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Old 06-27-2021, 11:55 AM   #21
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We retired and traveled then bought a snowbird place after 7 years and spent 6.5 months there each year. Now have sold that and bought another one. Times plans and attitudes change.
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Old 06-27-2021, 12:21 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KingOfTheCheapos View Post
So I am due to retire in no more than 5 years and will almost certainly be living in a new home (current home is too big) and almost certainly out of state.

And I'm curious how people handled the transition and why?

1) Did you just wait it out until a few months before the change?
2) Or did you pre-emptively buy before hand?
3) Did you live in the area first and then buy?

I have the cash to buy another home now. My reasoning is that home prices will probably greatly exceed inflation so why wait?

We had just assumed we would have to sell our house in NY first before we could buy one in NH. So for us we thought we would have to retire first and then sell our home. We intended to pay cash as we had not had a mortgage for a very long time and wanted it to stay that way going into older age. (we were already in our 60's)

After I left my job, I set up for us to meet with a fee only financial advisor. He needed some estimates on what housing could cost us in NH. So I looked a lot on line and gave him some figures and he then told me what amount we could reasonably afford when my husband retired, which at the time we thought would be in about 2-3 years or so when I would be 65 and could go on Medicare. (I was on his employer health insurance and I am 2 years younger then he is).

We took a ride up to NH to look at some housing, including the community where we now live. On the way home we were kind of bummed because we thought we could not buy the house and there were only like 10 lots left. We figured they would be all sold way before we could buy and it would be almost impossible to find anything else like it in NH, and something affordable.

But- a week later- at the urging of some people on another forum I belong to, I called our Financial Advisor to tell him about the house. He told me to go ahead and do it! He said not to worry about selling our home first- that it would eventually sell- and we could manage everything in the meantime and he would help us with the particulars.

In addition, my husband was getting weary of working and wanted to retire sooner rather than later. The Financial Advisor told him he could- actually he could have even sooner than he eventually did- which was just 4 months shy of his 66th birthday. And it just so happened to fall on the closing date of our new house!

It helped that the house being new construction was going to take awhile to build. And we had a lot of cash reserves for the deposit and for the "extras" being put into the home as it was being built.

Our former house was put on the market the same day we drove back up to NH to sign the papers for the new house. We had a buyer the very next day! We closed on our former home on Sept. 30 and ironically we moved into our home buyer's former house as renters, as they moved into our former home as owners! Having renters enabled our home's buyers to get their mortgage without having to wait to sell THEIR house to buy ours!

BTW- I went on COBRA for 2 months, but our financial advisor urged me to do an ACA plan since we have no pensions and not collecting SS and mostly using cash to live on, so income very low. Best thing I ever did in regards to health insurance. Went from $500 per month premium to a $34 per month premium.

*We had vacationed in New Hampshire several times in the past plus have a timeshare here, so we were familiar with it. Plus our only child lives in the state. But as I mentioned in another thread of yours, the lifestyle in the community we are in is a lot different from where we used to live.

I am glad we didn't wait to do the whole thing- quit my job at 62 (3 years earlier than I planned), sell our home in NY, buy the NH house, hubby retire later on, etc., as a month after we moved COVID hit.


One thing I will say is doing a new construction home is difficult when you live 6 hours away and one of you is working. We could not make weekly routine checks on the construction progress and had to rely on the realtor to keep us in the loop and send photos. Not ideal to say the least. Most of it fell on me since I was home. But I was also emptying the house out (we got rid of A LOT- and I mean A LOT), packing, finances, dealing with the realtors on both ends, dealing with movers- remember- we had to move twice!, making all the necessary changes of addresses and accounts like with the utilities, for example. Can you say STRESSFUL? I told my husband even if we hate it we are never moving again! LOL! Of course, we do not hate it at all. There are things we like and things we don't. But that's life. Nothing is perfect.

Sure- if we would have waited we would have gotten like $100,000 more for our NY house. But then we would have never been able to afford anything here that we would have wanted.

And one more thing: for years we analyzed where to retire to. We wanted it to be Vermont badly, but taxes on SS and the political environment there turned us off to it, though my heart is still there for so many other reasons. We vacationed there every year for 22 years. Always felt like home- but we were on vacation, so...

We even thought about Nevada or Idaho or Colorado. Yeah- we did consider Florida or Tennessee or NC or SC as well.DE and PA. We were open to a lot of places.

But NH fit the bill overall for our priorities. Familiarity, our son living here, the low taxes overall, a political group we aligned with, good freedom index, closeness to Vermont, the landscape.



And that day, finding this house sealed the decision for us.
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Old 06-27-2021, 12:34 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VanWinkle View Post
We're looking at the Tellico Village area. How has everything gone with the move for you?

Any tips appreciated!!

VW
Tellico Village is a highly desirable place to be. And prices in every desirable real estate development in East TN, Western NC and NE Georgia are skyrocketing.

If you can swing it, go ahead and buy now. My sister, like many others from Memphis, spends summers in NW NC, and she's remarked about house prices. My daughter lived in Atoka & Brighton. We left one in Arlington.

Moving from West TN to East TN and you'll think you've died and gone to heaven.
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Old 06-27-2021, 01:43 PM   #24
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Originally Posted by VanWinkle View Post
We're looking at the Tellico Village area. How has everything gone with the move for you?

Any tips appreciated!!

VW


We have owned our home a year tomorrow and we like it here. We live about 60 miles northeast of Tellico. It took a little getting accustom to the slower pace but there is plenty to do. Everyone is extremely friendly.
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Old 06-27-2021, 02:23 PM   #25
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Originally Posted by W2R View Post
OK, here's a thought experiment: How would YOU ("KingOfTheCheapos") respond to a thread with this title:

"I am 14 and plan to get my driver's license in 2-5 years, after I turn 16. Buy a car now, or wait?"

I think that will give you some idea as to my answer to your question.

Basically, I think you are jumping the gun. It takes a year or so to adjust to retirement, know where you want to retire, and know what kind of house you'll want in retirement. Most of us find our priorities shift a bit when we retire.

So, my response is just be patient, work on your retirement planning to make sure you are financially set, and wait until at least a year after you retire before you make decisions like this.
I vote this the best response to OP's question.

You might spend less now, on a place you really don't like long term, and more later to find the place that fits the "you" 2-5 years down the road. So be it.

Another option could be to buy a building lot where you think you want to go, but don't build until after you retire. If you change your mind, even if you take a hit on the lot, it will be far less than on a house, and you could even make some money if the area is still hot.
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Old 06-27-2021, 08:51 PM   #26
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Is their a stable year round rental market in East TN? I have the funds to buy a property and if the rent can cover most of the expences then that may be an option than parking the money in a MM.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Bamaman View Post
Tellico Village is a highly desirable place to be. And prices in every desirable real estate development in East TN, Western NC and NE Georgia are skyrocketing.

If you can swing it, go ahead and buy now. My sister, like many others from Memphis, spends summers in NW NC, and she's remarked about house prices. My daughter lived in Atoka & Brighton. We left one in Arlington.

Moving from West TN to East TN and you'll think you've died and gone to heaven.
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Old 06-27-2021, 09:15 PM   #27
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My husband wanted to retire outside of our state even though we had no idea when we would retire. He is generally a very impulsive buyer. I said no to him but he begged me for months to entertain his dream that one day he could retire and out of state. He suggested Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. I nixed all of them as hurricanes and tornadoes scare me. I picked Nevada and found a lovely community in which we both fell in love. We spent no more than 2 to 3 months cumulatively a year after we bought the condo. We figured out that it was best to own a condo since it would be empty most of the time. We retired 2 years later, 9 years before my planned retirement. We moved a year after our retirement because my son was living with us and he had to find a home before we could sell our home. We sold our home after he moved.

Fast forward, now that we are here full-time, we sold the condo and bought a single family home. We love where we live and we believe we lucked out. We had no idea on the timing of retirement and we had no idea that we would love where we picked.

We did not buy the retirement home before we retired because we thought real estate price would beat inflation rate, or not. We just wanted a "second" home then.
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Old 06-28-2021, 06:57 AM   #28
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Moving from West TN to East TN and you'll think you've died and gone to heaven.

What? Everyone knows, that’s West Virginia.
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Old 06-28-2021, 10:53 AM   #29
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What? Everyone knows, that’s West Virginia.
Almost.
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Old 06-28-2021, 10:56 AM   #30
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Over in the thread titled:

Be honest: Which of your pre-FIRE plans turned out to be coping fantasies?

I relayed our "false start" that happened due to buying "early" (25 years early). We rented the place out all that time, moved, remodeled and then moved to another location within 2 years. Having said that, part of our strategy was to "lock in" our place in Paradise. So, even though our dream place turned out to be less than perfect, it DID allow us to have a paid off place that we could trade (essentially) for something we liked better. That's what we did and it has worked out well for us.

As long as you know what area you want to eventually live in, you CAN, if need be, change houses to make "good" be almost "perfect." Had we moved and found that we had "Island Fever" it would have been a bad move to lock in so early. To determine our ability to live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific, we visited often. We also did some more travel to see if Paradise was what we wanted. We kept our options open, though owning would have made any serious change in focus (think Texas or Florida) somewhat problematic. Still, our ideas was that our place in HI would probably appreciate as much as anyplace else - with the exception of even higher COL areas (think CA.)

For most folks, I'm with W2R. WAIT. For us, we went with what our hearts were telling us and, with a bit of modification, it worked out. YMMV
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Old 06-28-2021, 11:29 AM   #31
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My vote would be to wait, because you never know what the future may reveal.
If you choose to buy now--
I would answer these questions for yourself:
What area has your interest and why, and how long have you lived/rented there to be sure? (I would say 6 months at least, you need to know the neighborhood well)
Can you afford both places for 2-5 years
Do you plan to rent out your home until you retire, how often will you be able to travel there to take care of business (unless a lock and leave condo type home) or will you need to hire out property management
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