Retirement, Some Housing Considerations
Are you nearing retirement age and are you and your significant other thinking about purchasing a second home?  Do you want to take a friend or friends with you?  Robert Blair put it best when he said that friendship is the mysterious cement of the soul, sweetener of life and solder of society.   Most people buy a second home to get away from the extremes of the weather.  People in the south look to go north in the summer and people in the north want to go south in the winter.   It can be a very lonely season for you if you do not make friends easily.  Perhaps taking a friend is the ideal situation for you.   As in everything else, there are pros and cons to all issues.  The advantage of purchasing vacation property with a friend is very obvious.  You already know each others faults and qualities and chances are if you are maintaining a good friendship in your current community you most certainly will maintain the same friendship in a vacation community.  You enjoy each others company and there is nothing better than taking good friends along to your new location. Ask them if they are in a position to purchase a vacation home and ask them if they would they be interested in pursing the possibility with you.  You most likely have already vacationed with them.  If you still have to work for a couple of years before you retire you can use your vacation time to look for a vacation place.  You can combine a vacation with house hunting. Half the fun of a vacation is planning it.  You can all collect brochures or data about a specific area and discuss it over dinner parties.  There are many decisions to be made such as should you buy a home or a condo? Should you go into a gated community?  A gated community is a community where visitors cannot enter the premises unannounced.   This very own web site can give you insight into the different type of living arrangements.