What Vacation Home Buyers Wish They’d Known After Year One

Most vacation home purchases start with excitement.

Beach mornings.
Mountain weekends.
Extra income.

And many of those things do happen.

As a team that works with vacation-home buyers across the Crystal Coast and mountain markets, and as owners ourselves, we see these realizations surface consistently after the first year of ownership.

What buyers often say after year one:

• “We use it differently than we expected.”

• “Seasonality surprised us.”

• “Location matters more than we thought.”

• “Maintenance feels heavier than anticipated.”

Vacation homes aren’t just financial decisions. They’re lifestyle commitments.

The happiest owners tend to:

• buy places they genuinely want to return to

• plan conservatively around rental income

• think beyond year one

• choose properties that still make sense when numbers fluctuate

The biggest regrets are rarely financial.
They’re about misalignment between expectations and reality.

These are the kinds of conversations we walk through with clients long before any paperwork exists, because clarity early tends to make everything downstream easier.