The Myplace Playbook // 072

Hey Everyone,

Last week I asked you to finish one sentence:

"If we had a place on the lake, the first thing I'd do is ______."

I figured I'd get a handful of replies.

I did not get a handful, I got many. Shouldn’t be surprised given our area that this is a common dream. And reading through them was some of the funniest moments of my week, no contest. So today I'm handing the newsletter over to you, because your answers are better than anything I was going to write.

Here's a few of them. Names off, obviously.

"Teach my daughter to fish off the end of the dock. She's four. I've got maybe a decade before she thinks I'm uncool."

You've got eight years, tops. Get the rods.

"Sit outside with a coffee and not hear a single vehicle. That's it. That's the whole dream."

This one came up over and over, in about ten different wordings. Turns out the number one thing people want from a place on the water is silence. Not a bigger house. Not a nicer kitchen. Escape.

"Finally buy the boat I've been saying I’m going to buy for fifteen years."

Fifteen years of repeating it... I believe you. Your family does not.

"Nothing. On purpose. Aggressively nothing."

I have nothing to add.

"Have every summer holiday there. Get everyone under one roof. My kids are getting older and I can feel the family calendar getting harder to fill. I want the place that pulls everyone back."

A lot of you wrote some version of this. The dream isn't really the cabin. It's the people the cabin gathers. That's the part worth remembering. This is, in a way, is generational wealth in the Kootenays. Not a family trust, with staff, that funds generations like on Succession (great show btw). Rather a shared memory and place that carries on for decades long after you’re gone.

"Rent it out enough to cover itself, use it the rest of the time, and feel very smart about it."

Respect the hustle. And that's more achievable than you'd think, which brings me to the other half of my inbox.

A bunch of you didn't just daydream.

You wrote back with a version of "okay but seriously, how would this even work?"

So here's the good news, and it is encouraging.

A second place is not the far-off, someday, if-we-win-the-lottery thing most people think it is.

You've probably already got a chunk of the down payment, and it's sitting in your current home.

If you've owned for a while, or you bought before the last few years of price growth, there's likely real equity built up in your place. That equity can help fund a second property, often without touching your savings at all. People assume a cabin means starting a whole new pile of money from zero or setting your current pile of savings on fire.

Is second-home financing a little different from your main mortgage?
Yes.

The down payment math changes depending on the type of place, a four-season cabin with year-round road access is treated differently than a water-access-only spot, and there are a couple of details that catch people off guard. Aside from a place or two on the odd end of Kootenay Lake (you know which end I’m talking about) there’s not many places with accessibility issues.

But "different" is not "impossible," and none of it is as steep a hill as the daydream makes it feel.

The people who own a place at the lake mostly aren't who you'd picture. They're regular families who sat down one afternoon, ran the actual numbers instead of guessing at them, and found out the gap between them and the dock was smaller than they thought.

So here's my offer, and there's no catch.

If your reply last week was more "how would this work" than "someday," let's find out. Send me a note. Tell me roughly what you own now and what you're picturing, and I'll give you a straight, no-pressure read on whether the lake place is a five-years-away thing or a this-could-actually-happen thing.

Worst case, you learn where you stand and go back to enjoying the daydream with better information.

Best case, next summer you're the one writing to tell me you taught your kid to fish off the dock or the name I can’t repeat on here that you gave your boat…

Thanks for filling my inbox with good stuff. Keep it coming.

-Andrew