[atourgates]

This is also a perspective I could have much more easily bought into pre-COVID.

We have kids, and live in a rural area, and honestly, many summers, don't get a ton of use out of our property and home because we spend most our free time and income on travel. Generally, we're gone at least 2-weekends a month on car trips, fly away for a few weekends a year, and try to fit in 1-2 international trips as well.

Obviously, all that's changed in the last year.

With COVID, we've felt incredibly lucky to live in a rural area where our kids were able to spend basically all summer just "playing outside." No need to interact with other people on mass-transit. No shared elevators or public spaces.

When we did start socializing a bit, it was very nice to have a nice private, outdoor space to (more) safely entertain our guests in.

COVID is hopefully a very temporary, one-time event. But it has changed my perspective.

Still, while I agree that the article takes optimization to sort of silly lengths, I do see a solid point behind it.

I apply the same philosophy to boats, RVs, vacation-homes and the like. (Though, I admit that COVID has tested my resolve there a bit). Expensive investments that aren't really going to make sense unless you're using them far more than our family would. Plus, with any major purchase like that, you're "locked-in" to doing that one thing if you're trying to maximize the value of your investment.

Buy a vacation home, and you're going to have a mental barrier going on vacation somewhere else. Buy a boat, and you're going to feel like you're wasting money when you spend a week of vacation somewhere besides a lake.

TL;DR: Like most things in life, it's a balance.

[ghaff]

>Buy a vacation home, and you're going to have a mental barrier going on vacation somewhere else.

I would probably agree with OPs sentiment in the context of vacation homes. They're not necessarily a great investment. They sort of lock you into a location. They're another thing you have to manage. And so forth. I'd much rather just get a hotel room, a B&B, etc.

I've even thought of buying a small place in the city. First of all, I'm really glad I didn't do that in the last year or two. But, really, while I wish I had done it 10 years ago knowing what I know now about property values, I also don't miss having another property to manage and I can always get a hotel if I want to spend a weekend in town every now and then.

[samatman]

This is, in turn, where AirBnB and companies like it add value to the world.

There are some really bleak effects on affordability in urban areas, but for someone who owns a vacation home they use two or three weeks out of the year, it's great: employ someone local to handle keys and cleaning, cover mortgage/taxes, maintenance, and maybe enough profit that you don't feel so bad going somewhere else once in a while.

In turn, someone like me can rent it! The best of my experiences with AirBnB have been this exact sort of rental, while the worst were situations where I discovered that the rental was illegal.

[asdff]

The only problem with AirBnB in high cost of living cities is that it gobbles up supply zoned for housing and uses it for ostensibly commercial purposes, which hurts the people living there who might have had the chance of signing a lease for that vacant apartment you don't use. Instead it goes to people looking to save $30 a night on a hotel.