--- title: Should You Buy a Vacation Home? | TIME description: There are just a few things to consider before you sign on the dotted line. canonical: https://time.com/video/PfAfAHM9/ og:title: Should You Buy a Vacation Home? og:description: There are just a few things to consider before you sign on the dotted line. og:url: https://time.com/video/PfAfAHM9/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PfAfAHM9/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Should You Buy a Vacation Home? twitter:description: There are just a few things to consider before you sign on the dotted line. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PfAfAHM9/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Should You Buy a Vacation Home? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Should You Buy a Vacation Home? [Watch (HLS stream): Should You Buy a Vacation Home?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PfAfAHM9.m3u8) (2:40)  _Published 2016-05-25. There are just a few things to consider before you sign on the dotted line._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:09 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [5 Vacation Homes Rented by Celebrities](/video/UqleDlIV/) ### 5 Vacation Homes Rented by Celebrities [Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Buy A Home MONEY](/video/VjgpBViw/) ### Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Buy A Home MONEY [Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Buy A Home](/video/dJ0ft98O/) ### Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Buy A Home --- ## Transcript With summer finally coming, many people are starting to think about buying a vacation home. Here to talk us through some of the dos and don'ts is Ilyce Glink, real estate expert. Thank you so much for being here, Ilyce. Nice to be here. Should people think about vacation homes as just personal use, for fun? Or should they be thinking about them as investments? When you make that decision of how you wanna use it, yourself, you can then think about how you want other people to use the property. And there are gonna be some distinct breaks, tax advantages, depending on how often you're gonna use it. And then you have to think about how much of an investment this really is. So, a lot of people think, well, I'm gonna buy at the beach. And I'm gonna rent it out year round. Or I'm gonna buy it where skiing is and I'm gonna rent it out year round. Well, maybe. And maybe property's gonna double in value in the next five minutes and maybe it's not. And so, you have to really look at trends. Who's going to that property. How much work it's gonna take to keep it in top- notch shape for renting. How much of that's gonna cost you. And all the expenses that roll up into it. So let's talk about that. Should you rent out your property? Should you just share it with friends? Should you just keep it to your family? If you've got a place, and it's going to rent out for $ 300 a night, and it's not costing you $ 600 million to buy it. Well that might make some sense. Take a look at what things are going for. Do the multiplication, figure out how much you pay for it, what your carrying costs are for the property. And then how is that gonna actually work out for you? And I think what most people will find is In their heads they think I'm gonna be able to rent it out 100 % of the time. And that just doesn't happen. Even if you have a rental property any rental property expert will tell you to only plan on say, 10 or 11 months on an average of 5 to 8 years. And you have to plan for the time when income isn't coming in. Or you could find yourself in a deep hole really fast. [ UNKNOWN ] Can you talk us a little bit of the tax implications? I know the things change depending on how much you use a property. Right. So, if you're using a property 14 days or more, there are different tax implications than if you use it less than 14 days so, if you're gonna rent it out and have to be really a rental property, you have up to 14 days of personal use that you can go in there. But, anything more and believe me, they check and talk to your tax adviser because Once you start buying investment property there are all sorts of tax implications for whether its active or inactive. If you are an inactive property owner, right this is something that you're doing not as your full time job. The tax implications are mostly that you're going to have to wait and sell the property to take the tax benefits. And that may mean that you're paying a lot more taxes than you planned on. And that's more cash out of pocket. Thank you so much. This is great advice. Appreciate you being here. 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