I’ve never had one, but here in South Florida there are vast numbers of part time residents who own houses, condos, or rent apartments year round that they occupy intermittently over about Nov - Mar & leave unoccupied the rest of the year.
While I was condo prez of a ~150 unit complex near the beach we had about 50 units that belonged to part-time “snowbirds”. Which 33% fraction was lower than many other buildings. 50% is common and even 75% snowbirds is not unheard of. Some of these folks came down just once for a long 5-month stay while others came down just once for a mere 2-week stay, leaving it sit unused the other 50 weeks.
Others came and went several times over the “Season” as we call it. A very common pattern was come down in early Nov as it’s getting cold up North, stay until just before Thanksgiving, then go north for the actual holiday & celebrations with family, then return here a couple days after. To remain here until shortly before Xmas (or Hanukkah), then return north for more family celebrations until just after New Year. Then come back down and stay until late March or even mid April depending on when it got warm enough up wherever they lived.
I now rent an apartment in a large building also near the beach. Both of my immediate neighbors are like that. They pay a year’s rent to use it only intermittently over about 2-1/2 months. Suits me; empty apartments are both quiet & uncomplaining.
I suspect a lot of these kinds of expenses are subsidized by falsely claiming permanent residence in zero-income-tax Florida versus their actual residence in big-income-tax New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc.
Another person raised in Michigan with a cabin “up north”. Log cabin, a couple rooms on an acre or two. Indoor plumbing, electricity, wood stove, so not horrible primitive. Not on the lake, but maybe less than 1/4 mile walk up the road to the lake.
I do! I don’t know about my grandpa, but my dad was one of those guys that refused to go to the doctor. The night before he died, he was in the basement doing something on his workbench. Later that evening he told my mom he was having pain between his should blades. She told him that he should have that checked out right away as in - we’re going to the ER. He wouldn’t go. He said that it was probably from being hunched over for so long at the workbench. He died the next afternoon.
As an East Coaster lots of people have summer places, either ‘downashore’ - beach houses on one of the many barrier islands or the other direction, in the mountains where it’s usually a couple of degrees cooler than in the city. Depending upon location, some of those mountain houses get the added bonus of being used in the winter if you’re a skier.
Some of the shore houses, especially beach block, are large, multi-million dollar houses, nicer than what most of is live in year round.
I know someone with a winter house in Florida. He usually stays there from October through March. During the summer, when he’s not there, he sets the thermostat to 74 °F.
One October he got a surprise: after opening the front door he was greeted with a huge blast of humid, hot air. Unbeknownst to him, the house’s air conditioning system failed sometime during the summer. The place was full of mold. All of the sheetrock/drywall had to be replaced at considerable expense.
Lesson learned: if you have a winter home in a warm climate, you need to know right away if the AC system fails. I am guessing it’s a lot easier to do that nowadays, with Nest-type thermostats.
Yep. That scenario was the bane of my existence as a condo prez.
Despite all our exhortations to the part-timers, we had no authority to force them to set the HVAC cool enough, keep the fan(s) running, and either have remote monitorable thermostats or have a friend or neighbor look in on their apartment at least weekly and better yet twice weekly. Ideally you have both a remote monitorable thermostat and somebody checking at least weekly for other problems.
Ever single year I was in charge somebody arrived from up north to a HVAC failure → mold disaster. Or to a water leak → mold disaster. Or to a set thermostat too high because why waste money cooling an unoccupied apartment → mold disaster.
A disaster they’re often surprised to learn homeowner’s insurance mostly does not cover. If they had insurance at all. A complete gut, remediate, and rebuild for units that size ran about $150K for just a basic Home Depot job. You want all designer cabinets and appliances and granite, not tile? Make it $300K. That was five years ago. (Wow, time flies!).
Most insurance caps mold damage at $10K, and that’s if they don’t find the owner negligently contributed to caused the disaster. Which most owners did in their foolishness.
In the case of my family’s cabin, there’s the additional financial complication that the land it’s on is owned by a corporation with shares divided among the four guys who initially bought the tract (my dad, his brother and their two friends), each of whom has their own family with various kids and grandkids. My parents got the other three owners to buy them out, so it’s not an issue for our side of the family anymore.
I grew up in Minnesota, so I’m reasonably well acquainted with Cottages or Cabins on The Lake. My mom’s cousin’s ex-husband’s family had one (maybe still has one? ). In my youth, the ex-husband’s parents had a nice summer home on The Lake, and then the Cottage would be made available to Mom’s cousin and her kid for a few days every other summer, and she’d invite Mom and my brother and me (and one time my dad) to come along.
This past fall, I took my parents on a visit back to Minnesota, and we met up with a good many of their old friends-- most of whom have moved into condos. Some live in their condos all the time, others only live in them when not at their assorted lake homes. The amount of maintainance required on any sort of house was definitely a factor in why people had sold their primary residences.