buy a second home

My boyfriend and I have been wanting to leave town for a few days and in deciding where to go, I said “why don’t we go to the house in Maine?” His parents have a vacation rental for the winter in Maine which they only go to occasionally, so we can use it whenever we want…only we almost never go there. He said “I guess maybe this means we shouldn’t get a second home, since we never even use the vacation place we have access to.”

And I guess that helped me to clarify that my desire for a second home isn’t really about having a “vacation house” as much as it comes from my deep down desire to have my OWN house. Since I own my current home jointly with my boyfriend, I think I still have this unfulfilled desire to have a home that’s all mine.

So Richard has lately gotten all hyped up for us to buy a place in Quebec City. His sales pitch is:

1. real estate is very affordable there
2. it’s a charming, historic town that’s in another country
3. everyone speaks french there which is both of our strongest second language and it would help us improve speaking it.
4. It will be a cooler place we can go in the summer.

I’m mostly skeptical because I had been leaning toward some place warmer to go in the winter (I like our current place in the summer!) and had more exotic foreign notions, like coastal mexico or Greek islands or Barcelona or Florence or something. Of course, we can’t afford any of those until we’re much richer, but a place in Quebec City we could probably afford right now.

Then again, we haven’t even bought a sofa for our current home, so we shouldn’t be off looking to buy another one so soon. Still, he wants us to visit and check it out.

I haven’t fully fleshed out this goal, but I do know that I would like my second home to be somewhere warm where I can go in the winter. Right now I’m thinking Mexico.

Look for a house lottery

We bought our first house in 1994, what I consider the trough of the housing market locally here. I expect us to see another pricing valley within the next 36-60 months with up to 20% price correction. If I am right, I must be ready to buy another building.

Forward budget earmarks % of savings toward this goal.