How about this for a deal on a vacation place: a nearly new 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom chalet-style home with a pool, on five wooded acres in north-central Pennsylvania. Asking price, a mere $119,000. I found it on eBay.

Where I live in Bucks County, Pa., you’d be lucky to get a third of an acre for $119,000. And then you’d have to spend hundreds of thousands more to build on it. Same goes for the Jersey Shore. My eBay find is a steal.

As the official start of summer nears, vacation-home fantasies come into full bloom. Wouldn’t it be great to have a summer place to pass down through the generations?

Well, in more sensible moments, I’m not so sure. I don’t really like vacationing in the same place over and over.

But that’s me. Obviously, lots of people yearn for second homes. With mortgage rates still low but likely to head up, it might pay to look hard this summer if you’re one of them.

There are a few factors to keep in mind, especially if you consider this move an investment.

• Risk. Because low interest rates enable buyers to borrow more — and thus spend more — prices have soared during the past few years in many hot vacation communities. But unlike a primary home, a vacation home is a luxury easily foregone, so buyers can dwindle if rates go up or the economy sours, driving prices down.

While any profit made upon selling a vacation home is taxable (with an exception I’ll get to in a moment), a loss is not tax deductible unless the property was rented out. Even then, the deduction would be limited if you’d used the property yourself.

The exception. If you sell your main home, you can pocket profits without paying federal capital gains tax. For an individual, the first $250,000 in such profit is tax free; for a couple, it’s the first $500,000. You don’t get this break on profits from a second property.

But you could move into the vacation home after retiring, then sell it later. To claim it as a principal residence, you must live in it for two of the five years before selling and not have claimed a tax-free sale of another home during the previous two years.

• Expenses. Home buyers tend to figure affordability by considering predictable costs such as mortgage payments, insurance and property taxes. A new roof or air conditioner can then knock the budget on its ear.

And if you plan to defray costs by taking in renters for part of the season, there will be advertising, rental management fees and cleaning expenses.

Renters are less tolerant of minor problems than owners are. So if you’re owning from a distance, you’ll probably have to pay pros to deal with clogged drains and other things you’d fix yourself if you were there.

• Annual taxes. Mortgage interest and real estate taxes paid on a second home are tax deductible, just as they are with a principal residence. But if the property is rented out, figuring taxes gets very complicated, depending on things such as the number of days it was used by the owners vs. those it was rented.
• Liquidity. Perhaps I should say “illiquidity.” If you need your money, getting it out of a second home is a lot harder than pulling it from a mutual fund. Selling a second home would likely involve paying a real estate commission and sprucing-up costs.

It sounds like I’m really down on second homes. Not really. I know that many people have made good money on vacation properties.

But I’d study the local market very thoroughly before buying. Ideally, the area would have limited supply — that is, it’s unlikely thousands more homes would be built. And it should promise continuing strong demand — it’s beautiful and easy to get to.

The financial benefits of a second home are iffy, and it’s sure to add to life’s headaches.

So, most important, that summer place should set your heart aglow.