Experience with floating homes

March 8, 2024 11:42 AM

What are the pros/cons of living on a floating house?

So, Mrs Mars and I are thinking of contingency plans should TFG manages to get elected. Leaving the country isn't an option, so we're scouting relatively safe locations and have been looking at the Pacific Northwest.
We keep seeing floating houses popping up when looking at listings and are curious. Size-wise they seem like an OK match, it's just the two of us and we've lived in similarly sized houses before. I'm not sure about the maintenance and other costs that we might not be aware of.
Anyone have direct experience?

posted by Eddie Mars to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Best answer: There are some complications with mortgages and insurance both being specialized products (similarly the float inspection, painting, …). Depending on the roof geometry, you might have to do snow removal if there is a lot of accumulation - you’ll see floating homes heeling under snow load after a snowstorm here. My experience is with several houses on the Columbia river, which has both river flow and tidal currents. And we do get freezes, so there is some amount of cold-weather management around freezing both supply and drain/sewage pipes. Their moorages have carts for moving groceries and trash - the ramps can be quite steep in late summer when the water level is low.

My friends with these homes love being on the river, though. It’s wonderful to step outside to swim or step into a boat. And to be close enough to -notice- the water level and wildlife and idiots driving boats too fast.
posted by janell at 12:52 PM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Best answer: No personal experiences but I think you'd get a lot of information from a YouTube channel called Keeping Afloat with the Joneses. They're a couple and a dog who live in and renovate floating homes on a small lake in the Carolinas, and there's a lot of info on the overall pros, cons, hows, and whys of this particular lifestyle. It's fascinating.

Their most recent video gets into details on how their utilities work, for example.
posted by mochapickle at 1:09 PM on March 8

In the UK, including here in London, the big cost is mooring fees. According to friends who were looking into this, every moorage seems to have impossibly high fees, no spaces, or both.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:17 PM on March 8

FWIW, I was at a marina in the PNW with a friend a few years ago and asked him about the numerous houseboats / floating homes there and the people that live in them. He told me that his impression was that a substantial fraction of them are hiding from someone.

So you might have... interesting neighbors.

On the other hand, when I lived in Seattle, my boss and one of my co-workers lived in houseboats, and seemed normal.
posted by Hatashran at 3:51 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

I looked at a few listings for these when I was buying a home, and my realtor was like, no, you don't want to do that. I can say these communities might not be your typical PNW communities.
posted by bluedaisy at 4:04 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Liveaboard slips can be remarkably expensive, particularly in/near desirable parts of town. Meanwhile your house is a humid depreciating asset.

If this sounds like a fun experiment nonetheless, do it! If it's something you'd be giving up other forms of stability to achieve, do a whole lot more research first. (There's a good chance you could find a rental houseboat or monohull to try out for a year, for instance — though probably at a higher price than buying. Also, try not to let Mefi's weird classist suspicion of people who don't live legibly middle-class lifestyles scare you off of the idea before you can think through more concrete pros and cons.)
posted by knucklebones at 12:04 AM on March 9 [4 favorites]

A friend of mine almost did this, and the amount you would have to spend on dock slip fees—which you have to pay forever—made it unaffordable for her. It was cheaper to buy a house. This was outside of Portland.
posted by Violet Hour at 2:14 AM on March 9 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Cons are that it's cold and damp most of the time. Mildew will become an ongoing battle. If the weather is rough, you're going to get jostled a lot, and you'll have to make sure your things are secured well. So they don't fall and break. You may not have as much wattage to run things on as you're used to. Insurance can be tricky to get.

Pros are that it's right on the water (obviously) so if you love boating and fishing, it's very convenient. Also it tends to be more affordable than regular housing in town.

It's fun in the summer time, but you may not enjoy it so much during winter.
posted by ananci at 6:53 AM on March 9 [2 favorites]

Best answer: This woman in Toronto made the move a couple years ago. She talks about how she deals with winter, utilities, insurance, and at the end explains that her monthly costs sans mortgage are about on par with what she paid to share a place downtown with three other people.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:31 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Just a note on Toronto slip fees - here's some insight. The park she's in in 2022 had slip fees of $811/month -- and they were about to go up. Property taxes are low - $800/year - but those homes go for like $600-900k for the floating homes, $450-700k for the type of home she has. I don't know where she was living but my spouse and I have priced it out and it's not inexpensive.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:32 AM on March 10

Best answer: It is probably fair to point out that slip fees/moorage HOA are usually paying for actual services and admin. More like a condo than a neighborhood’s HOA- those fees are covering the shared parts of the utilities (e.g. sewage pumping and trash service and bank-side parking/gates/lighting/landscaping).
posted by janell at 10:16 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, for sure, but compared to a house where (in Toronto) there are utility fees but they aren't huge comparatively (for example, if you keep your garbage to the medium bin, it's $360/year), for us the carrying costs were a significant thing to factor in.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:40 AM on March 10