Dreaming about your next vacation? If you’ve started planning for spring break or summer trips, you might want to consider staying in a vacation home instead of hotels.

Here are five questions to ask yourself to decide what will work best for you and your travel companions.

1. Is a hotel or a vacation home the better option?

When traveling, consider the number of nights you plan to be out of town and the number of people traveling with you. One or two nights likely won’t work for renting a vacation home because most require at least a minimum stay of three to four nights or even a week to a month.

When taking just a few people on a trip, a hotel or hotels (in a few different locales) might be cost-effective, but when taking a larger group (five or more people), a home with multiple bedrooms will very likely be less expensive than a few hotel rooms.

Expense isn’t the only consideration. Also think about what kind of amenities you prefer. If you love having a clean room with fresh sheets and towels every day, and you don’t want to worry about a checklist of items to do before leaving, go for a hotel.

But if you want more space to spread out, with a full kitchen and a living room, and you don’t mind completing a small checklist of cleaning items (such as taking out garbage and maybe throwing some sheets in a washing machine) before checkout, a house is a nice option.

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2. Are my travel habits conducive to buying or renting?

Do you have a favorite vacation spot? Does your family find itself drawn to Southern Utah’s national parks and recreation year after year or Southern California’s plentiful beaches and amusement parks?

Or do you like to find a completely new place to try out each vacation you take? If the former, buying a vacation home might work well for you. This is especially true if your go-to location is a favorite destination for lots of other tourists, with plenty of attractions for people of all ages and temperate weather. If the latter, renting others’ properties would be a better choice.

3. If I buy, will I use the property mostly for myself or for income?

If you like to visit the same location on many of your trips and have decided to purchase, you need to decide if you will use the home exclusively for yourself and for friends who might like to visit, or if you’re willing to be an “investor” and rent out the home for income and/or to recoup purchase costs.

As thesimplemoneymaker.com points out, an emotional element can come into play for some people when renting out a home they own and visit themselves: an investor must be able to detach emotionally from the house and shouldn't have a problem with “strangers” using the home and bed, etc.

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4. How will buying affect my taxes?

If you live in the home part of the year and don’t rent it out more than two weeks per year, mortgage interest and property taxes are deductible, according to Kiplinger. “Rent for more than 14 days, though, and you must report all rental income. You also get to deduct rental expenses, (though) that gets complicated because you need to allocate costs between the time the property is used for personal purposes and the time it is rented.”

5. Is now a good time to buy?

Kendall Clements, owner of Escape Properties in St. George, said that now is a good time to buy a vacation home, since interest rates are low and there’s plenty of inventory of homes to choose from.

It’s a particularly good bet for those who are nearing retirement age and know where they would like to retire. Someone in their 50s could buy a home now at a good interest rate and recoup at least some of the investment by retirement time by renting out the house to vacationers.

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