Retire to Airport Community?

cowtowner

cowtowner

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Cowtowner
At the age of 55, the wife and I are contemplating our next move.
We live in an oversized house on the lake in Fort Worth and are looking at selling it this spring and are now tasked with “where to next”

We are thinking maybe we just buy a small house here in DFW to be near the grandkid, but then also buy a hangar home in Florida or Colorado. Summers are unbearable here as I get older, and she hates the cold.

Any suggestions?
 
I don’t believe I’d be interested in a flying community. You will need to deal with an association, have rather expensive fees to maintain the airport grounds, and the long term value of the home is iffy with the current age demographic of pilot population.
 
Clip4 said:
I don’t believe I’d be interested in a flying community. You will need to deal with an association, have rather expensive fees to maintain the airport grounds, and the long term value of the home is iffy with the current age demographic of pilot population.
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There are also politics, deadbeat owners, and the like. Add in the occasional massive fee when it is time to repave the runway or some other substantial expense (assuming the association hasn't set aside enough money). SWMBO drug me out to Pecan Plantation on our last visit to Dallas to visit her folks. It was exactly as I expected. Nice, but man your hands are tied. I'd rather have a house where I want and have the airplane in a hangar at a nearby airport. Alternately, I'd like to have my own airstrip, but I've concluded that will be unrealistic over the long term or I come into a LOT of money to hire the maintenance.
 
Full service condo close to the grandkids, a shack near the beach in Florida and a well insured plane that you can tie down outside.
 
Some places like Fly-in Ranches in Vero Beach are looking to have pilots rather

than non -pilots buy in.

check it out.
 
When I searched, there were no houses for sale at Fly-in Ranches in Vero Beach
 
I have to say - for a home that you're not at 100% of the time, Condo > Standalone House.

In our case, our AZ Condo is in a highrise. We leave it when we wish - stay away as long as we choose, and when we open the door, everything is fine.

No pool to have turned green. No lawn to have turned brown. No curious neighbors peeking (or worse) in garage windows.
 
Have you considered buying an acreage, and pushing in your own dirt/grass strip. Buy a riding mower, and keep it from becoming a jungle. When I retire, my plan is to move to the country, build a home, push in my own strip, build a little hangar, and live close to my plane. Already purchased a 160 acres for my future retirement. It is complete with its own creek that runs through a corner of it.
 
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I pay someone to mow my yard. No way I want to mow an airfield. I have 23 acres we are building a new warehouse for our company. I told my business partner that he better plan to mow it because I’m not ever going to do it.


YKA said:
Have you considered buying an acreage, and pushing in your own dirt/grass strip. Buy a riding mower, and keep it from becoming a jungle. When I retire, my plan is to move to the country, build a home, push in my own strip, build a little hangar, and live close to my plane. Already purchased a 160 acres for my future retirement. It is complete with its own creek that runs through a corner of it.
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weilke said:
Full service condo close to the grandkids, a shack near the beach in Florida and a well insured plane that you can tie down outside.
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Go to Arizona, avoid the salt-water issues in Florida.
 
I do not like the desert. If I went west, San Diego would be my pick. But if I spent more than 30 days there, I’m gonna give up a substantial part of my income to taxes.

Florida doesn’t have those concerns


murphey said:
Go to Arizona, avoid the salt-water issues in Florida.
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Clip4 said:
I don’t believe I’d be interested in a flying community. You will need to deal with an association, have rather expensive fees to maintain the airport grounds, and the long term value of the home is iffy with the current age demographic of pilot population.
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Could not disagree more. My HOA dues are less than $500 a year, for a very nice neighborhood with a well maintained, paved, 3700 foot runway. In addition, my house has gone up around 50% in value in the last 5 years.

It's awesome to live with people that love flying. It's awesome to have your IA live across the street. It's awesome to watch planes in the pattern all day. It's awesome to be able to walk out of the house and climb into the plane that you know hasn't been crashed into because it's been in the hangar that you own. Best decision I've ever made was to move here.

There are politics, but I can stay out of that easily enough.
 
Salty said:
Could not disagree more. My HOA dues are less than $500 a year, for a very nice neighborhood with a well maintained, paved, 3700 foot runway. In addition, my house has gone up around 50% in value in the last 5 years.
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Salty, do you know what the HOA's runway "reserves" are and how much it'll cost to repave when that time comes for your community? My experience with HOA's (not fly-in communities) has been that people beeyotch about dues to the point the association doesn't charge enough and finds itself in a bind when it is time for major repairs (like a tennis court resurface, a big pool repair, etc). I assume repaving a runway is a huge expense.

We also had a small fly-in community nearby that had deadbeat owners who refused to ante up when the sod runway was damaged by erosion. The problem was the hangar space was valuable to car restoration guys and others, so many owners weren't airplane people. When the bill came due, they said "I don't fly, I'm not paying". It ultimately got resolved, but not without a bunch of sturm and drang. That's probably less likely in your scenario, but you never know.
 
kyleb said:
Salty, do you know what the HOA's runway "reserves" are and how much it'll cost to repave when that time comes for your community? My experience with HOA's (not fly-in communities) has been that people beeyotch about dues to the point the association doesn't charge enough and finds itself in a bind when it is time for major repairs (like a tennis court resurface, a big pool repair, etc). I assume repaving a runway is a huge expense.

We also had a small fly-in community nearby that had deadbeat owners who refused to ante up when the sod runway was damaged by erosion. The problem was the hangar space was valuable to car restoration guys and others, so many owners weren't airplane people. When the bill came due, they said "I don't fly, I'm not paying". It ultimately got resolved, but not without a bunch of sturm and drang. That's probably less likely in your scenario, but you never know.
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Our runway is privately owned, not by the HOA. We have a permanent easement to use the runway. We are responsible for the taxiways, which were repaved recently at our expense. We don't have very much in reserve, and we don't have gates (I wish we did), so there's not much I the way of expenses either.
 
Salty said:
Our runway is privately owned, not by the HOA. We have a permanent easement to use the runway. We are responsible for the taxiways, which were repaved recently at our expense. We don't have very much in reserve, and we don't have gates (I wish we did), so there's not much I the way of expenses either.
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Your community is not the norm.
 
Salty said:
How do you know?
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Because few fly in communities do not maintain their own runway and few would risk only having an easement to a runway held in private ownership they have no control over.

I definitely wouldn’t own in a situation under those circumstances. And yes, your association may have an agreement until things go to bankruptcy court.
 
Clip4 said:
Because few fly in communities do not maintain their own runway and few would risk only having an easement to a runway held in private ownership they have no control over.
I definitely wouldn’t own in a situation under those circumstances.
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How do you know?
 
murphey said:
Go to Arizona, avoid the salt-water issues in Florida.
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That's all fine and dandy, you are just giving up the beach and boating part.
Yes, I know they have some reservoirs, but that's not the same thing.
 
Clip4 said:
I don’t believe I’d be interested in a flying community. You will need to deal with an association, have rather expensive fees to maintain the airport grounds, and the long term value of the home is iffy with the current age demographic of pilot population.
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I live at an airpark with a 3100’ paved and lighted runway, and a parallel grass runway (3100x100), with grass taxiways. HOA is $1200 a year, and that includes contracted weekly mowing for the taxiways and grass runway.
 
We live on an airpark and love it. 3800ft paved strip in good shape. The $200/year airpark fee (not actually an HOA) also gets us $.75 off each gallon of avgas, so it pays for itself. Revenue from fuel sales covers expenses for the airpark operations and is building a reserve for the runway.

There are definitely politics (where aren’t there, when two or more people get together?) but manageable.

Being able to fly when I want has meant I fly a LOT more. Plus the hangar is also storage for the camping trailer and has a separate workshop and office. With the Covid stuff it has been my daycare center.
 
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My current plane was bought out of Mallards Landing just south inside the Class B of Atlanta’s airspace. I spent a few hours there while my plane was being inspected. The limited time and exposure that I saw made me want to retire in a similar place. The people were genuine, honest, and incredibly helpful to me and one another. We all piled in somebody’s minivan and went out to lunch. When we found a small issue with my plane, one of the neighbors flew me back home (I paid for gas). Another neighbor came up to me, said he’d leave his hangar open in case I needed to borrow any tools as he was headed into town. I then introduced myself.

I would love that type of living arrangement. I’m sure there are always exceptions to the positives, but I’m willing to do lots of research when the time comes and find a great Airpark community a little further south of where I live now.
 
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I have retired to an airport community. The association dues are currently $500. My house looks over a 3000' grass runway on one side and this time of year with the leaves off the trees I have a view of Lake Norman. The only real onerous part about the HOA is that my wife got her arm twisted to be president and I'm the treasurer. The airport telephone line rings through to my phone either so I get calls from prospective buyers and real estate agents and lawyers handling closings and occassionally a call from the FAA or HSA (failure to close flight plans and the like).
 
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Rgbeard said:
I have to say - for a home that you're not at 100% of the time, Condo > Standalone House.

In our case, our AZ Condo is in a highrise. We leave it when we wish - stay away as long as we choose, and when we open the door, everything is fine.

No pool to have turned green. No lawn to have turned brown. No curious neighbors peeking (or worse) in garage windows.
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As much as I love my acreage, I definitely agree with Rusty.

For the past 10+ years my mom has maintained two residences - the one in New York and one in France. Both are apartments. When she leaves she locks the door, puts the mail on hold, and leaves. Obviously she's very limited on what she can keep in each residence, but she's also very limited in what she has to do in either residence.
 
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I've done the two house thing. You end up with two of everything which somehow ends up with both of them being at the OTHER house.

This is why I ended up with three sets of tools (one for each house and one for the hangar in Virginia since it was not at the house) and four air compressors (the fourth showed up during construction, I don't know who it belongs to but I suppose it makes up for the Milwaukee impact driver of mine that walked in the process).
 
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Rgbeard said:
I have to say - for a home that you're not at 100% of the time, Condo > Standalone House.
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I have to agree with this. I had a single family home with acreage and a condo in the city that I inherited. When I retired, I decided to sell the house and live in the condo, even though I would never have chosen it myself. Not fond of many aspects of the city, or joint ownership, but I wanted to travel, and it takes care of itself. Lock and leave. Hopefully extended travel will come back again soon.

flyingron said:
The only real onerous part about the HOA is that my wife got her arm twisted to be president and I'm the treasurer.
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This. I got my arm twisted to be the treasurer. I flatly refused to be president. I don't mind the bookkeeping part, but I can't stand dealing with other people's petty complaints. My rule is if that something bothers you, deal with it yourself, don't come to me. Luckily there are only 9 units, and just one is real problem.
 
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Everskyward said:
I have to agree with this. I had a single family home with acreage and a condo in the city that I inherited. When I retired, I decided to sell the house and live in the condo, even though I would never have chosen it myself. Not fond of many aspects of the city, or joint ownership, but I wanted to travel, and it takes care of itself. Lock and leave. Hopefully extended travel will come back again soon.

This. I got my arm twisted to be the treasurer. I flatly refused to be president. I don't mind the bookkeeping part, but I can't stand dealing with other people's petty complaints. My rule is if that something bothers you, deal with it yourself, don't come to me. Luckily there are only 9 units, and just one is real problem.
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I'm watching how your retirement works for you, Mari, since my situation won't be dissimilar - one day I'll inherit mom's apartment and have to decide what to do with it. One thing nice with my mom's apartment is that there are a number of other apartments (I think it's got around 80 units) so nobody has to worry about getting roped into anything like you did. The idea of subletting it to keep the option open exists, assuming the co-op would allow that.

If I retire when I'm hoping to (20 years or so), that's a long ways off but not that far off...
 
We looked at a few places in the Ft. Worth area. We went through a few houses in Pecan Plantation and two other places whose names escape me. In each case they were magnificent houses and palatial hangars. Problem is, if we were to move, there's two of us. We had five kids, but they're grown and long gone. I think the smallest place we found for sale was a little hovel at Pecan that only had a paltry few thousand square feet (not including the detached garage, the casita, the hangar, etc.) My wife didn't like it because there was no pool. All of the ones we looked at were a little over the budget we had in mind, especially once you added in the HOA and mandatory country club fees, but most would have really needed a small staff just to keep up the house and grounds. Just a little overkill for our needs, I think.

We live in Nebraska, which is one of the worst states for retirement, at least tax-wise. We've talked about moving when I retire, but we've spent a ton of money getting this house exactly the way we want it. She swears otherwise, but I an as certain as I can be that anywhere we move would just kick off a new round of remodel work. I'd love nothing more than to have a house, a hangar, and direct access to a runway... but I've about decided that 10 minutes from the airport is good enough.
 
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DaleB said:
We looked at a few places in the Ft. Worth area. We went through a few houses in Pecan Plantation and two other places whose names escape me. In each case they were magnificent houses and palatial hangars.
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This is one of the major problems as you get older. You think "I'll just retire to a little 3/2 in a nice neighborhood, minimize my maintenance, etc."

What you find is there are no "Little 3/2's in nice neighborhoods". The nice neighborhoods are all McMansions, because the builders can make a lot more money selling a McMansion on a 1/4 acre lot than selling a 2,000 SF 3/2 on the same lot.
 
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