When my fiance (73m) and I (70f) met three+ years ago, I had owned my house on a lake on the edge of town for 15 years. He was in the midst of having his small house in the country gutted and remodeled.
He soon moved into my house. Then my 35 year old son moved into my house to go back to college between jobs. When the country house was finished, fiance and I moved there. We found out quickly that the house was too small, and we hated the inconvenience of living a half hour from town. We sold that country house 9 months later, and he bought a lovely townhouse two years ago on a quiet wooded cul de sac near our town square.
The townhouse location was idyllic. Right downtown, near shops, library, doctor, dentist, etc. Our unit is at the far end of the street, overlooking woods with 150 year old oak trees. This was to be our last home.
Developers bought the woods this year, cleared all the trees and are cutting a street through our cul de sac to a new townhouse development of 54 homes on 7 acres. There are diggers and bulldozers, log trucks, work trucks of all kinds right out our living room windows. Our idyllic dream has been totally crushed. When the two final huge oak trees across the street went down this week, it was a huge emotional blow to my fiance and me.
Meanwhile, I had to have major foundation work done on my lake house, and still have to pull up the flooring and have new concrete poured and new flooring installed. The interior needs fresh paint, as well. Our plan had been to finish the repairs and sell the lake house when my son gets his Masters degree this fall and moves away.
Here's our dilemma... we've remodeled the townhouse kitchen, hardscaped/landscaped a beautiful intimate back yard, repainted most of the rooms, done a lot of cosmetic and electrical upgrades. My only problem, and it's a big one at our age, is that the townhouse has stairs to all the bedrooms and laundry. I have knee replacement coming up this year, so stairs will be an ongoing problem as we age.
The lake house is all one floor, has a beautiful view, but is not as well built as the townhouse- and has more yard to deal with (I do have yard people). After the flooring is fixed, there's not much left to do to prepare it to sell or to move into. I've already remodeled the bathrooms and kitchen, it has a 2 year old HVAC system. And it is just off a 4 lane bypass - handy, but a bit noisy.
Fiance and I are seriously thinking of selling and moving yet again - the development next door has already caused us a lot of angst and disappointment, let alone the noise and mess to come for the near future as they build all those homes. We cannot decide if we should move back to the lake house, though it will be possibly more ongoing maintenance, or grit our teeth and stay in the townhouse, which we do like very much.
I am emotionally attached to my house - it was to be my retirement home. All one floor, big enough rooms, nice neighborhood. And the lake right out the back door.
We have up to a year to make this decision. Once the concrete slab is leveled and ready for new flooring, we must decide if we want to upgrade the flooring for us to live there.
This is so hard. The townhouse is sturdy, convenient and just has the master bath yet to remodel. But there is now no view, there are stairs,and a guarantee of lots more cars driving by each day. Our little enclave is gone. The lake house has a great floor plan, but has traffic noise and possibly some maintenance in the future.
Both are worth about $300k, theres no mortgage to worry about on either one. What do we do? We plan to wed once we've settled in one home or the other.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1qat7o9/own_two_homes_choosing_which_to_keep/
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