We have kids in school for 9 more years, so we just get out of Texas for most of the school-year summer. We rent a place in Park City for the time we're there, but I plan to buy a place when we can stay there May-September.

I know an older couple that keep a home in Wisconsin and head there in early June and comeback mid-September.

The summer is nice in a lot of places. PA would even work, and the natives tend to be quite nice outside of the cities.

(It would make estate planning a bit complicated as the government is run by a worse than usual grade of thief.)

My wife and I are very interested in this as well, but haven't yet taken the plunge. However, after last summer, we are highly motivated to get the heck out of dodge between June-Sept.

Question: What type of protocols do you use to handle things while you are away? For instance- do you turn the water off to the house, do you forward your mail to your vacation location, etc.

Any info/tips you can provide are greatly appreciated

This was the primary driver in finding a 4 season place with much milder summers. But I wanted a place that was not an egregious drive. We just closed on a lake house in the Arkansas Ozarks. I plan on spending at least half the summer there.

In reply to TikkaShooter

TikkaShooter said:

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What are the travel logistics to E. Tenn?

Meaning:

I'm flying out of ATX or SATX into…Nashville? Somewhere else?

Then what's my drive like from airport to cabin?

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Fly into Knoxville. Drive probably about an hour maybe an hour and a half.

I am actively trying to get an expat role or finding the courage to start my own consulting firm so i can bounce back from other places and my home in CO. No desire to move back to TX to be honest, aside from family there. I am starting to network with a few folks to house share. If the housing market gets a little improved, I am selling and living in my 5th wheel till I early retire in a few years.

We're doing this right now!

Glenwood for 5 months, Tulum for 6, and then traveling the other month or month and a half.

Currently on day 5 and LOVING it.

If you're looking to buy in CO, especially in the mountains, get ready for TONS of maintenance and upkeep. It costs us around 30-40k a year just to maintain our house and utilities and it isn't even super nice.

In reply to JustPanda Got damn! For what??? Definitely not factoring that amount in for maintenance.

In reply to TikkaShooter In our case we just don't water the grass(weeds) around our house and the last few summers I've only had to have it cut about once a month at most. It costs $160 for about 5 acres. I have the flower beds on a WiFi system.
Pool guy once/week and the deal is to just keep it from getting out of control. $100/month.
Texas house AC is WiFi and I watch it to keep humidity down.
We usually have lots of stuff to haul back and forth so like that its a 14 hour drive between Texas and Colorado houses. And it's nice to have your own truck. Don't underestimate that.
Colorado cabin is winterized when we're not there (gravity drain water) so no utilities. Other maintenance is DIY in summer. Property taxes are low.

In reply to JustPanda

JustPanda said:

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We're doing this right now!

Glenwood for 5 months, Tulum for 6, and then traveling the other month or month and a half.

Currently on day 5 and LOVING it.

If you're looking to buy in CO, especially in the mountains, get ready for TONS of maintenance and upkeep. It costs us around 30-40k a year just to maintain our house and utilities and it isn't even super nice.

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That is crazy. We pay around 4K a year for snow removal. Our neighbor has a tractor with a snow blower/plow and he does it for us. Plus we have a guy that checks on the house once a week and keeps the hot tub functioning. I think he charges maybe $100 a trip so lets say $5200 a year. Pretty minimal electric/gas costs as we are not there most of the year. So I'm thinking we are at more in the 15-20k range?

In reply to docb That seems way more reasonable. Winter is the most expensive time of the year for utilities and snow issues. This winter was pretty average, but last year just about broke me lol.

Our HOA plows the road to our driveway. Since we won't be there much in the winter, I'm thinking our additional snow removal costs will be relatively low. We'll just need our road/drive (about 500-600 ft) plowed if we're going to be there and there's lots of snow on the ground (which isn't always the case in Ridgway)

Utilities should be minimal when we're not there. No hot tub for now. Zero landscaping for now. What else is going to cost money? Taxes very low.

Snow removal for the roof + deck, + hot tub/pool weekly maintenance and service + factoring in the annual cost of a roof over 20 years + all of the other things like water, nat gas, electricity, HOA fees etc. we are easily at 30k a year. For a smaller roof etc, I'd say 15-20 easily and that doesn't in life emergencies which happen all the time here

Also gotta include the extra car insurance (Colorado is insane) along w snow tires etc

Our costs on Marion Overlook in Ridgway were anywhere between 15-30k a year depending on what we had done. Since building it, we had to replace our deck, part of the roof etc. We had a water leak and the downstairs lock out flood etc etc etc. Just wait…something about the elements in the mountains just eats houses. ESPECIALLY when you aren't there. I actually prefer having people in our place because when things break we usually cat ch them before they explode. When we haven't had people in the house is when we've had most of the issues.

Sheesh. That's enough to make me not want to own a second home. But just travel and rent, knowing it's more expensive over time, but the peace of mind that when I leave…I leave. And it's someone else's upkeep

Sounds like we've got a lot to look forward to!

Any recs for things we can plan for now, pre-build, to help ease some of the maintenance issues? We're doing standing seam roof and some standing seam siding, which should help. Radiant in floor heat. Anything else? Water shut off? Obviously we'll need to run heat while not there in winter...

The key is having someone in it some of the time it not sitting there. You are not going to be replacing decks, roofs or flooded basements each year unless you have a crap house or dont winterize properly. Those are just part of living up here and general home repairs that occur.

Our hunting lodge gets winterized the week after Thanksgiving each year and I recently went out there to check it out since the road is not snowed in. In the 4 years I have had partial ownership we have had a hot water heater bust from not being drained and foundation issues out the ass. The former was human error and cost around $4000 in damage, the other is out of my control.

Every situation is different. One year it could be lots of repairs, and others little to none.

In reply to MAS444 Get the flow logic for sure. Once we had it work because the leak was inside the houses pipes. Another time it didn't help because the leak was before I entered our pipes (it was in the cities portion) so the flow logic never registered the leak.

Radiant floors are nice but also take a LONG time to heat up when you lose the heat inside the house.

We have door monitors that let us know when a door or car garage has been left open for a set amount of time. We use it ALL the time in the winter. I can't count how many times I've sent the "please have the renters close the patio door" text. They don't realize that heat costs a fortune here.

In reply to Hoyt Ag This x 1000. You'll feel like oh it's not that bad and then BOOM flood, etc etc.

Heated roof and driveway are nice but aren't cheap. The snowmelt can produce ice dams that will flood your house thought too.

Radon detection and alarms too. I think those are required by law now.

It's really a battle. I promise this isn't hyperbole. It's 99% of why we moved to Tulum and decided to go back and forth vs staying there year round. Our renters are responsible for anything that isn't structural so when things break it's on their dime.

Get a good pest control person too. We use a guy nicknamed Dr Death and he's great. It's amazing what those little *******s can do damage wise if you let them.

You may look into if there's a solar co op you can join. We put solar on the roof that flows back into the coop we joined and it's saved us a fortune. Without it we'd be looking at exorbitant electric bills on top of crazy natural gas and water. Since you're in TOR, get ready for the INSANE amount they charge for water. Our family of 5 is $500+ every month and that's being stringent. Also, make sure you find out if you're on fixed or variable nat gas pricing. You really want to try to avoid variable rates. If you can. Last year Xcel was like $3.15/mmbtu and then in January it spiked to something like $12/mmbtu. We had friends that received a $40,000 nat gas bill for just that month. We had black hills and they didn't pass along those same costs. Otherwise. We'd have been broke AF. Our friends had to enter into a deferred payment plan w them.

Just some things I've learned living here and being a homeowner.

In reply to JustPanda I'd love to rent seasonally but our HOA has a minimum 3 month rental period. Do you see any chance of off season/seasonal renting in Ridgway? Like September - December? I guess we might even consider September/October - early March. Any recommended resources for locating renters?

In reply to MAS444 Travelling nurses or seasonal workers would be your best bet for a 3 month rental. I rent 3-4 rooms in my house from April to October to the BLM and Forest Service seasonal folks. It is great money for me, basically pays my mortgage most the year. You could give your name and number to the nearest Regional Center for those two agencies and they can keep your name on file when they need housing.

We are building our summer home in the mountains right now. We are probably 10 years away from retirement so for now we will spend several weeks at a time there working remotely, and the 6-8 weeks in Centex.

We plan to visit the mountains year round, not just in the summer.

In reply to MAS444 You get slot of people that want shoulder season rentals because it's less expensive. Traveling nurses etc too.

Ouray county has such a housing shortage that you can ALWAYS find a renter. That's never been an issue for us.

In reply to JustPanda Any particular place you'd recommend to list for such a thing? Would want to be very selective if we rented.

In reply to MAS444 We usually wait to hear that a local that we know is priced out and having to move and then reach out. We prefer to know the renter as well. The school district is another asset we've used as they always need spaces for teachers and we've found them to be very low maintenance.

We 100% don't do AirBNB or Vacasa or VRBO etc. we've found those renters to be an absolute nightmare. There's no accountability there and we'd prefer not having people in our house whose paradigm is party vacation. We prefer people that understand how lucky they are to get a rental and want to try their hardest to never lose it.

The tourists around here are entitled and arrogant and honestly not our cup of tea. They want to pretend and act like blue bloods from telluride but are in Ridgway because they couldn't afford telly. Last people I want are party people on a budget price that live w an attorney on retainer snd moms and dads money. Id rather make $200 less a month than deal w them.

Another thing to consider is just buy a condo if you are going to be summering in Colorado. We used to own a couple in Steamboat. Certainly no yard to worry about and most of the condos will have a service that can rent it out for you when you are gone. In Colorado you really don't need a yard as there are countless outdoor areas to explore. That's your backyard.

I'd also highly suggest reading up on the local STR restrictions. They are becoming more prevalent and likely only will become more onerous. I wouldn't want to buy a place thinking I'll have STR income and find out later I can't. That's happening in a lot of mountain towns. The state didn't pass either of the laws they were considering but that hasn't stopped municipalities from crafting their own. If those regulations pass (they likely will at some point in the upcoming years) it'll turn the mountain rental business into a totally new beast. As the owner of a rental property, if either of the laws had passed we'd of had to sell. So yeah know those are on the horizon.

In reply to JustPanda

JustPanda said:

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I'd also highly suggest reading up on the local STR restrictions. They are becoming more prevalent and likely only will become more onerous. I wouldn't want to buy a place thinking I'll have STR income and find out later I can't. That's happening in a lot of mountain towns. The state didn't pass either of the laws they were considering but that hasn't stopped municipalities from crafting their own. If those regulations pass (they likely will at some point in the upcoming years) it'll turn the mountain rental business into a totally new beast. As the owner of a rental property, if either of the laws had passed we'd of had to sell. So yeah know those are on the horizon.

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This 1000000%. We just passed a STR law in our little town. I am indifferent on it, to be honest. I only rent to seasonal workers for that reason, they are seasonal and will leave soon enough. During hunting season I charge a premium and get premium guests. Helps avoid the partiers and people that have no respect for others stuff.