built for us home where we called the design shots and it is better designed, layout and efficiency wise, in a higher end location, and while only a mile from where we are now, it is county instead of city taxes and utilities. Saltwater pool and superb gym, it SHOULD be a good lifestyle & location for aging for the next 20 years. Plenty of much older people already living in them. It is a small neighborhood, only 90 or so townhouses, ut have yet to meet anyone that doesn’t love living there and most all moved from a larger SFH. It was about $100k more than the home we sold, which was nearly paid off. We used to laugh at the prices of these, but had never been in one and when we visited on a whim it rang true. Thanks to the lure of recent significant appreciation and still low rates, coupled wih the neighborhood changes in the last 12 years we’ve been here (from nice quiet to kid central/bus stop on our corner, increased maintenance,) and desire for no exterior maintenance, or interior for at least the next 10 years, pushed us to make the move. Though larger, it will be far easier to clean due to design layout and lack of traffic. We’ e always had a housecleaner but for now we decided it is honestly more trouble than it is worth, with this new home. But getting my weekends to be mine and relaxing will be key to easing in to retirement. Could have paid cash but chose to only put $200k down. No frequent visitors or grands to consider and prolonged vacations will be far easier. Easily fits in to our cash flow.
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Old 10-03-2018, 06:41 AM   #80
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I vote with the members who advise evaluating your resources and doing the numbers. Some of us budget huge amounts for travel. Your wife wants to put a big chunk into living in her dream house. Well, you scrimped and saved to enjoy ER, if the numbers add up go for it. If a worse than worse case scenario hits you can always sell the joint and downsize. Or take Tom Selleck's advice and live off the equity in the house.
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