Boston Luxury High-Rise Condos for Sale and Rent

Boston luxury vacation homes

Vacation home demand continues to be unrelenting, according to a new report from Zillow.

Demand has been trending up since the beginning of the pandemic, fueled in large part by employers offering more flexible work arrangements that allow employees to work from almost anywhere.

The majority of the vacation towns impacted by the shift offer sunny weather and are located near lakes, oceans and mountains. Zillow said its page traffic for homes for sale in these areas increased over the past two years from 27.7% in January 2020 to 48.2% in January 2022.

Astoria, Ore., had the highest rate of page traffic on Zillow compared to the rest of the U.S. and had nearly three times as many page views per listing as the rest of the country. Barre, Vt., was next on the list at 2.6 times more than the U.S., followed by Breckenridge, Colo., at 2.1 times, Portland, Maine, at 2.1 times and the Lakes Region of New Hampshire at two times.

Unsurprisingly, home-value appreciation in vacation towns is outperforming the rest of the country, with homes in nine out of the top 10 most-popular areas appreciating faster than a typical home. Of the top 19 most-popular towns Zillow tracks, 16 have seen residences appreciate by more than 20% annually, compared to the typical U.S. home that’s appreciated at 19.9%.

Vacation-home purchase applications increased almost 30% from 2019 to 2020. Counties with the highest share of vacation home applications were in Kane County, Utah, Nantucket County, Mass., and Grand Country, Colo.

Boston Luxury High-Rise Condos for Sale and Rent

Boston luxury condos

Every year around this time, many homeowners begin the process of preparing their homes in case of extreme winter weather. Some others skip winter all together by escaping to their vacation homes in a warmer climate.

For those homeowners staying at their first residence, AccuWeather warns:

“The late-week cold shot should fade next week, but this is a warning shot for winter’s return late in the month and early February.”

Given this, it’s time to go and stock up on winter weather supplies! However, if you’re tired of shoveling snow and dealing with the cold weather, maybe it’s time to consider obtaining a vacation home!

According to the Investment & Vacation Home Buyers 2018 Report by NAR:

“72% of vacation property owners and 71% of investment property owners believe now is a good time to buy.”

It’s time to take advantage of the equity in your home. As the latest Equity Report from ATTOM Data Solutions stated:

“Nearly 14.5 million U.S. properties (are) equity rich — where the combined estimated amount of loans secured by the property was 50 percent or less of the property’s estimated market value — up by more than 433,000 from a year ago to a new high as far back as data is available, Q4 2013.

The 14.5 million equity rich properties in Q3 2018 represented 25.7 percent of all properties with a mortgage.”

This means that over a quarter of Americans who have a mortgage would be able to use some of their home equity to make a significant down payment toward a vacation home, and many are doing just that! According to the same report by NAR:

“33% of vacation buyers purchased in a beach area, 21% purchased on a lakefront, and 15% purchased a vacation home in the country.”

Many homeowners who are close to retirement will use some of their equity to purchase vacation homes, which may eventually become their permanent homes post-retirement!