Quote:
Originally posted by Jandrews
Jim,
I have to say, your NC adventures just sound amazing. Your getaway that you look forward to, within a nice driving distance. Then, when you get there, you break out the steaks and micro-brew. Wow...that's the kind of stuff I dream about on a daily basis, and your setup has inspired me to pursue something similar. I want a second home about three hours away that I can just go to and do my stuff. Tell us a little more about your place, what kind of stuff you do there, who comes to visit, how long you stay, etc... Pics are appreciated, and I'll take one of those steaks!
Thanks for the inspiration.
JA
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Sorry for the long post.
Its kind of interesting how we came about owning this 2nd home. In 1996 we bought a very humble small 3/2/2 home with a screened pool. We paid 92K for it and made double mortgage payments on it from the first payment on. More if we could afford it.
We could have purchased a 200K-350K home easily at the time but chose to stay simple. 8 years later we only had about 20K left on the mortgage. I was having a good year business wise that year and decided to just give myself a big bonus and pay off the house. This was in Early 2004.
I decided to apply for a mortgage on the house in order to buy a house to flip. After posting my intentions on here I was swayed away from doing it as I analyzed the home prices here I realized they were unrealistically high and I could easily get hurt. I canned that idea.
Then we got rocked by 2 hurricanes back to back. If we ever got hit by a category 5 hurricane here my house will be gone. I decided that our best bet would be to buy a second home far away from our Florida home where it would not be affected by natural disasters.
I decided somewhere near the Smoky Mountain National Park was where I wanted to be. I again, posted up a thread in PPOT for information about the area. Procon gave me tons, even pointed me towards a house he knew of for sale in my price range. He talked me into coming and visiting the little town he lives in and I fell in love with it.
We ended up with a 2 story 4/3/ carport home that is 1600 s.f. its not huge, but not tiny either. I hired Procon to close in the carport so I would have a secure storage for my P-car when I leave it up here. We ended up replacing all the flooring in the house and painting every inch of it ouside and in. Its 10 years old and does not appear to have been painted since new.
It has turned out to be a great place to come with family and friends to relax. We have been exploring the surrounding areas, hiking trails and enjoying the outdoors.
I consider myself to be very lucky to be able to afford to do this and will never take this for granted. As the building industry has slowed in Florida and my business has been on a decline it has been stressful financially. We are actually toying with opening up the house as a vacation rental property so it generates money for us. We figure if we rent it out for 5 or 6 years we can use the money to pay off the mortgage and then we can remodel out all the damage from renting it out and make it a dedicated personal vacation home again. Its been really hard pulling the trigger on opening it up for rent. We know it will be abused and we put a lot of hard work into it.
We are trying to avoid it but it is becoming inevitable.
