Define excessive. Excessive for the avg American...maybe. Excessive for a person working for a large company building their career...probably not, and actually is below the norm.

Have all the moves been by choice or did you HAVE to do it? Do you enjoy seeing different areas or owning different homes?

Chart and article on the average number of times an American moves. (11.4 in a lifetime)

https://www.google.com/...ge-person-moves/amp/

Yes. I was in the military and the average tour of duty is 3 years, so 6 moves would have been considered "normal" in that world.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

I don't Wife and I bought our first house in 1992, Still live in it today.

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Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

Yes, for such a period of time. But I am sure you have your reasons.

It seems excessive to keep buying places when moving every 2-3 years. That must be stressful.

Seems that you could cut some stress down just by renting.

Only if it bothers you.

Though if I liked to move around I probably would rent over buy to stay as flexible as I wanted.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Unless you're in markets that have sale prices increasing rapidly or you do major renovations, I'd think it would be expensive to sell houses that quickly. If we moved that often, renting/leasing would be the only way to do it.

92-95 manchester
95-2000 ohio
20-04 chicago
04-06 boulder
06 Milton keynes
07 Southampton
08 sussex
09/10 london
10-17 qatar
17 london
17-present france

Potentially 19 onwards may be Riyadh or Paris

Not excessive.

Though for reasons not relevant to this post I am not interested in purchasing a home again

That seems stressful. But I've only owned two houses (both in the same city) over the last 16 years, and I REALLY hate change.

Are you using realtors to sell your home and are they getting X% each time you sell? If you are losing money on commissions each time you move I would say it is excessive but I am cheap that way.

I eliminated a lot of stress about four moves ago when we started hiring movers. That’s a big stress reliever.

Having not moved for 15 years, we moved last July. I can say moving sucks! And, I shoot listings, so I might know better. How you have done it and kept your sanity is amazing.

We moved 8 times not including the temporary apartment to house moves since 2001, several moves from coast to coast, with 4 house purchases in that time. Each move had a good reason, some for moving up the career ladder, some because I was fleeing an unethical or plainly illegal workplace and one move simply because we didn't like the city very much.

We finally settled on our current location in 2013 and are planning to stay here with a possible move once I retire. That will depend on how crazy our city gets, it is growing faster than any place I have ever lived except San Diego back in the 1990s. My idea of retirement is not being stuck in my house because the road infrastructure is significantly under the traffic requirement

Lemme see, since 1994 (first house) I've bought new in 1997, 1999, 2003, 2009, 2013, and 2018. That's 7 since '94, so yes 8 since '01 is excessive, although if you've only owned 5 of those you get some credit.

I know plenty of people who build a home every year, live in it for a year to avoid cap gains tax then sell. In some markets it's a great way to build wealth.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

We’ve moved 6 times since October 2017 so nope, not excessive at all since you’re spreading it out over many years!!😂😂

Special circumstances saw us moved 4 times from Nov 11 - Dec 1, 2018. We have at least 1 (if not 2) more to go before the house we are building is issued a CO. All local moves at least, but now we are playing the rental game and it sucks. Oh well. Hopefully within the next 8 months we finish the house and I never have to move again if I don’t want to!!

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Harry: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this."
Loyd: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man."

We’ll this makes me feel better, we really had no good reason to move, with the exception of a cross country move. I think it would be nice to unpack our boxes, though. I just cracked one open today from our last move (2 years ago). We really need to settle down.

Mike

We’ve got 2 storage units that are basically inaccessible since the house fire forced all those moves in November. (We had to move fast - and nothing is labeled, it’s all just boxes stacked in there). When we can finally move into our house it’s going to be like Christmas opening all the boxes - and we’re going to need a dumpster for all the shit we won’t need or want any more.

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Harry: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this."
Loyd: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man."

2 years to avoid cap gains.

Great when it works - not so great when it doesn't

Who care how often you move, if moving doesn’t disrupt your life. That depends on you.

More importantly, if you made money on every house you owned, than that isn’t a bad thing.

Then settle down! I would be happy moving every few years. I started out buying the crappiest place I could find and living in and flipping it. It was really lucrative. It fit my personality. I got married my husband finally had to have a come to Jesus meeting that he did not want to move every two years. We’ve been in the same house for 14 years. I still look at real estate listings and send him scary looking flips. We got a ski condo with no working heating or plumbing 5 years ago - so that scratched the itch for a while (and doubled in value). Right now it’s not the right phase of life for it for us. Life goes in cycles. When my daughter goes to college I will probably need a project - at that point he will have nearly three decades of stability - so I foresee a big project :-)

Thread was originally bumped by a spammer, but I never saw it the first time so...

My SIL's husband is a career marine, but they only move twice as often as we do.

I'm going back to college for a nice 23 years, and I'm including all moves. 18 times in 23 years and I've never bought anything. Been close twice

Because they keep burning down?