[HN Gopher] Where are vacation homes located in the US?
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Where are vacation homes located in the US?
Author : rufus_foreman
Score : 65 points
Date : 2025-07-26 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| AdventureMouse wrote:
| TL;DR In Florida
| the__alchemist wrote:
| And less dramatically, states that have a coast (ocean, gulf,
| or large lake)
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Or an abundance of lakes like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
| Michigan, which are also Great Lakes states.
|
| Finland also has a high amount of vacation homes on lakeshore
| property, and I would guess that pretty much any area with
| glacial lakes within hours of population centers will have
| lots of vacation homes.
| tzs wrote:
| That's the TL;DR for the least interesting part of the article
| since most would expect Florida to have the most.
|
| It's well known as a major state to retire to, and many of the
| things that make a place attractive as a retirement destination
| also make it attractive as a vacation home location. And it is
| a high population state so when comparing by absolute numbers
| it would be the most obvious candidate for most vacation homes.
|
| The interesting part is where it looks at percentage of homes
| in the state that are vacation homes. Florida is high by that
| measure too at 8.2%, but behind Maine and Vermont which are
| each over 15%, and New Hampshire at over 10%.
|
| It is even a little behind Alaska (8.9%) and Delaware (8.6%). I
| bet not many people would have guessed that Alaska has a higher
| percentage of vacation homes that Florida.
|
| Hawaii is also interesting. It has twice the population of
| Alaska, but only slightly more vacation homes (31.6k vs 29.2k).
| fn-mote wrote:
| > Hawaii is also interesting. It has twice the population of
| Alaska, but only slightly more vacation homes (31.6k vs
| 29.2k).
|
| Common sense reasoning: people cannot afford to have their
| vacation home in Hawaii.
|
| High prices, long and expensive flights.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yes but it's _Hawaii_. Common sense reasoning only lets you
| conclude that rich people have vacation homes in Hawaii,
| not some specific percentage relative to the rest of the
| states. I bet it if the math was done based on vacation
| land area, Hawaii would come up near the top, given Lanai.
| Probably places like Montana too.
| radpanda wrote:
| > I bet it if the math was done based on vacation land
| area, Hawaii would come up near the top, given Lanai
|
| I'd be shocked if the parcels that Larry Ellison owns on
| Lanai are classified in a way that would show up as a
| vacation home. Typically rich large landowners in Hawaii
| are "gentleman farmers" who (ab)use agricultural tax
| loopholes.
|
| https://jacobin.com/2023/06/agriculture-property-tax-
| break-u...
| matwood wrote:
| FL, ME, and VT also allow for weather arbitrage. People
| winter in FL and summer in places like ME and VT.
| 42772827 wrote:
| The largest generation in US history is retiring and buying
| property in the state with no income tax.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And a corresponding level of services.
| cpursley wrote:
| This is not even logical, retired people don't have incomes.
| Anyways, they get them with insane property taxes.
| koolba wrote:
| Not quite. Retired people have deferred income in IRAs and
| 401(k)s that can be claimed at their leisure after 59.5 years
| old. So if you deferred taxes from a high tax State and then
| get the income in a no-tax State, you saved on taxes.
| cpursley wrote:
| True but generally this is lower than their W-2 was.
| koolba wrote:
| The point is that you finally have control of where are
| when you realize the income.
| karakot wrote:
| Income from Social Security benefits and 401(k)s are taxable.
| righthand wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by retired. In the traditional sense
| you're correct, retired people don't have income. In the
| legal sense retirement just means the person is of age to
| collect benefits. But there is also the question of type of
| income.
|
| If a retired person owns property and sells it, that is
| income subject to capital gains tax.
|
| If a person is retired but still owns the business or is even
| still a board member, they're still working in a sense and
| gaining shares.
|
| There are plenty of "retired" people who are "working" and
| have income.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or at least not much income. But they still probably have
| dividends/interest. May well have annuities of various
| kinds. Probably not much W-2 income but probably some
| material cash-flow, especially if they have a vacation
| home.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Depends how much money you retired with. When the ratio of
| your net worth to the cost of a house is high enough,
| property taxes are trivial. Let's say you have $50 million
| and you earn 7% a year on that. That's $3.5 million a year.
| Well worth it to live in FL to save the $350K you would lose
| every year in NY / CA.
| toast0 wrote:
| Anything that involves living in FL isn't really worth it
| :P
| cpursley wrote:
| Yes, yes - terrible place. Horrible beaches, rivers, etc.
| Too many snakes, gators and mosquitoes. And we're all
| full.
| fragmede wrote:
| New York state has a number of exemptions for property tax
| for seniors (65+), which seems like a better mechanism than
| California's prop 13.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| This explains very little. State income tax is based on your
| state of residence, not where you have a vacation home, in
| which by definition you do not live most of the year. Further,
| it makes no sense to refer to "the state with no income tax",
| as there are many of those.
|
| Granted, there are some working-age people who buy a vacation
| home with the thought of moving into it permanently a decade or
| two into the future, but those plans entail a lot of
| uncertainty (health, closeness to family) and of course once
| they move, it is no longer a vacation home.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| When they retire, they sell their house in the place with the
| job and move full time to the no tax state.
| jaxn wrote:
| So, no income tax right when you have less income?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| But when you have less money, every dollar counts. The
| income tax in places like Cali or NYS can be huge because
| it eats into the disposable income. It could easy cut
| your disposable income in half or maybe eat it all.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Or you spend 6 months + 1 day in your 0 tax state (possibly
| with some creative accounting) and the rest in high income
| tax state.
| garciasn wrote:
| > as there are many of those.
|
| Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota,
| Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming do not have income
| taxes. Less than 20% isn't 'many' to me but I realize YMMV.
| majormajor wrote:
| 9 is "many" if you're using "THE state with no income tax"
| as a singular noun.
| pengaru wrote:
| > The largest generation in US history is retiring and buying
| property in the state with no income tax.
|
| Millenials are retiring already?
| thechao wrote:
| Dear map makers who show us by-state break-downs: normalize by
| the population. The first map tells me this: New York, Florida,
| and Texas have large populations.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Second map is "Percent of housing units that are vacation
| homes".
| fn-mote wrote:
| My point would be: the second map belongs in the article
| because it is informative. The first one does not.
| jowea wrote:
| Is that appropriate in this case? I would expect lots of
| vacation homes be owned by people out of state.
| fragmede wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1138/
| roxolotl wrote:
| I'm glad that Maine lives up to its Vacationland slogan
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| I knew numerous people that have a vacation home in Florida due
| to their parents retiring there and then passing away. They
| decide to hold onto the house/condo as an investment rather than
| using it in any way. Given how many people were retiring to
| Florida, I wonder how many vacation homes there are due to this
| rather than being the preferred purchasing location for younger
| generations.
| brudgers wrote:
| If you are have an objective squint, a lot of vacation homes have
| wheels. Per Google AI just prior to pasting:
|
| _As of 2024, there are an estimated 11.2 million RV-owning
| households in the U.S., according to Emergency Assistance Plus._
|
| That's more than double the 4.8 million mentioned in the
| article...and theoretically some households could own more than
| two. But modulo RV's are also used for work travel particularly
| when it comes to construction.
|
| Like anything relating to housing and real-estate, it's
| complicated.
| khuey wrote:
| This is interesting, but one axis it's missing is that in some
| places the "vacation homes" aren't actually habitable year round.
| Quite a few cabins in Maine are neither insulated nor heated for
| the winters, are only accessible via roads that aren't maintained
| during the winter, etc. I'm not familiar with the area but I
| would guess that Minnesota's Lake Country and other similar
| places have the same thing going on.
| scythe wrote:
| This also occurs in the Rockies:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal,_Gunnison_County,_Colo...
| garciasn wrote:
| Happens here in MN too. I own a vacation home that used to be
| a fishing resort in the 40s-70s and now shares water / septic
| with 5 other cabins; we turn the water off mid-Oct to end of
| April because the lines are only buried about 2 feet deep.
|
| Having a three-season place is pretty common here.
| terminalshort wrote:
| I suspect the "vacation" homes on Manhattan are really mostly
| empty luxury units for foreign rich people to park money in the
| US. "Billionaires Row" near Central Park is half empty for just
| this reason.
| vintermann wrote:
| Shower thought, maybe bitcoin is actually good for the
| environment, if it replaces even more wasteful ways of trying
| to park wealth.
| czhu12 wrote:
| It's not really "parking" wealth since property taxes are
| still collected every year on these properties, which fund
| other city programs, unlike other asset classes like stocks
| and crypto.
|
| Presumably if the residents don't even live there, then they
| are massive net contributors to the tax base
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| A lot of vacation towns have pretty good school systems
| thanks to the fact that many of the people who pay the real
| estate tax don't send their kids to the schools.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major
| factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was
| the main purpose to have a vacation home. That's why so many
| vacation homes are near old major cities like Philadelphia, New
| York, Boston, Chicago, etc. In the summer, families with money
| escaped to the mountains or the beach, where it was much more
| pleasant during the hot months.
|
| I would guess that another huge factor has been the decline in
| the real cost of air travel. It's now cheap enough that people
| with money can reasonably expect to fly somewhere for every
| vacation they want to take. You don't need a condo near the local
| ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.
|
| In fact, I feel buying property in one vacation spot is starting
| to look more like an anchor than an escape hatch. Keeping capital
| in securities instead is more liquid and less expensive (stocks
| don't have roofs or plumbing). Let someone else own the hotel or
| AirBnB or VRBO. I'll fly in and rent it just for the vacation.
| This mindset may partially explain why vacation home ownership
| has not "kept up" with the growth in real wealth.
| MrDarcy wrote:
| This is a win win win for all involved, owner, renter, and
| Airbnb. I converted stocks into a vacation home on puget sound
| and rent it out when we aren't using it. Demand is high enough
| that we don't need to rent it out months in advance so we still
| feel like it's mostly ours and we're not just another guest
| fitting into Airbnb's schedule.
|
| To your point I liked the liquidity of equities but it has been
| nice to do something with it beyond just watching a number in a
| spreadsheet. If we want a change in scenery it's a wash to rent
| our own place out and stay in another.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Liquidity is a major factor for me thats kept me out of real
| estate in the past, have the money burning AI buyers helped
| make home trading more liquid?
| apwell23 wrote:
| > You don't need a condo near the local ski resort if you can
| fly to a different one every winter.
|
| lodging at a ski resort is still very expensive though. I think
| i makes sense to buy one if you ski ~100 days/year and airbnb
| out rest of the time. Lots of ski resorts now have summer
| activities like mtb and hiking too.
|
| and ski resorts usually are sentimental purchases.
| ghaff wrote:
| 100 days/year is a huge amount. I don't really downhill any
| longer but I'd have very little interest in getting a place
| for a lot less than that for the purposes of stashing my
| gear.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I've been to many old mansion estates, and in hotter climates
| the maid staff would have the upstairs rooms with potentially
| the best rooms. (Although the rooms were designed to be
| afterthoughts for maids.) I found that interesting, whats
| desirable has completely flipped based on our ability to make
| it comfortable.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I mean, attics and top floors with no AC often get
| swelteringly lot because heat rises
| arccy wrote:
| plus heat transfer from the sun through the roof
| ghaff wrote:
| I came to that conclusion years ago. I guess that for a family
| or group of friends, a ski condo could maybe make sense--or for
| literal snowbirds that migrated with the season.
|
| But the conclusion I came to years ago was that who wanted to
| be tied down to a particular location or urban location for
| vacation. Yeah, it's not cheap but more-so than owning and
| having to deal with a second home.
| tayo42 wrote:
| If I got a vacation home it would probably be in Puerto Rico. Not
| part of the analysis.
|
| Then figure out a way to get out of income tax.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you are a bone fide resident of Puerto Rico, you generally
| aren't subject to federal income tax. The commonwealth has an
| income tax though... depending on your income, it might be more
| or less than the federal tax; the top rate is lower, but the
| brackets are smaller so you get to the top rate sooner.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I'd guess the ones in Alaska are rentals for seasonal workers. I
| understand there are tourist areas that are largely unpopulated
| in the winter and populated mostly by seasonal workers in the
| summer (some of whom work in Hawaii the other half of the year).
| phkahler wrote:
| There are a number of retired people that bounce between Michigan
| and Florida (or Arizona) depending on the season. You might say
| they have 2 vacation homes :-)
| owenversteeg wrote:
| The most interesting part of this is the map of census tracts
| that shows how most vacation homes are tightly grouped.
|
| For example, Florida has a lot of vacation homes (8% of the
| state's housing vs 3% nationwide), but the vast majority of
| Florida census tracts have a tiny proportion and vacation homes
| are the majority in a few small areas. In some areas, the
| proportion of vacation homes seems to follow population density
| (gulf coast of Florida), and in other areas it follows the
| _inverse_ of population density (northern Maine.)
|
| What I think would be really interesting is a map of distance to
| primary home by census tract. Obviously Florida vacation
| homeowners are mostly from far away and in New England they live
| closer, but what about all the other areas?
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