zlacker

>>jger15+(OP)
I’ve mentioned the last year of my life on HN where my wife and I decided to get rid of everything we own that wouldn’t fit in four suitcases including our cars and we became “hybrid digital nomads”. We fly to different cities across the US and stay in midrange extended stay hotels and stay in our own “Condotel”[1] the other six months in Florida.

What I haven’t talked about is what got us to this point. I grew up in a small town in southwest GA, moved to metro Atlanta in 1996 and stayed there until last year.

We had a house built in 2016 in the northern burbs and thought we had our “forever home”. All the time from 1996 -2020 I bumped around between 7 jobs as a journeymen “enterprise dev”.

My wife had lived in metro Atlanta all of her life. We got married in 2012 (both on our second marriage).

Everything changed in 2020. Our youngest son (my stepson) graduated from high school, Covid happened (didn’t fatally affect anyone in our inner or outer circle) and I fell into a remote job at BigTech.

When things got back to normal around 2021, we both realized that life is short and we wanted a change. That’s what caused us to blow up our life and we are both happier now that we really can’t acquire “stuff”.

When we left our condo in March to start our six month trip, we put it in the rental pool, it gets professional managed like a hotel room and we get half the rent to cover our mortgage.

We don’t own a car. We take Uber for six months once we hit a city and we have a Sixt subscription and we rent a car by the month when we are at home.

>>scarfa+0m1
You're paying half your rent to property managers?! Stop this insanity. There is no such thing as a rental pool, unless it's literally a pool that is rented. What service are you using?

>>Dowwie+ID1
It literally is 300-400 units in a resort “hotel” and they rent out your unit as part of a pool of units. They do all of the marketing, replenishment of supplies for the kitchen, maintenance, payments etc. The units are rented out by the night just like a hotel when you aren’t there.

But you don’t understand the other part. I’ve done the landlord thing before. I would rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever be a landlord again. The entire purpose of it was never to make money. But to have a place to stay for six months, a legal residence in a state that didn’t charge taxes, and for it to pay for itself when we are not there.

When we leave every year, we pay a one time $110 cleaning fee and don’t think about the place again until we come back in six months. The income comes in the same account where the mortgage is paid automatically.

>>scarfa+3Q1
I stayed in one of these places in Miami FL, but I didn't realize what it was until we arrived. Really interesting model.

>>nerdpo+uW1
I can’t recommend it for most people. It’s a horrible “investment” by any sort of analysis. We barely break even and that’s only because we stay there during low season.

We also had to pay 30% down since it is considered a commercial property. But you buy it just like you would any other commercial unit through a bank. On top of that, we took a HELOC on what was our primary home to get the 30%, just as interest rates were rising. We rent our home out to our grown son and two of his friends that we have known forever.

The HELOC isn’t covered by either rental income and that only makes sense because it is offset by the state taxes we don’t pay.

The only time this makes sense for most people is if their primary home is paid off and as a vacation home and for retired snowbirders.

Also people do it to avoid taxes on real estate sales using a 1031 Exchange.

Even knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t do it under any other circumstances besides what we are doing now or as part of 1031 exchange if had taxable real estate capital gains.