My wife and I have been looking at up-to-date homes, now that we are near retirement age we want something a little bit out of the city.
A beach house near the water would be nice too.
However, we are in no rush to buy. It has to be the perfect lake beach house for both of us; Last weekend we spent some time looking at houses near the bay. They are extravagant however we can afford it. But, in this area, we get the occasional hurricane so that is a concern. The fact that many of the houses were up on stilts reaffirmed that problem for us. I am not sure we want to be quite that close to the water. Still, we toured the listed houses and got a more extensive list of things we do and do not want! For example, many of the stilted houses didn’t have central heating and cooling. Instead, they had big windows with nice airflow plush, maybe, an air conditioning component in the window. I just assume they use space furnaces in Winter time even though I didn’t see any lying around. The two of us certainly want central heating and cooling. That is not optional. I don’t care how nice of a breeze you get, periodically you just need cooled air. Other times you need hot air. 2 houses we looked at did have central heating and cooling. I felt it was bizarre that the compressors were on stilts too or otherwise connected to the wall of the beach house at the 2nd story level. I think that makes sense though. After all, you would want to keep the HVAC component from flooding too.