We have a vacation home. Simple, small, in the mountains, 1.5 lane dirt/gravel road. Undesirable? Not to us. Quite the respite from metro ATL life and less than 3 hours away. Would recommend.
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Yes, if your desired location is cheap, then all the better. That kinda goes for housing in general. Most people want to live close to cities, but if you prefer rural areas, then congrats, you get to buy a cheaper and probably bigger house.
For the majority of people though, their desired areas will be expensive, by definition.
The āvacation homeā is rented out as an AirBnB until you retire. I know plenty of people who did this or have done this.
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Well, my mortgage with HOA is over 4k/month. So weāre speaking different circumstances here. And my place is pretty small all things considered, but itās pretty much brand new.
I mean, sure, if I saved all my working career and rented cheap I can probably pay off a vacation home in cash past retirement, but then I will have lived my whole working life in a cheap rental, which is the majority of my life, and Iām not willing to bet on living past retirement tbh.
We do have significantly different circumstances. We could be holding down about 5x our minimum mortgage payment while maxing our retirement accounts. My HOA, for example, is $350/year.
If one chooses to buy a home in an expensive place, they just value the expensive place. But most fellows at least could afford a modest vacation home, if not an expensive one.
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My HOA is $920 
A lot of it is hedging against dying young. I donāt want to live a frugal life thinking I can have a glamorous retired life only to die before that even happens. And considering investment in a nice property could even make you more money in the future, it sounds pretty peachy. All the meanwhile Iām living like a king.
Lol, I just deleted my guess at who you are to not ruin your pseudonymity. I feel moderately confident I have it pinned, though I donāt recall you sharing numbers previously.
Living it up and dying early rings a specific bell.
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Lol you probably got it. Not really exactly trying to be detached of my past life here. Weāll see how long I stay this time.
Should check the life tables, IMO, but IANALA.
Obvious from the pseudonym and no other info IMO.
(Kidding! This could be any of 20000 actuaries.)
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I am not a life fellow? 
Should be an āAā at the end. Iāll fix.
Arenāt you considering upgrading from a 1m to a 2m house at some point? If thatās attainable, then why not 2 separate 1m homes?
Also less of a stretch of your spouse is also a professional making 6 figures, or if you dont have kids, or get into a management role.
Airbnb is also an option to stretch out savings into a nicer property.
None of that involves living in a trailer.
My mortgage payment might be cheap now, but i have been here for a while, and the new neighbors are probably over 5k a month with 20% down.
Lots of options if you arenāt always making yourself house poor every few years on the latest upgrade.
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Mostly agree. But I canāt help that I prefer opulence. So sadly, even with my salary, I feel poor.
Thereforeā¦the answer to your questionā¦
ā¦is that I want a 2 mil home. Not two 1 mil homes.
Well, I want maybe a 1-1.5 mil home with 500k of interior design.
Oh, well i guess Iām pretty happy with functional spaces that are comfortable. Iād pay for things like nice views/overlooks and nice outdoor spaces, but not going to have much interest in your 200k kitchen or anything like that.
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I created an FM/2 exercise to illustrate the point Iāve been making in this thread:
Assuming my answer is correct, the returns to real estate are usually much higher than people think.
Have a look, it illustrates my point pretty well. I used the rental data for Toronto and assumed an 8% increase in the home price. The return is 22% because of leverage.
Weāre talking about the returns on investment over the last 10-20 years and people are arguing that real estate hasnāt been as good as the stock market which is simply wrong due to the fact that people are using leverage with real estate and not with stocks.
real estate is generally a bet on the direction of interest rates and changing preferences for certain locations. Here in Canada, we have had strong immigration in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as falling interest rates. So the real estate market has been very good.