Can you pay off the mortgage on your primary residence? I would do that first.
To me, there are always deals to be found in real estate, especially in vacation areas and retirement areas. Somebody is always eager to sell that second home that they bought years ago. It's easy to buy (especially if you're paying in cash) and hard to sell.
Take a really good hard look at the place where you're thinking about getting the second home. Do you need to buy? How are rental prices? How are resale prices? Are they going up?
We're thinking long-term about selling our house and buying a condo in our town. But there's a glut of new condos here, so while purchase prices are pretty good right now, so are rental prices. Now we're realizing that at this moment--not sure how this will play out in a few years--we can rent for only slightly more than we would pay for maintenance and taxes if we owned a unit. So at the moment, renting is really a better deal, since there's no opportunity cost. We could keep our savings in investments.
To me, there are always deals to be found in real estate, especially in vacation areas and retirement areas. Somebody is always eager to sell that second home that they bought years ago. It's easy to buy (especially if you're paying in cash) and hard to sell.
Take a really good hard look at the place where you're thinking about getting the second home. Do you need to buy? How are rental prices? How are resale prices? Are they going up?
We're thinking long-term about selling our house and buying a condo in our town. But there's a glut of new condos here, so while purchase prices are pretty good right now, so are rental prices. Now we're realizing that at this moment--not sure how this will play out in a few years--we can rent for only slightly more than we would pay for maintenance and taxes if we owned a unit. So at the moment, renting is really a better deal, since there's no opportunity cost. We could keep our savings in investments.