Moving Nationally or Internationally

[BIG_DADDY]

If you were going to move would you consider an international move ever? If you were going to pick another spot in the good old USA where would you like to be? For me I could see Austin in my not too distant future. If our country goes hard left I would have to look at the options at that time but I am going to start the process next year. I would love to look at Panama. I have seen several clients and friends move over the years. The most popular places have been Costa Rica, Philippines, Equador and Brazil but I know a lot of Brazilians. i can't forget Monaco for those with a lot of cash.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

That Honolulu condo sold for $402k only six years ago... certainly looked like a steal when I clicked on it.

Very interesting. I think that's the leasehold effect. I bet the leasehold ends really soon. I don't know the exact effect on pricing, but I would think that the value would completely tank at the end of the lease, because legally it's got a value of $0 when the leasehold clock strikes zero.

I went to way more trouble to research that than I should have, but i had no idea such a system existed.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Holy shit!

Most HOAs are scammy enough.... even if I had that kind of money, I'd really be curious where the hell all of that was going.

Yeah, no kidding. If you live there for 20 years, you're going to be paying a quarter million dollars or more just to go to the pool and get your lawn mowed. I wouldn't get anywhere near the value that I would be paying.

It seems like these are pretty common in South Florida because I ran across them several times. I thought this wasn't one of them, but after digging a little I'm pretty sure it is.

So I've found four really unusual location-specific hidden fees that are enormous. They don't exist for all properties in those places, but when a place seems like a good deal, you have to look for these things.

1. Hawaii has the leasehold system that essentially destroys your home equity over time.
2. Southern California has land leases where you own the house but not the land and pay a huge monthly rent on the land.
3. South Florida has required country club memberships that include upfront fees and annual fees.
4. Some resort communities like Colorado ski towns list prices, but it's for fractional ownership of 8 or 12 weeks per year. Those are clearly identified in the descriptions, though, even if they're not easily identifiable during the search.

[Rain Man]

Now I'm wondering if the annual country club fee for the Delray Beach house is per household or per person. Surely it's for the household, right?

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

#21 through 25. See the picture for scoring.

Sample houses:

21 – Greeley (CO)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-92598?view=qv


22 – Honolulu (HI)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-99594?view=qv


23 – Bay St. Louis (MS)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-66168?view=qv


24 – Marfa (TX)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-98733?view=qv


25 – Denver (CO)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-14766?view=qv

Summary (in reverse order)

25 – Denver (CO) – This is an option of selling our house and buying a smaller condo in our same general neighborhood. My expected advantages here were that it would free up some home equity to produce income, and there’d be no need for exterior maintenance. In the long run, not having a lot of stairs may be necessary, too. The interesting thing about this is that when you sum everything up, it’s no more affordable than keeping our house, and the condo is a less attractive housing option. (My model builds in property taxes, a maintenance amount, and also income from the apartment in my house.) The HOA fee for the condo is pretty high, so you’re still paying for the maintenance indirectly. It’s a nice option because it’s Denver, so it scores high points on my scale, but other than the lack of stairs it offers no advantage at all over staying in my house. This was a good thing to learn.

24 – Marfa (TX) – My wife wants to visit Marfa and is intrigued by it. It’s a little artsy town that’s in southwest Texas, and it’s not near anything. It’s about three hours east of El Paso, three hours southwest of Odessa, and three hours north of Big Bend National Park. It’s pretty high in elevation, so the climate is surprisingly reasonable. The summers are about the same as Denver, and the winters are ten degrees warmer with almost no snow. That’s a win. The thing that’s not a win is that it’s a small town with a hit-or-miss housing stock that’s surprisingly expensive. It’s a bit more affordable than Denver due to low Texas taxes, and the sample house is reasonably nice, but you’d have to get lucky looking for a house there. It’s a better option than I thought from a climate perspective, though.

23 – Bay St. Louis (MS) – I’ve never been here, but a longtime friend of mine lives here and I thought it was kind of interesting. It’s on the Gulf Coast about an hour’s drive east of N’awlin’s. It actually stacks up very well. It’s very affordable, and the winters seem pretty darn nice. The summers are similar to Denver and notably more humid, as one might expect. The town leans heavily right politically for however you value that. I can’t say that I’m wowed by the architecture there, but there’s a good selection of houses that would work for me. I really wasn’t expecting much out of this place, so it surprised me positively.

And by the way, what’s the deal with the big open space in that sample house? It looks like it’s a small auto showroom or something. I first thought it was a patio, but it appears to be indoor space.

22 – Honolulu (HI) – Okay, I’ll say up front that I’m kind of suspicious here, and it turns out that my suspicion was correct. Honolulu should be ranked a lot lower for a reason that’s unique to the locale. I’ve always heard that Honolulu is expensive, and you may recall that Hilo, HI, was a non-competitive #74 in the rankings (though it too graded out as being affordable and it’s big problem was housing stock). So something was amiss and I found it in the fine print.

Obviously the climate is a winner here other than humidity – the January lows are 65 and the July highs are 85.

So back to the pricing. The condo seems very reasonably priced, and I figured out why. In the fine print, it says it’s a “leasehold” condo. Doing a little digging, leaseholds date back to the days when the King of Hawaii owned all of the land. They would lease the right to build on the land, but at the end of the lease the landowner owned whatever was on the property and they took it all. So if you buy a leasehold property, you own it, but essentially the value goes to zero when the leasehold ends. Your house or condo goes free and clear to whoever owns the land.

So the reason that this property seems affordable is likely because there’s not much longer on the leasehold team, so you’re essentially paying to buy it when it’s really just rent and you’ll lose the entire investment in a few years. Apparently a lot of times the landowner will negotiate a new lease when it ends, but that’s a cost that you have no control over, and if they want your condo (or house), they just take it. (Southern California has a similar but slightly different system on a lot of their coastal real estate, which is why it’s so high. But in their model you pay a monthly “land lease”.) I looked at some other places and they would often say how much longer was on the leasehold because that's a massive driver of the value. This place is a little skeezy in not mentioning it.

My initial thinking is that this system is a complete and total ripoff, and it is. But in thinking about it more, there’s a weird advantage to it for someone like me (or rather, someone 15 years older than me). I’ve got no kids and I don’t really care about leaving an inheritance to anybody, so someone like me can buy a condo with a relatively short lease as long as it’ll last the rest of my life, and I'll pay a discounted price for it. If I’m in my 70s at some point and want to move to Hawaii, I just find a place with a 15-year leasehold term remaining (with the appropriately discounted price) and make a bet that the leasehold will outlive me. So in looking at it, it’s a terrible deal for somebody under age 60 or whatever, but it’s a pretty good deal for a person who’s elderly and doesn't care about leaving an estate. Very weird. I will tuck that information into my back pocket for a couple of decades.

21 – Greeley (CO) – It’s notably more affordable than Denver, primarily due to inexpensive housing. But the climate is a slight downgrade with slightly colder winters and hotter summers, albeit with 1/3 less snow. I had to compromise on the housing sample and pick a house with a basement, so the housing stock’s not a great fit. While this ranks pretty high, the advantages of moving there from Denver are purely financial, and everything else is a bit of a downgrade. Not really worth it, in my opinion.

Honolulu isn’t humid. It’s on the other end of the island from the tropical side. It’s really pretty arid over there.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

Honolulu isn’t humid. It’s on the other end of the island from the tropical side. It’s really pretty arid over there.

Ah, okay. I couldn't actually find location-specific average humidity figures, so I'm just assigning zones based on a national map that I found. It's probably highly variable in the coastal areas and an inexact science on my part in reading the map.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

#21 through 25. See the picture for scoring.

23 – Bay St. Louis (MS) – I’ve never been here, but a longtime friend of mine lives here and I thought it was kind of interesting. It’s on the Gulf Coast about an hour’s drive east of N’awlin’s. It actually stacks up very well. It’s very affordable, and the winters seem pretty darn nice. The summers are similar to Denver and notably more humid, as one might expect. The town leans heavily right politically for however you value that. I can’t say that I’m wowed by the architecture there, but there’s a good selection of houses that would work for me. I really wasn’t expecting much out of this place, so it surprised me positively.

And by the way, what’s the deal with the big open space in that sample house? It looks like it’s a small auto showroom or something. I first thought it was a patio, but it appears to be indoor space.

If you read the description, that open space doesn't appear to be counted in the air conditioned space. Kind of a weird space with limited utility/value.

I've been casually thinking about retirement locations the last few years. The trade offs are really challenging. Even though my priorities are different than yours, I still am hoping your top 20 will reveal some hidden gem I had not previously considered.

My key trade offs are:
Beach front vs walkable community with culture. I really don't want to have tons of time on my hands being isolated in suburbia or a rural area.
Cool location (beach front or walkable/culture) vs. Living space. My wife has an art studio now, but wants to expand rather than contract it in the future. Can't really afford to have a large living space in a cool location.

I'm more willing to put up with miserable summers than any kind of winter whatsoever. I an either find shade and not move or go inside and soak up the AC.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Yeah, no kidding. If you live there for 20 years, you're going to be paying a quarter million dollars or more just to go to the pool and get your lawn mowed. I wouldn't get anywhere near the value that I would be paying.

It seems like these are pretty common in South Florida because I ran across them several times. I thought this wasn't one of them, but after digging a little I'm pretty sure it is.

So I've found four really unusual location-specific hidden fees that are enormous. They don't exist for all properties in those places, but when a place seems like a good deal, you have to look for these things.

1. Hawaii has the leasehold system that essentially destroys your home equity over time.
2. Southern California has land leases where you own the house but not the land and pay a huge monthly rent on the land.
3. South Florida has required country club memberships that include upfront fees and annual fees.
4. Some resort communities like Colorado ski towns list prices, but it's for fractional ownership of 8 or 12 weeks per year. Those are clearly identified in the descriptions, though, even if they're not easily identifiable during the search.

Yeah, the leasehold is a no-go... the price makes more sense now though.

Wasn't aware of the land leases.

[KS Smitty]

Are you sure you aren't underestimating the humidity to comfort levels? We haven't had less than 50% humidity for quite a while and the last week it's been much higher. It was 99% earlier today and it's currently 80%. This is no bueno Rainman. Outdoor events are awful during the summer here. My cousins from Denver and CO Springs have been here this week and they are melting.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

Are you sure you aren't underestimating the humidity to comfort levels? We haven't had less than 50% humidity for quite a while and the last week it's been much higher. It was 99% earlier today and it's currently 80%. This is no bueno Rainman. Outdoor events are awful during the summer here. My cousins from Denver and CO Springs have been here this week and they are melting.

Humidity is actually in my scoring algorithm as a separate variable. I've lived in Denver for so long that a place with high humidity would really have to check a lot of boxes to work for me. My wife flat-out says high humidity is a deal killer, but I'm not eliminating those places from consideration just because I want to see if there's some gem out there that's worth it. I must say, some of the Florida locations pass the early sniff test due to the tax environment, but we'll see if they're still competitive as I reveal the top 20. (Insert dramatic music here.)

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by cdcox

If you read the description, that open space doesn't appear to be counted in the air conditioned space. Kind of a weird space with limited utility/value.

I've been casually thinking about retirement locations the last few years. The trade offs are really challenging. Even though my priorities are different than yours, I still am hoping your top 20 will reveal some hidden gem I had not previously considered.

My key trade offs are:
Beach front vs walkable community with culture. I really don't want to have tons of time on my hands being isolated in suburbia or a rural area.
Cool location (beach front or walkable/culture) vs. Living space. My wife has an art studio now, but wants to expand rather than contract it in the future. Can't really afford to have a large living space in a cool location.

I'm more willing to put up with miserable summers than any kind of winter whatsoever. I an either find shade and not move or go inside and soak up the AC.

What do you think that space is for? I actually wondered a little bit if the building is a converted funeral home or something where the hearse came in through that space. But the location is clearly in a residential area, and the house looks pretty residential on the inside. So I think it's just a really weird home design. Maybe there's some specific Mississippi thing that I don't know about, but I have a hunch that maybe the home was custom built and some person had a hobby that specifically required that space.

On your tradeoffs, that's very interesting, because this started out purely as a financial exercise. I built a financial model because I was pondering how long I would have to work to replace my income (not counting our Sandbox millions at some point). Once I built that model out, it evolved to how I would handle IRA strategies and stuff to optimize finances, and that led to thinking about relocating to free up home equity. From there, I started building in the various factors of relocation such as cost of living and taxes and stuff.

One thing that I don't have in the model is some of the lifestyle stuff you're talking about, like beaches and walkability. In part, this is because those attributes are going to vary from house to house within a location to some extent, and I figured retirement is still far enough off that it wouldn't be productive to look for specific sample houses with those features. So I kind of built it in implicitly by just picking general locations that I thought were candidates based on the lifestyle we want. But there are some general differences in the cities on my list, so I've pondered adding some qualitative factor to the model about that. It might change the rankings a bit, but in part the cities are on my list because I think they might be acceptable places to live, so maybe it doesn't matter.

For us in the end, the two big factors are affordability (on my end, how many more years I need to work to move there) and climate (for my wife). Once we find a place that checks those boxes, then I'm trusting that we can find a nice walkable neighborhood and/or a place with nice aesthetics.

The living space tradeoff is kind of built into the model with my housing grade, but to my own tastes. My wife says she'd be fine cutting down our living space a lot to live in a great place with a nice climate. I'm much less interested in doing that. We have a lot of space right now, and while I could downsize a bit, I think we'd be uncomfortable living in half our current space. So I'm generally downgrading a city on housing stock if I can't get 2,000 square feet for my budget, which I think would still be comfortable. I'm not interested in maximizing living space, though, because that usually entail living in an uninteresting place and paying for more space than I need.

One weakness in my model is the sample house selection. I'm generally targeting houses in the $400k to $500k range, just to be consistent. However, there are some places (particularly some that are still coming up on the list) where I could probably meet my goals with a cheaper house. That would pull the score of those places up since it would help affordability. I kept a consistent price range partly for convenience, and partly because I can account for it a bit in the housing stock grade.

As for the climate, one reason that I started doing this is that my wife and I have both had bad falls on ice in the past couple of years, and my wife is kind of done with winter. She actively dislikes it, and she really likes warm weather. I actually don't have an issue with cold winters (well, other than falling on ice) and would prefer a cold winter over a hot and humid summer. So part of this exercise is looking at different climates and learning what the options are. I may be overweighting climate a bit in my scoring, but honestly climate is one of the two big reasons that we'd consider relocating in retirement.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Ah, okay. I couldn't actually find location-specific average humidity figures, so I'm just assigning zones based on a national map that I found. It's probably highly variable in the coastal areas and an inexact science on my part in reading the map.

Yeah the climate in Honolulu is damn near perfect.

Here’s my understanding. But I’m a flat lander in ****ing Kansas. I think Splatbass lives there. Definitely trust pretty much anyone else’s word over mine.

The prevailing winds in Hawaii come from the east so the humid winds coming off the ocean hit the east side of the island, rain going up the elevation and the west side is in a rain shadow. East side tropical, west side (Honolulu) arid.

If I am remembering correctly.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

What do you think that space is for? I actually wondered a little bit if the building is a converted funeral home or something where the hearse came in through that space. But the location is clearly in a residential area, and the house looks pretty residential on the inside. So I think it's just a really weird home design. Maybe there's some specific Mississippi thing that I don't know about, but I have a hunch that maybe the home was custom built and some person had a hobby that specifically required that space.

On your tradeoffs, that's very interesting, because this started out purely as a financial exercise. I built a financial model because I was pondering how long I would have to work to replace my income (not counting our Sandbox millions at some point). Once I built that model out, it evolved to how I would handle IRA strategies and stuff to optimize finances, and that led to thinking about relocating to free up home equity. From there, I started building in the various factors of relocation such as cost of living and taxes and stuff.

One thing that I don't have in the model is some of the lifestyle stuff you're talking about, like beaches and walkability. In part, this is because those attributes are going to vary from house to house within a location to some extent, and I figured retirement is still far enough off that it wouldn't be productive to look for specific sample houses with those features. So I kind of built it in implicitly by just picking general locations that I thought were candidates based on the lifestyle we want. But there are some general differences in the cities on my list, so I've pondered adding some qualitative factor to the model about that. It might change the rankings a bit, but in part the cities are on my list because I think they might be acceptable places to live, so maybe it doesn't matter.

For us in the end, the two big factors are affordability (on my end, how many more years I need to work to move there) and climate (for my wife). Once we find a place that checks those boxes, then I'm trusting that we can find a nice walkable neighborhood and/or a place with nice aesthetics.

The living space tradeoff is kind of built into the model with my housing grade, but to my own tastes. My wife says she'd be fine cutting down our living space a lot to live in a great place with a nice climate. I'm much less interested in doing that. We have a lot of space right now, and while I could downsize a bit, I think we'd be uncomfortable living in half our current space. So I'm generally downgrading a city on housing stock if I can't get 2,000 square feet for my budget, which I think would still be comfortable. I'm not interested in maximizing living space, though, because that usually entail living in an uninteresting place and paying for more space than I need.

One weakness in my model is the sample house selection. I'm generally targeting houses in the $400k to $500k range, just to be consistent. However, there are some places (particularly some that are still coming up on the list) where I could probably meet my goals with a cheaper house. That would pull the score of those places up since it would help affordability. I kept a consistent price range partly for convenience, and partly because I can account for it a bit in the housing stock grade.

As for the climate, one reason that I started doing this is that my wife and I have both had bad falls on ice in the past couple of years, and my wife is kind of done with winter. She actively dislikes it, and she really likes warm weather. I actually don't have an issue with cold winters (well, other than falling on ice) and would prefer a cold winter over a hot and humid summer. So part of this exercise is looking at different climates and learning what the options are. I may be overweighting climate a bit in my scoring, but honestly climate is one of the two big reasons that we'd consider relocating in retirement.

Down scaling would be pretty easy for me as long as I don't pick up new hobbies like woodworking. Give me a nice kitchen, a place to sit outside, and enough space for my clothes, a laptop, TV and a guitar (hoping to learn to play late in life) and I'm good. The pandemic has put some stress on us, but mainly when I am having business meetings on zoom. My voice is pretty loud and my wife feels like I have taken over the house. Zoom meetings are now either outside or in our basement office.

I'm also looking at staying put as a home base and live medium term (2 to 6 mos at a time) in cool, affordable international locations. That would combine the small footprint when abroad with a larger space (that could accommodate an art studio) when we were in the states. I think that could be a very cool way to retire that wouldn't get boring.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

On your tradeoffs, that's very interesting, because this started out purely as a financial exercise. I built a financial model because I was pondering how long I would have to work to replace my income (not counting our Sandbox millions at some point). Once I built that model out, it evolved to how I would handle IRA strategies and stuff to optimize finances, and that led to thinking about relocating to free up home equity. From there, I started building in the various factors of relocation such as cost of living and taxes and stuff.

One thing that I don't have in the model is some of the lifestyle stuff you're talking about, like beaches and walkability. In part, this is because those attributes are going to vary from house to house within a location to some extent, and I figured retirement is still far enough off that it wouldn't be productive to look for specific sample houses with those features. So I kind of built it in implicitly by just picking general locations that I thought were candidates based on the lifestyle we want. But there are some general differences in the cities on my list, so I've pondered adding some qualitative factor to the model about that. It might change the rankings a bit, but in part the cities are on my list because I think they might be acceptable places to live, so maybe it doesn't matter.

For us in the end, the two big factors are affordability (on my end, how many more years I need to work to move there) and climate (for my wife). Once we find a place that checks those boxes, then I'm trusting that we can find a nice walkable neighborhood and/or a place with nice aesthetics.

The living space tradeoff is kind of built into the model with my housing grade, but to my own tastes. My wife says she'd be fine cutting down our living space a lot to live in a great place with a nice climate. I'm much less interested in doing that. We have a lot of space right now, and while I could downsize a bit, I think we'd be uncomfortable living in half our current space. So I'm generally downgrading a city on housing stock if I can't get 2,000 square feet for my budget, which I think would still be comfortable. I'm not interested in maximizing living space, though, because that usually entail living in an uninteresting place and paying for more space than I need.

One weakness in my model is the sample house selection. I'm generally targeting houses in the $400k to $500k range, just to be consistent. However, there are some places (particularly some that are still coming up on the list) where I could probably meet my goals with a cheaper house. That would pull the score of those places up since it would help affordability. I kept a consistent price range partly for convenience, and partly because I can account for it a bit in the housing stock grade.

As for the climate, one reason that I started doing this is that my wife and I have both had bad falls on ice in the past couple of years, and my wife is kind of done with winter. She actively dislikes it, and she really likes warm weather. I actually don't have an issue with cold winters (well, other than falling on ice) and would prefer a cold winter over a hot and humid summer. So part of this exercise is looking at different climates and learning what the options are. I may be overweighting climate a bit in my scoring, but honestly climate is one of the two big reasons that we'd consider relocating in retirement.

Not that you asked for it or even want it, but here's my opinion on it.

Be careful writing off humidity if you intend to do outside stuff in retirement. As we age, some of us struggle with heat more. Heat is generally a stress and as we age and our bodies break down, it becomes important to reduce stress on our bodies. Humidity amplifies that greatly, because as we sweat, it doesn't evaporate and cool the body down as intended. Accordingly your body has to sit in the heat and stress. Accordingly, people choose to retire in low-humidity environments. Arthritis is also a factor, so people choose to get out of the midwest so the climate variability is lower.

Maybe I'm sensitive to it because I hate heat anyway, but there would have to be tremendous overriding factors that would lead to moving to an environment with humidity.

RE: Housing.
I wouldn't put a blanket square footage number on it, so much factors into the design and usefulness of the space that just a numerical cutoff doesn't really tell much. I would lean towards open flooplans, wide accesses (ADA approved), and as few of stairs as possible. Also limit the number of bathrooms/bedrooms, since you probably won't have a bunch of people staying. That can contrast greatly with a lot of big houses around. The other thing with big houses is you have to clean them. I mean you can have a maid or whatever, but you still have to manage the property. I would look for a smaller more functional footprint. For instance, I'd happily give up a 12X12 3rd bedroom for another 10 Sq ft in the master bathroom.

[lewdog]

Slow work day. Read through this thread. Very interesting and good stuff. Depending on your point in life, things provide you different value. What I like today will likely be different in 10 years and there’s lots to consider in moving.

[Otter]

Sweden or Greenland