Where are vacation homes located in the US?

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/where-are-vacation-homes-located

by rufus_foreman • 12 months ago

138 98 12 months ago

construction-physics.com

AdventureMouse• 12 months ago

TL;DR In Florida

the__alchemist• 12 months ago

And less dramatically, states that have a coast (ocean, gulf, or large lake)

quickthrowman• 12 months ago

Or an abundance of lakes like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which are also Great Lakes states.

Finland also has a high amount of vacation homes on lakeshore property, and I would guess that pretty much any area with glacial lakes within hours of population centers will have lots of vacation homes.

tzs• 12 months ago

That's the TL;DR for the least interesting part of the article since most would expect Florida to have the most.

It's well known as a major state to retire to, and many of the things that make a place attractive as a retirement destination also make it attractive as a vacation home location. And it is a high population state so when comparing by absolute numbers it would be the most obvious candidate for most vacation homes.

The interesting part is where it looks at percentage of homes in the state that are vacation homes. Florida is high by that measure too at 8.2%, but behind Maine and Vermont which are each over 15%, and New Hampshire at over 10%.

It is even a little behind Alaska (8.9%) and Delaware (8.6%). I bet not many people would have guessed that Alaska has a higher percentage of vacation homes that Florida.

Hawaii is also interesting. It has twice the population of Alaska, but only slightly more vacation homes (31.6k vs 29.2k).

fn-mote2• 12 months ago

Hawaii is also interesting. It has twice the population of Alaska, but only slightly more vacation homes (31.6k vs 29.2k).

Common sense reasoning: people cannot afford to have their vacation home in Hawaii.

High prices, long and expensive flights.

matwood• 12 months ago

FL, ME, and VT also allow for weather arbitrage. People winter in FL and summer in places like ME and VT.

42772827• 12 months ago

The largest generation in US history is retiring and buying property in the state with no income tax.

ceejayoz• 12 months ago

And a corresponding level of services.

cpursley3• 12 months ago

This is not even logical, retired people don't have incomes. Anyways, they get them with insane property taxes.

koolba2• 12 months ago

Not quite. Retired people have deferred income in IRAs and 401(k)s that can be claimed at their leisure after 59.5 years old. So if you deferred taxes from a high tax State and then get the income in a no-tax State, you saved on taxes.

karakot• 12 months ago

Income from Social Security benefits and 401(k)s are taxable.

righthand• 12 months ago

Depends on what you mean by retired. In the traditional sense you’re correct, retired people don’t have income. In the legal sense retirement just means the person is of age to collect benefits. But there is also the question of type of income.

If a retired person owns property and sells it, that is income subject to capital gains tax.

If a person is retired but still owns the business or is even still a board member, they’re still working in a sense and gaining shares.

There are plenty of “retired” people who are “working” and have income.

terminalshort2• 12 months ago

Depends how much money you retired with. When the ratio of your net worth to the cost of a house is high enough, property taxes are trivial. Let's say you have $50 million and you earn 7% a year on that. That's $3.5 million a year. Well worth it to live in FL to save the $350K you would lose every year in NY / CA.

fragmede3• 12 months ago

New York state has a number of exemptions for property tax for seniors (65+), which seems like a better mechanism than California's prop 13.

refurb• 12 months ago

Florida's property tax rate on average, according to Google is 0.79%. Average home price is $411,000, for property taxes of $3,200 per year.

That doesn't seem insane compared to say California with 0.71%?

PopAlongKid• 12 months ago

This explains very little. State income tax is based on your state of residence, not where you have a vacation home, in which by definition you do not live most of the year. Further, it makes no sense to refer to "the state with no income tax", as there are many of those.

Granted, there are some working-age people who buy a vacation home with the thought of moving into it permanently a decade or two into the future, but those plans entail a lot of uncertainty (health, closeness to family) and of course once they move, it is no longer a vacation home.

xhkkffbf3• 12 months ago

When they retire, they sell their house in the place with the job and move full time to the no tax state.

dgrin91• 12 months ago

Or you spend 6 months + 1 day in your 0 tax state (possibly with some creative accounting) and the rest in high income tax state.

garciasn2• 12 months ago

as there are many of those.

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming do not have income taxes. Less than 20% isn't 'many' to me but I realize YMMV.

pengaru• 12 months ago

The largest generation in US history is retiring and buying property in the state with no income tax.

Millenials are retiring already?

thechao• 12 months ago

Dear map makers who show us by-state break-downs: normalize by the population. The first map tells me this: New York, Florida, and Texas have large populations.

rufus_foreman• 12 months ago

Second map is "Percent of housing units that are vacation homes".

fn-mote2• 12 months ago

My point would be: the second map belongs in the article because it is informative. The first one does not.

cwmoore2• 12 months ago

Really highlights the IL->WI gradient.

jowea• 12 months ago

Is that appropriate in this case? I would expect lots of vacation homes be owned by people out of state.

ghaff4• 12 months ago

I expect there are exceptions like Manhattan/Long Island. Maybe Denver and a ski condo. But, generally, people are looking for something different in a vacation home from their residence, whether climate or activities that aren't especially nearby for a weekend trip.

fragmede3• 12 months ago

https://xkcd.com/1138/

roxolotl• 12 months ago

I’m glad that Maine lives up to its Vacationland slogan

unsnap_biceps• 12 months ago

I knew numerous people that have a vacation home in Florida due to their parents retiring there and then passing away. They decide to hold onto the house/condo as an investment rather than using it in any way. Given how many people were retiring to Florida, I wonder how many vacation homes there are due to this rather than being the preferred purchasing location for younger generations.

brudgers• 12 months ago

If you are have an objective squint, a lot of vacation homes have wheels. Per Google AI just prior to pasting:

As of 2024, there are an estimated 11.2 million RV-owning households in the U.S., according to Emergency Assistance Plus.

That's more than double the 4.8 million mentioned in the article...and theoretically some households could own more than two. But modulo RV's are also used for work travel particularly when it comes to construction.

Like anything relating to housing and real-estate, it's complicated.

khuey• 12 months ago

This is interesting, but one axis it's missing is that in some places the "vacation homes" aren't actually habitable year round. Quite a few cabins in Maine are neither insulated nor heated for the winters, are only accessible via roads that aren't maintained during the winter, etc. I'm not familiar with the area but I would guess that Minnesota's Lake Country and other similar places have the same thing going on.

scythe• 12 months ago

This also occurs in the Rockies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal,_Gunnison_County,_Colo...

garciasn2• 12 months ago

Happens here in MN too. I own a vacation home that used to be a fishing resort in the 40s-70s and now shares water / septic with 5 other cabins; we turn the water off mid-Oct to end of April because the lines are only buried about 2 feet deep.

Having a three-season place is pretty common here.

terminalshort2• 12 months ago

I suspect the "vacation" homes on Manhattan are really mostly empty luxury units for foreign rich people to park money in the US. "Billionaires Row" near Central Park is half empty for just this reason.

vintermann2• 12 months ago

Shower thought, maybe bitcoin is actually good for the environment, if it replaces even more wasteful ways of trying to park wealth.

czhu12• 12 months ago

It’s not really “parking” wealth since property taxes are still collected every year on these properties, which fund other city programs, unlike other asset classes like stocks and crypto.

Presumably if the residents don’t even live there, then they are massive net contributors to the tax base

mancerayder5• 12 months ago

Bitcoin goes up and down in wild, multi month and year swings. Manhattan real estate (condos at least) go only one direction.

snowwrestler• 12 months ago

The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vacation home. That’s why so many vacation homes are near old major cities like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. In the summer, families with money escaped to the mountains or the beach, where it was much more pleasant during the hot months.

I would guess that another huge factor has been the decline in the real cost of air travel. It’s now cheap enough that people with money can reasonably expect to fly somewhere for every vacation they want to take. You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.

In fact, I feel buying property in one vacation spot is starting to look more like an anchor than an escape hatch. Keeping capital in securities instead is more liquid and less expensive (stocks don’t have roofs or plumbing). Let someone else own the hotel or AirBnB or VRBO. I’ll fly in and rent it just for the vacation. This mindset may partially explain why vacation home ownership has not “kept up” with the growth in real wealth.

MrDarcy• 12 months ago

This is a win win win for all involved, owner, renter, and Airbnb. I converted stocks into a vacation home on puget sound and rent it out when we aren’t using it. Demand is high enough that we don’t need to rent it out months in advance so we still feel like it’s mostly ours and we’re not just another guest fitting into Airbnb’s schedule.

To your point I liked the liquidity of equities but it has been nice to do something with it beyond just watching a number in a spreadsheet. If we want a change in scenery it’s a wash to rent our own place out and stay in another.

yieldcrv5• 12 months ago

Liquidity is a major factor for me thats kept me out of real estate in the past, have the money burning AI buyers helped make home trading more liquid?

apwell233• 12 months ago

i am guessing an agency manages your airbnb? how does that work out financially?

ericmay3• 12 months ago

Well, arguably it’s a win except for local populations in some areas where enough housing is converted to vacation housing that they complain and don’t like it for various reasons. There is a balance to be struck.

I’m sympathetic to that complaint a bit but it’s also a bit like NIMBY.

Generally I think the cheapness of travel has been an unsung net negative for humanity as a whole.

apwell233• 12 months ago

You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.

lodging at a ski resort is still very expensive though. I think i makes sense to buy one if you ski ~100 days/year and airbnb out rest of the time. Lots of ski resorts now have summer activities like mtb and hiking too.

and ski resorts usually are sentimental purchases.

ghaff4• 12 months ago

100 days/year is a huge amount. I don't really downhill any longer but I'd have very little interest in getting a place for a lot less than that for the purposes of stashing my gear.

yieldcrv5• 12 months ago

I’ve been to many old mansion estates, and in hotter climates the maid staff would have the upstairs rooms with potentially the best rooms. (Although the rooms were designed to be afterthoughts for maids.) I found that interesting, whats desirable has completely flipped based on our ability to make it comfortable.

anon7000• 12 months ago

I mean, attics and top floors with no AC often get swelteringly lot because heat rises

ghaff4• 12 months ago

I came to that conclusion years ago. I guess that for a family or group of friends, a ski condo could maybe make sense--or for literal snowbirds that migrated with the season.

But the conclusion I came to years ago was that who wanted to be tied down to a particular location or urban location for vacation. Yeah, it's not cheap but more-so than owning and having to deal with a second home.

throw0101d• 12 months ago

The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vacation home.

One of the (main?) reasons why the Bretton Woods Conference [1] (that determined the post-WW2 financial/currency regime) was held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire [2] was because no one wanted to be in Washington, DC, in July when it was schedule to take place because of the oppressive heat and humidity that tends to occur in DC during the summer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods,_New_Hampshire

ashdksnndck3• 12 months ago

If you treat days of the year as fungible, the math on owning a ski condo looks bad. But if you want the ability to look at the weather forecast, see that it is about to dump, then drive to the mountain before the storm arrives and set up shop before they close the highways, you are not going to pay a lot more than the standard nightly rate.

sokoloff• 12 months ago

I would expect that people with that mindset would be willing to pay quite a bit more than the standard nightly rate to have that experience.

DANmode3• 12 months ago

Good plan in theory until you get to the first AirBnb you've pre-booked for 1-4 weeks and it's destroyed with mold.

But, then again, some people don't notice marginal increase in neurotoxins.

criddell2• 12 months ago

Couldn’t you say basically the same thing about vacation homes? Plenty of people have shown up to their lake house and found broken windows, leaky roof, broken pipes, etc… that have lead to mold.

mancerayder5• 12 months ago

High property taxes and insurance costs are another factor that's changed the equation. I'm not sure how profitable it is to operate a second home as a business anymore, unless it's very special and very well marketed. If anything it feels like a personal luxury.

tayo42• 12 months ago

If I got a vacation home it would probably be in Puerto Rico. Not part of the analysis.

Then figure out a way to get out of income tax.

toast02• 12 months ago

If you are a bone fide resident of Puerto Rico, you generally aren't subject to federal income tax. The commonwealth has an income tax though... depending on your income, it might be more or less than the federal tax; the top rate is lower, but the brackets are smaller so you get to the top rate sooner.

furyofantares• 12 months ago

I'd guess the ones in Alaska are rentals for seasonal workers. I understand there are tourist areas that are largely unpopulated in the winter and populated mostly by seasonal workers in the summer (some of whom work in Hawaii the other half of the year).

phkahler• 12 months ago

There are a number of retired people that bounce between Michigan and Florida (or Arizona) depending on the season. You might say they have 2 vacation homes :-)

owenversteeg• 12 months ago

The most interesting part of this is the map of census tracts that shows how most vacation homes are tightly grouped.

For example, Florida has a lot of vacation homes (8% of the state's housing vs 3% nationwide), but the vast majority of Florida census tracts have a tiny proportion and vacation homes are the majority in a few small areas. In some areas, the proportion of vacation homes seems to follow population density (gulf coast of Florida), and in other areas it follows the _inverse_ of population density (northern Maine.)

What I think would be really interesting is a map of distance to primary home by census tract. Obviously Florida vacation homeowners are mostly from far away and in New England they live closer, but what about all the other areas?

cwmoore2• 12 months ago

This[0] might provide some context to your question, links to the New York Times Connectedness map:

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/90239274/infographic-did-faceboo...

relaxing• 12 months ago

Too bad there no adjustment for price. Many of those “vacation homes” in the north are a few acres of wilderness and improvements worth a few thousand max.

Zoning, as the author points to, is not the issue around those parts.

BrenBarn• 12 months ago

It's not clear to me from this article or from the census page whether this definition of vacation homes includes residential units rented out via AirBnB or the like. But the numbers seem to suggest it doesn't, since some data ( https://insideairbnb.com/los-angeles/ ) says that, for instance, Los Angeles has 45k AirBnB listings while the article claims only 14k vacation homes in LA.

tonymet• 12 months ago

All of the data about vacation homes grossly underestimates the vacancy rate because of the US primary residence deduction. There's a higher rate of vacancies even in non-vacation areas, and in vacation areas extremely high rates 75% or more for certain neighborhoods

Most likely investors are setting up phony identities and marking the homes as occupied to claim deductions

stockresearcher• 12 months ago

As with any stats-laden post, I wanted to understand what exactly a “vacation house” was. A footnote in the article references a “census of housing” and I found information on the US Census website. There are 6 main categories for vacant houses (vacation/seasonal is one of them), and at least some of them have subcategories.

It is pretty likely that “vacation house” doesn’t include a lot of housing that most people would think of when they think about vacation houses. If something is listed on AirBnb or VRBO, for example, it is almost certainly not included in these stats.

kccqzy• 12 months ago

If the home listed on Airbnb is also occasionally used by the owner, it would count as a vacation home. Otherwise it's just business property, more similar to a hotel than a vacation home. I got the sense that it's more about vacationing use by the owner, not short-term rental use by a non-owner.

Where are vacation homes located in the US?

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