And for a long time, in New Jersey, no one wanted to be at the shore. So some forward-looking beach-lovers bought shore places long before the prices skyrocketed. It's hard to even find a place to rent reasonably now, much less buy.

My favorite was a house right. on. the. beach. in Bayhead that friends of my parents bought when he retired from teaching math. It was a ramshackle basic Victorian, and it *was* before shore houses were fashionable, so they bought it cheap. It had at least five bedrooms, all with slatted *breeze* door and transoms, and the back ones had balconies overlooking the ocean. I loved that place. Oh, and they named it the Aftermath. They'd probably get close to a million for it now.

So cost-wise, it's a lot more plausible for people without bags of money than it would be in more temperate climes.

As opposed to Rhody, where the value of those summer homes is going through the roof, forcing a lot of folks to sell homes that have been in their family for generations, because they just can't afford the taxes anymore.

Another thing that happens here is that URI is close to the shore, so a lot of folks rent their houses to students in the winter.

I'm thinking of buying a weekend home upstate. Strangely enough, few people in Phoenix had them, but I think it's relative to how close comfortable weather (or a freaking beach) is to your city. There's a million weekend homes within 2-3 hours of NYC.

People here in the Cities have Up North, which includes everything from the Boundary Waters to Lake Superior. Some people go over to South Dakota.

Dammit. Look at this. I wonder how much that'd cost in maintenance?

I'm thinking of buying a weekend home upstate.

Just so. The best part is that real estate is still pretty reasonable in places like the Catskills, where my brothers have their vacation place.

Look at this.

Wow! I see the future Buffista resort.

Dad has a place at the beach and our extended family has houses all together becuase my great grandfather bought the property.

My great aunt and uncle just tore down the original house that was built and built something newer and big enough for their needs (1 son has 8 kids). It was very weird to see the old place gone, but I understand.

Dad had the opportunity to buy one of the larger houses down the beach, but he opted against it at the time. Of course now he wouldn't be able to afford the property taxes, somethign similiar sold for $1 million.

It's really kind of sad to see what's going on, this area was "forgotten" and there was a big push to get the area on the map, so to speak, and now everyone's discovered it and developers want to build on and near land that is really too fragile for it.

Then Dennis came through and did major flood damage, I'm hoping some people will read about the projections for the hurricane seasons in the next 10 years and decide not to build. But that's probably too much of a Pollyanna view.

It occurs to me that some people probably have ski cabins in the local area, but as most of the skiing is a pretty quick drive from Seattle proper, probably fewer than would if it were further.

Is a weekend house just what it sounds like? Are they marketed as such?

The NYT had an article this weekend about how cheap homes are up in the Catskills, and it sounded attractive as an investment opportunity.