SAND, warm sun-kissed sand, a spread of golden grains stretching out as far as the eye can see, the caw-caw of the seagulls, the lapping of the waves, the ...
O.K., go ahead and just shoot Michael Bevilacqua now. Right now.
"There are a lot of people out there who can't stand the feel of sand between their toes, and Michael is one of them," said his wife, Marisa Fox, a Manhattan-based freelance writer and editor. "I've always loved the beach. I find that New Yorkers crave what they don't have, which is a roaring surf and turquoise skies."
Mr. Bevilacqua, an artist, put it this way: "It's just not my thing anymore. I grew up in Carmel, Calif., and I was the one running across the sand to go surfing — but I think I O.D.'d on the beach."
To beach or not to beach. That is the question for many couples contemplating the purchase of a weekend home. Even the most compatible pairs — those who are of one mind about what movies to see, what restaurants to frequent, the number of children to have and how to rear them — may not see eye to eye about the location of a vacation getaway. For some, the beach is essential. For others, mountain air is de rigueur.
For 10 years, Ms. Fox and Mr. Bevilacqua had fantasized about buying a weekend home, stalling for time by spending vacations in Madison and Chester, Conn., where Ms. Fox talked herself into a fondness for the gritty, rocky shoreline and Mr. Bevilacqua took pleasure in the area's rural charms. "But he really favored the Adirondacks and Woodstock, and I said, 'No way,' because I needed some link to the beach," Ms. Fox said. "A lake or a creek wasn't going to do it for me."Finally, last summer, the couple, who have three children, checked their bank account and determined it was time to buy. They looked at Connecticut (too expensive). They looked at the Jersey Shore ("but I knew my husband would be miserable," Ms. Fox said). Finally, on the advice of friends, they looked at the North Fork on Long Island. "We really liked it," Ms. Fox said. Last August, they closed on a two-bedroom 1940's cottage — within easy walking distance of the beach.
"Being the ultimate New Yorker, I don't have a driver's license, and my husband didn't want to be involved in my getting there," she said. "Even when we go to the beach as a family, it's always on a timer, and after a few minutes he starts to complain about being sunburned."
Elaine Stimmel, senior vice president of the Corcoran Group in East Hampton, said that buyers are often attracted to real estate that brings with it pleasant associations. "People may want to buy in a particular area because it reminds them of good times in their past," Ms. Stimmel said.
If the wife grew up spending happy summers at the beach while the husband spent similarly idyllic summers at a camp in upstate New York (or vice versa), they may be particularly disposed to those same locations when looking for a vacation property.
Budget is also part of the mix. Some couples may not be able to afford the Hamptons, and the practical spouse may push for an inland area or the mountains, "where they can pay less and get more house," Ms. Stimmel said.
Both money and memories have played starring roles in the vacation-home debate that has long occupied Tom and Kathy Kingston. "We've been happily married for 37 years," Mr. Kingston said. "But 30 of them have been spent debating the merits of beach versus mountains."
Mr. Kingston, the vice president for finance and administration at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., grew up in Syracuse and spent childhood summers at camps and lakes upstate. "My only exposure to beaches," he said, "was going to Fort Lauderdale during college spring break."
Meanwhile, Ms. Kingston lived in New Jersey before moving with her parents and nine siblings to Syracuse. "A lot of her family was still in New Jersey, so she kept going back to the shore in the summer," Mr. Kingston said.
His first job after college, as business manager at a Wilmington, Del., prep school, provided the couple with a house on campus, "but being a good business major I felt we needed some equity," Mr. Kingston said. "We'd been going back and forth to the Jersey Shore, but my headmaster had a place in the Poconos, and he let us borrow it. Kathy was pushing for the beach, and I was pushing for what I knew: the mountains."
Even then, in the mid 1970's, Mr. Kingston said, there was a huge discrepancy in what you could get at the Jersey Shore (a second- or third-floor flat that wasn't on the beach) and what you could get in the Poconos ($28,000 bought a quarter-acre lot and construction of a three-bedroom ranch). The Kingstons went for the Poconos and compromised by splurging on a one-week rental at the shore every summer.
Twenty years later, when Mr. Kingston was in a new job and making more money, the couple revisited the issue. They looked at Delaware beaches and New Jersey beaches. Then they looked at an upscale gated community, Lake Naomi, in the Poconos. "Kathy lost again," Mr. Kingston said. "The beach was appealing, but financially it was a reach." So they chose Lake Naomi and remained visitors at Cape May and Spring Lake and made spring-break trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Thirty years has been ample time for the Kingstons to perfect their talking points. It's simpler to pack for the beach, according to Ms. Kingston, a math teacher — you need only a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and a bathing suit. And even in the summer, nighttime temperatures in the Poconos can dip well below 50, which means you need clothes for three seasons.
Mr. Kingston will counter that there is more to do in the mountains — there's biking, there's hiking. If it rains at the beach, what can you do besides head for the movies?
At least the Kingstons were in agreement that they wanted a vacation house. That put them leagues ahead of Scott and Ava DeGhetto. By Mr. DeGhetto's calculations, their buy/don't buy debate went on for two years (and that was before their beach-mountains debate). "Actually, it's an understatement to say we debated this," said Mr. DeGhetto, an investment banker at a Manhattan firm. "We actually argued about it."
Mr. DeGhetto, who estimates he's on planes 200 days a year, took the stance that he'd never be able to enjoy the purchase and that it was a luxury the family couldn't afford. For her part, Ms. DeGhetto wanted a break from her workaday, do-the-laundry, answer-the-e-mail, ferry-the-kids, deal-with-social-obligations life in Short Hills, N.J.
"When it comes to taking positions, my husband takes very strong positions, period," she said. "He didn't want the house."
But then the DeGhettos' financial situation changed, and Mr. DeGhetto became more open to the vacation-getaway idea. "I'm not sure how I broke him down," Ms. DeGhetto said. "If I knew, I'd package it and sell it."
Of course, that was just half the battle. Ms. DeGhetto was vehement that the property be within what she considered relatively easy driving distance — by which she meant the Hamptons. Mr. DeGhetto thought the mountains made far more sense; they were more of an escape than the beach, because they offered both winter and summer activities.
"I said the beach would be expensive," Mr. DeGhetto recalled. "There's a ton of maintenance on the water. Things corrode. My wife's attitude was: 'I'm going to use it more than you. I want a place my friends will visit.' "
Their solution: BelleHavens, a destination club that offers an equity membership and has properties in Palm Springs, Calif., Hilton Head, S.C., and Deer Valley, Utah, among other locations.
And now the DeGhettos have something new to fight about: which destination to choose. Mr. DeGhetto wants to go to Hawaii for Christmas (yes, the beach!). But how is Ms. DeGhetto going to explain to the couple's two young children that Santa Claus won't be showing up on Waikiki Beach — "because I don't want the expense of shipping all the packages there," she said.
THE beach versus mountains conflict also struck Joe and Mary Ann Ramirez. When they began contemplating the idea of a second home a few years ago, they weren't caught up in memories of childhood summers and a desire to replicate them. Mr. Ramirez simply loved the coast. Ms. Ramirez was similarly enraptured by the mountains around Lake Tahoe.
Real estate types talk location, location, location. Mr. Ramirez, a lawyer, kept talking proximity, proximity, proximity. The drive to Tahoe from their San Jose, Calif., home took four hours. Aptos, a beach community near Santa Cruz, where they bought a two-bedroom bungalow last month, was a mere 35 minutes.
"He kept hammering that home to me," said Ms. Ramirez, a product cost analyst. "And he reminded me how cold it could get in the mountains. He asked if I wanted to be shoveling snow."
Also, since they wanted to rent out the property if their finances dictated it, "it would be easier for us to keep an eye on things if the house wasn't too far away," Ms. Ramirez said.
For the Kingstons, their Poconos choice was not the final round in their battle. A few years ago, they got back into the ring. When they went to a family reunion on Chincoteague, a resort island on Virginia's eastern shore, they were sufficiently enchanted to sell their house in the Poconos and buy a three-bedroom expanded ranch on the island. Across a causeway is Assateague Island, with miles of shoreline and a wildlife refuge.
"There was the beach for her and the bike trails for me," Mr. Kingston said.
Still, as much as the couple love the new place, it's a four-hour journey from their house in Pennsylvania, hardly a trip to be undertaken every weekend.
"Kathy still has a bug to be at the Jersey Shore," Mr. Kingston said. "I keep thinking I've satisfied her, but she still has that itch. She's relentless and she is not giving up.
"I have a feeling," he said, "that I'll be spending my retirement looking out the window in Ocean City."
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