Beach Houses

I was interested in Bernard Salt's column in The Weekend Australian that referred to the ownership costs of a beach house.   He concludes that for most people the beach house idea doesn't make financial sense.   I, too, suspect that the numbers only stack up if your parents made the original investment!  But, like Bernard, each January, I reflect on the high cost of renting during the holiday season and look at all the "For Sale" boards, and then the idea of buying hibernates for the next 11 months.

Someone once suggested to me that the way to buy a house at a coastal resort was to walk around and decide which house you would like, then knock on the door and ask the price.   This is on the basis that, even if they're not advertised, a lot of the houses in at least some coastal towns are for sale at the right price.

At Lorne, there did appear to be a more-than-usual number of properties with "For Sale" signs this year.   I also heard that the holiday letting market is a little quieter.

Just the same, there's some building activity occurring around town,   I'm not sure if building a house is any more "economically rational" than buying an existing house, but perhaps the achievement of ending up with just what you think you want compensates for what seems to me to be the stresses of the building process.