Buying a Retirement Home
Decades Before You Retire

Retirement-home sales are growing -- among buyers still decades away from retiring.

From New York's Catskill Mountains to Oregon's rocky coast, younger couples who might otherwise be focused on building a nest egg instead are buying a lakefront house or country cabin that they hope to one day use in retirement.

For these younger buyers, this isn't an extension of the real-estate investment bug that bit a few years ago and is now fading as home prices flag in many markets. And they're not throwing financial caution to the wind just because they want a second home.

Instead, they're crunching the numbers and making hard decisions about their personal finances. In some cases, they're receiving an inheritance or a stock grant and are choosing to invest in their future real-estate needs rather than the stock market. In other cases, they're altering their expectations about how long they'll work and the kind of returns they'll earn on their nest egg in order to pursue an emotional investment.

Daniel Merkle and his wife, Sandra Bauman, take in the view of Sleepy Hollow Lake behind their house.

No one knows how many younger buyers are out snapping up their retirement homes. But real-estate agents and financial planners around the country say they're increasingly assisting younger buyers spending $100,000 to $500,000 for a house to call home in retirement. Partially at play is a cultural shift planners say they see among younger savers who aren't content to just accumulate assets to use in retirement. Instead, this younger generation wants to put some of its nest egg to work today as an investment in family.

A year ago, Daniel Merkle and Sandra Bauman of Glen Rock, N.J., took roughly 20% of their retirement assets -- none of it coming from tax-deferred accounts like their IRAs or 401(k) plans -- and bought a cottage on a hill with 60 feet of lake frontage in Athens, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains. "It was clear the money was better off in the index funds we owned," Mr. Merkle says. "But there are factors you can't see on a spreadsheet -- like the time we get with our kids building memories there," he says. "We wanted to get in while it was affordable." The trade-off is that the couple had to give up on the idea of retiring early. "But we realized you never know what is going to happen in 20 years, and it's better to enjoy it now," Mr. Merkle says.

Gregg Yaeger, a vice president at Chicago's Northern Trust Corp., says he has dealt with several younger clients doing this in recent years, including a 37-year-old client currently buying a retirement house on a lake in Michigan. "He wants this place specifically to retire," Mr. Yaeger says, "but he also wants it now as a place to build a bank of memories with his kids."

The question many people face is how to afford the future today. After all, beyond the price of the house there is maintenance, insurance, taxes and other costs. Phillip Cook, a financial planner in Torrance, Calif., says he discourages his clients from pursuing this strategy because "most of the rationale is emotional, and financially I think that's a mistake. Do you really think you know where you want to live 25 or 35 years from now?"

Sandra and Daniel with children, Catherine and David, in front of their lake house.

Nevertheless, people who receive an inheritance or other cash infusion are often deciding to put that money into retirement real estate instead of stocks. Others are pulling some of the nonretirement-plan money from their nest egg. Either way, says Suzanne Krasna, a financial planner in Walnut Creek, Calif., the bottom line is to figure out if your income can support the additional liability of this house after you've met other obligations -- such as building an emergency savings account, contributing to a child's educational savings and fully funding your retirement plan -- and after accounting for your current lifestyle.

Clients without deep pockets, Ms. Krasna says, are finding ways to afford the home they want to retire to. One of her clients -- a 39-year-old single mother -- recently sold her home in Northern California and decided to rent instead so that she could use the cash to build a nest egg and buy the home she wants to retire to in New Mexico. This client, Ms. Krasna says, is generating from her New Mexico home $500 in excess cash that she is also funneling into her retirement account. The trade-off: Because renters live there, she doesn't get to spend time with her daughter at her future retirement home.

Mr. Cook, the planner in Torrance, Calif., says prices on retirement homes purchased in resort locations are often volatile, negating the idea that the homes are an investment. That doesn't mean they won't appreciate, though. While all real estate is susceptible to price declines, unique properties, such as those on a lake, tend to appreciate over time at a faster rate than traditional residential real estate "because you can't just replicate these kinds of properties in a subdivision," says James Donnelly, vice president of J. Lee Donnelly & Son, a Bethesda, Md., real-property appraisal firm.

View from the back of the Page family's lake house on Lake Gaston

Jeff Page, a senior director for a clinical-research company, says the house that he and his wife, Laura, bought -- a 1,400 square foot, three-bedroom cottage on Lake Gaston, near the North Carolina-Virginia border -- has already doubled in value in the four years they've owned it. The Raleigh, N.C., couple purchased the place when they were each 32 years old, heeding the advice of both their fathers who both advised essentially the same thing: Enjoy your money while you're young. So, from April through early September, the Pages and their three children spend most weekends at the lake. "The house is an asset," Mr. Page says, "so it's not like we're throwing away part of our retirement savings."

Younger buyers, however, don't necessarily see these homes as investments. They recognize that real estate has intrinsic value and that their retirement dollars remain at work in some fashion, since, if they do live in this house at retirement, they can sell their current primary residence to supplement their retirement savings.

Most, though, are like Anuraj Bismal, 40, and his wife, Ann. The pair pulled money from their nest egg and bought 38 acres and a 100-year-old farmhouse in far northeastern Pennsylvania, about 2½ hours from their Montclair, N.J., home because, after each seeing parents die in recent years, they've come to the conclusion that "the moment is now," says Mr. Bismal, a financial executive with a major Wall Street firm. So, the Bismals spend most weekends at their Pennsylvania house, and Mr. Bismal expects they'll spend part of every year in retirement there.

"I could care less if I make $1 on this place," he says. "For me, this is very basic: I want to live my life now."

Have you recently sold a second home that you think would make a good Resale profile? Email a description and a photo of your property.

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