Becoming a digital nomad and travelling the world is a type of life few are lucky enough to experience. As rewarding as it can be, it also leaves a lot of questions about what to do with home affairs while you’re away. If you own a house, you have to wonder whether it’s best to keep it or to sell it, and how that might affect you on your journey. Each path has its advantages and disadvantages, and that’s what we want to look at today.
Photo by Jordan Bauer
Selling Your Home
The biggest advantages of selling your home come from the influx of cash you’ll be able to expect, and the freedom you’ll have without the worries about your property while you’re away. Managing ongoing costs while overseas and in a different time zone can be a major hassle, taking away time you’d rather spend doing travel activities, hanging out with friends, or just committing to work. Selling your home might also help you capitalise on recent house trends, if you enter the market at the right time.
Keeping Your Home
Making your house feel like home and keep it – to live on and off or to rent – will certainly require more work than selling it. But it can also offer some major advantages. For a start, you’ll always have a place to return to in an emergency, or just to relax and recover after a particularly stressful period. Having an escape route in the back of your mind can also help you relax while you travel, which can benefit some digital nomads.
Owning a home also means you have the opportunity to rent it, either long-term or through a system like Airbnb. Short-term rentals can be more lucrative, but require more work and are higher risk. In either case, you’ll need to hire someone to maintain it while you’re away, but the constant passive income can make the effort and additional costs worth it.
Photo by Vlada Karpovich
What if You Want to Sell Later?
It’s also possible to take a third option, holding onto your home initially and then selling it later down the road if you decide to keep travelling. Accomplishing this route means having a plan to keep your personal effects in storage, or lending them to friends or family.
From here, you could then use an online house sale system which offers quick cash for houses to aid in delivering a rapid sale. These can guarantee sales on any property, meaning less time spent on traditional estate agents and frustrating paperwork. As long as you’re prepared for this possibility as you go, the process can be very doable, so it’s always an option.
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No one route is perfect for every digital nomad, so choosing the right one means knowing what’s best for you and what’s most likely. In any event, we’d recommend trying the digital nomad lifestyle for a month or two before fully committing, to see if the approach is right for you and if your body responds unpredictably. That way, when you do make a more serious decision, it’s more likely to be one you’re happy with.
