Retiring in 2-5 years? Buy Now Or Wait?

[KingOfTheCheapos]

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.

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.

 

[RetiredHappy]

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.

 

[Markola]

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.

 

[RunningBum]

What? Everyone knows, that’s West Virginia.

Almost.

 

[Koolau]

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

 

[pacergal]

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