Thinking about buying our winter home in HH - Positives and Negatives please?

Not timeshare related as we own two but are looking into buying our winter home on the island to escape the Colorado weather beginning in November of this year. We have visited the island on three separate locations - twice in February and once in November. If anyone would take the time to mention the pluses and negatives of buying vs renting, we would appreciate it! We also have two small dogs who travel with us and of course, will be residing with us. TIA!!!

Are you set on being on the island? I live in Sun City which is in Bluffton off of RT 278. It's a 55+ community. We have a lot of snowbirds here and there is a club called the Part-Timers which caters to them. There are a lot of activities, clubs, gyms, etc. To say it's an active community is putting it mildly. Housing is a lot cheaper than on the island. It's been a cold winter this year. The coldest in the 4 winters I have spent here. Today it's 56 and sunny so not too bad.

There is a program where for $150 Pulte (the builder) will put you up in a home on property for 3 nights. Make sure you book far in advance so you get the homes and not a hotel. You get the use of a golf cart, free round of golf and free dinner with a host couple. Of course, you have to meet with a salesperson. IMHO, it's better to buy resale here right now.

Now, that I've said all that, sorry that I'm not much help on HHI itself.

Haven't been back to HHI in a while but back when I checked it out the downsides I saw were the cost of property and the traffic. Maybe things have changed since I was there. Sun City in Bluffton sounds like a good alternative.

George

Rent vs Buy

Look at foreclosures if you are interested in buying. I use my timeshare in Williamsburg, VA as a second home. Prices are not forecasted to go up so you have plenty of time to decide.

Stephen

We had friends who bought a retirement location on HHI. They recently moved to the Bluffton area and now reside there. When I asked why, one of the big reasons was the cost for hurricane/flood insurance on the island. I did not confirm this, but it sounds reasonable.

Perhaps this would be a good question to ask a realtor as it might make a huge difference in housing costs.

My brother on the other hand, lives in Minnesota. For the past two winters, he found condo rentals to use during the coldest months in MN. For them, this worked out because they wanted to be in the MN areas for the beautiful times of the year.

Just some thoughts.

Cost of property isn't the issue. In fact if you look on the Blufton side, you can get a ton a house for your money. What kills you is the non-resident property taxes. They charge so much more than residents that you have to scratch your head. Now if money is no issue.....

go read this bulletin board, it will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/south-carolina/553975-second-home-tax-question.html

I thought you had to be in Florida south of Sarasota bo be a snowbird. It gets way to cold north of there. So you asked about negatives of making HH a winter home thats a big reason

To me the biggest negative for any seasonal home is that you have to pay for it 12 months a year and use it less than half the year.

That makes no sense to me when timeshares are available.

I can do a Worldmark 2 bedroom for about $600 a week mf So 3 months is less than $8000. Compare that with taxes, insurance, utilities, furniture, etc etc at a full ownership condo or house. And next year I can go someplace different if I want

Although I hear what Ron says, I personally disagree. We like our small snowbird condo. It is ours; our furniture, our dishes, our appliances, etc. Also we can leave personal items here and not have to move them around. We bought ours about 13 years ago and have been very happy. No regrets. We split our time about 50/50.

Nancy

My taxes in Bluffton as a non-resident, less than 65 yrs old were $1800. As a full time resident over 65 they will be about $700. I came from NE PA where the taxes were fairly low and they still were a lot more than I paid as a non-resident here.

My cousin was paying close to $6000 on HHI proper before moving there full time. That's $500 per month. She was from PA also, but near Philly. Her property on the island is probably worth a lot more than in Bluffton. Bluffton is a great deal right now for good resale homes in very nice gated communities.

Pat H said:

My taxes in Bluffton as a non-resident, less than 65 yrs old were $1800. As a full time resident over 65 they will be about $700. I came from NE PA where the taxes were fairly low and they still were a lot more than I paid as a non-resident here.

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Another Sun City HHI person with her opinion. We have several friends who have moved from the island to our community. What are you going to do on the island? Remember that your neighbors may be folks who work full time or perhaps use their home only occasionally. In Sun City, you have activities constantly from which to chose and you can be on the beach in 30 minutes. You buy into a life style which is fabulous. We have so much love and support from our neighbors that we feel as though they are family. We travel often and never worry about our home. We are snow birds who have flown to St.Thomas for a month!

Janette said:

We are snow birds who have flown to St.Thomas for a month!

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Janette, stop rubbing it in. It's 35 degrees right now!

We seriously looked into a villa in Shipyard as a second home. By the time we paid the non-resident taxes, the monthly Villa regime fee, the Shipyard Plantation fee, the insurance, etc....we were well over $1500 a month just in fees/taxes/insurance and you can bet they would only go up. Combine that on going expense with the purchase price and we decided to stick to timeshares on Hilton Head. Having said that, if we had tons of money we would have done it, but financially it just didn't make sense for us.....especially since we like to go to a lot of different places. ( I would still
consider HH as a place for our primary home tho..if I could ever get DH out of NC ! )

Nancy said:

Although I hear what Ron says, I personally disagree. We like our small snowbird condo. It is ours; our furniture, our dishes, our appliances, etc. Also we can leave personal items here and not have to move them around. We bought ours about 13 years ago and have been very happy. No regrets. We split our time about 50/50.

Nancy

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No question there are excellent reasons for owning your own second home. and youve mentioned several. The op asked for the downside...and the downside is it aint cheap.

By the way Im a licensed real estate agent in sw Florida. Most of my sales have been second homes to snowbirds. So Im well aware of the positives of home ownership. Thats how I put food on the table; "accentuating the positive" (I dont mention the negatives unless asked.)

Not as warm as Florida, but better than Pennsylvania in the winter as well. It might be chilly but it's sunny a good deal of the time. If you look at Sun City, note the difference in taxes. Non-residents pay higher taxes no matter what but Jasper County is significantly higher than Beaufort County. One side of Highway 278 vs the other in the development. I would recommend renting and spending some time here in the winter before making a decision. That might help you decide what area you prefer. And I belive you can rent a condo on the island for a month or more quite reasonably. Living in an area is far different than vacationing there.

Yes, the taxes on the north side of 278 are about double the south side. However, insurance is cheaper. I sound like a salesman, don't I? It's just that I love it here.

We love our condo on HHI

We finally bought an oceanfront condo in HHI last year. I had been watching the real estate prices for years, and it seems that they are at the lowest they will go. There were several factors that pushed us toward buying vs renting:

1 We realized that the amount we pay for rental for 2-4 months per year would be similar to what our mortgage payment would be
2 Our favorite time to visit is October-March, but prime time rentals for HHI are Apr-August. We rent out our villa in those months and ended up making money last year. Rentals so far this year are booking fast!
3 If you buy in a condo rather than freestanding, you won't have to worry about the property/hurricane insurance as the HOA will cover that but more than likely you will not be able to bring your pets
4 We can write off some of our travel and expenses on taxes because we use it as rental property

Feel free to ask more questions if I can advise