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| | Where to retire? It depends who’s asking.
Where to retire is best decided by good research and examining your own personal preferences. There are many books, magazines and articles on the subject along with numerous other resources, both online and print, and all express different opinions on where to retire. In addition, your choices of where to retire may change greatly if you elect to have retirement homes in more than a single place. Our selection criteria are based on picking only one place as your retirement home. With more than 80 million baby boomers reaching retirement age starting from today, it makes sense to plan ahead to find your retirement spot before demand pushes prices upward. | |
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| | On our website, we offer choices of where to retire driven by a particular criteria. Take a look at our active retirement communities to see how they match up to your own criteria. Our criteria are centered on the following considerations, ranked roughly in order of importance. They are: | |
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| | | 1. | Mild, Four Season Climate - My business partner and I (transplanted northerners) have lived in South Florida for more than 15 years each and maybe that experience has redefined our idea of where to retire. We think that a mild, four season climate will be the preferred alternative for more than 80 million baby boomers. Nothing against tropical weather and palm trees, but after awhile, there is a longing for a landscape that is made up of something more than just white, puffy clouds and weather that brings so little variability. | | 2. | Affordability - All other things being equal, why not go to the place that offers the most affordable alternative? Makes sense to us. And, with our criteria affordability has 2 parts, the affordability or cost of living index of the area, itself, and the affordability of the community and our new homes within the area. We compared similar or neighboring communities in the same areas on lot and home pricing to pick the winner based on clear and outstanding value. | | 3. | Nature and Landscape - We think that, especially in retirement, many of us will want to be surrounded by or live within a beautiful natural setting that provides views (mountains, lakes, forest), a vacation or park-like setting, and opportunities for everyday/anytime light exercise such as nature walks, gardening and hiking. We like these things, our spouses like these things, and now we're free to do them anytime we want. | | 4. | Activities - Baby Boomers may be getting older, but it's still not your Grandpa's retirement we're talking about. Nothing against shuffleboard (I even liked it when I was a teenager), but the Baby Boom generation is looking for an active, healthy, and full lifestyle. In every one of our selected communities, there is abundant opportunity for golf, boating, fishing, hiking, tennis, sight seeing and much more. | | 5. | Gender Balance - Let's be honest. There are the things men like and the things women like. It is a wonderful thing when our likes coincide. But, to be realistic, a good choice of where to retire will have characteristics and activities that offer plenty to both the masculine and feminine sides. What better way to maintain peace and contentment. | | 6. | Convenience - Our number 2 element, affordability, must be balanced with having the conveniences of life within easy reach. After all, there are many places that are affordable, mainly for the reason that they are so remote. Stores, especially good grocery stores, should be nearby along with places that provide us with most of the other of our weekly necessities or near necessities. | | 7. | Shopping and Entertainment - Shopping, for many, is not simply a matter of what we need. On a higher level, it is what we want to do for recreation and fun. Other times, we might enjoy a nice meal at a good restaurant, maybe see a movie, and take in the night life. Then there are all the little, simple things that add up to make daily living more enjoyable: the coffee and pastry shops, bakeries, a good deli, ice cream (whatever your flavor of life may be). In our search for communities we place a high premium on insuring that all of these little things are within easy reach. | | 8. | Culture, arts and education - Colleges, universities, performing arts centers, etc. all bring a special vitality to the community and create opportunities for continued learning, quality live entertainment, and more. We look for places that deliver this added value. | | 9. | Transportation - Our "where to retire" criteria considers important elements, but we are still missing one very critical piece - our families and friends. If our choice of retirement place is not within reasonable distance to our families and friends we should make it as easy and convenient as possible for us to visit them and vice versa (there is an argument against this as well). That is why we selected places with good interstate highway access and convenient air transportation. | | 10. | Medical facilities and medical emergency - No matter what your age, it doesn't hurt to have good, responsive medical facilities nearby. All of our communities put you in close and quick touch with good emergency medical assistance and excellent medical facilities. | | 11. | Crime - In our communities, crime is so non-existent as to be a non-factor and it is one reason why we do not rank it higher in our list of criteria. We do not see this as a consideration at any of our communities. |
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| | If our criteria of where to retire is a close match to yours, it is worth taking a look at our active adult communities to see how well they provide the things you were searching for. | |
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| | Here is a list of helpful resources on retirement, investment, home prices and other related subjects. These should be helpful to you in determining your own best place to retire. Our own selections of where to retire are based on a consideration of most of these factors: | |
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| | Any of the Best Places to Retire lists or Where to Retire advice are based on the points of view of the authors. In many cases, we think that they failed to look long and hard enough for the best places and failed to identify criteria for what is best or to reveal what makes the suggested place such a good place to retire. We think that a discussion of the best place to retire without criteria for defining what is “best” leaves us free to suggest any place based on any criteria. See our own Selection Criteria.
You can purchase the following retirement books on Amazon.com, under the new and used books section. | |
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| | 1. Where to Retire Books
Retire in Style – 50 Affordable Places Across America, by Warren R. Bland, PhD
This book leaves me a little confused since it references 50 “affordable” places. Dr. Bland sets out a clear 12 point criteria and his focus is on Affordable Places, but somewhere along the line he went astray. Naples, FL (my business partner owns two condos there); Sarasota, FL (my mother lives there); Santa Fe, NM (I frequently vacation there); and Boulder, CO are all great places to live or retire, but they are not close to affordable. In fact, in my rankings, they would appear among the most desirable places to retire, but also among the least affordable. It makes for interesting reading, but falls short of the goal in identifying places where one can retire in style at a very affordable level.
America’s 100 Best Places to Retire, by the writers and editors of Where to Retire magazine, edited by Elizabeth Armstrong
In this book you get a compilation of the places that Where to Retire would recommend as the 100 best in the U.S. The big problem with this book is that it is very difficult to determine what standards they applied for determining the best places to retire. If anyone can figure out what Paris, TN has in common with Sanibel Island, FL or San Juan Capistrano, CA, please help me on that one. This 100 best places to retire has some very beautiful and expensive places with plenty to do mixed in with very affordable, more remote places that have very little nearby. This list of best places to retire is a pretty eclectic one.
Where to Retire, by John Howells (sixth edition)
This is hands down the retirement guide to read if you want a good overview of things to consider, regional differences and good old common sense. The Howells, husband and wife team, provide a lot of good information and made a good effort to define various regions to consider that had common characteristics. It is the only where to retire book you really need to read unless you simply like to read various people’s “best” lists. | |
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| | 2. Where to Retire-Online Sources
www.usnews.com/directories/retirement - this site is US News’ venture into the best place to retire discussion. This site gives both retirement advice in a number of categories of interest as well as having a section where you can input your own responses to seven different retirement criteria that US News established (things such as region, weather, housing cost, recreational opportunities, social environment, health care and crime stats).
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2007/ - This is the Best Places to Live list from CNNMoney family which also includes Fortune magazine. Warning! Some of their best places to live or retire are a bit on the cold side for my liking, but the analysis is good and gets you thinking about all the things you may want to consider.
www.LiveSouth.com – this is one of our personal favorites in terms of active adult retirement community listings because it has a tight focus (primarily the southeastern US), gives a thorough, consistent presentation about each community, and contains the mother lode of retirement community listings. They are also pretty neutral about the best places to retire other than for the fact that they are promoting the places in the southeastern US.
www.privatecommunities.com – Similar to LiveSouth above except that the supposed focus is on private communities, most with a golf course amenity. | |
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| | 3. Sites that let you determine the criteria for best place to retire
www.bestplaces.net (Sperling’s Best Places) – You answer their formatted questions one-by-one, providing your own personal ranking for each separate criteria. Then, push the submit button and, presto, you have your own best places to live or retire according to Sperling’s logarithms. If nothing else, it’s fun to see what they come up with based on your own input.
www.findyourspot.com – Similar to the above, but it adds its own wrinkles to the process. If you try one to determine a best place to retire, you may as well try the other for comparison if for nothing else.
www.neighborhoodscout.com – I have to admit that I am a little leery of this one if for no other reason than that they provide links to the hottest real estate markets and those markets include Las Vegas, NV; Fort Lauderdale, FL and Phoenix, AZ. Unless they’re talking about “hottest” in terms of average annual temperatures, they surely have failed to hear the more recent news. In any event, they do have a real estate investment section and other helpful information to peruse. Just don’t click on the hottest market links. You may get burned. | |
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| | 4. Neighborhood and Local Information
www.grayboxx.com – Want to find out about the local restaurants, hardware stores, grocery stores, etc. in any locality? Just type in an address and Grayboxx finds what you are looking for. My own tests of the website for places I knew yielded pretty solid and complete results. They claim to be better than Google or Yahoo at this particular task and they just may have the results to back that claim. Definitely worth a try.
www.city-data.com – I will tell you first off that this is among the most dry reading you will encounter from any of the sites I have recommended (maybe other than the site dealing with state tax rates). However, this site has very good information about many localities and I personally found it to be a very helpful tool.
www.cityrating.com – Gives detailed reports on weather, employment, crime and other considerations. It is fairly easy to use and presents most information in large simple graphs.
www.bls.gov – This is the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics website. It gives you a reading on the health of the local economy with unemployment rates and other data. This was not part of our consideration or criteria, but it may be of some usefulness to those who care about the local economic health.
www.kauffman.org - This organization promotes entrepreneurial spirit across the U.S. and tracks what they consider to be the most innovative and entrepreneurial communities and economies in the U.S. Again, this was not a part of our consideration to determine the best value places to live, but for those who are thinking about continuing their own business or career interests, this site may provide some helpful insight.
www.weatherbase.com – This is the site I most often used for weather data. I thought it was among the most thorough in what it presented for weather data, was easy to use, and allowed the greatest number of search options. | |
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| | 5. State Tax Rates
http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/ - Get state tax rates and tax tables from the Federation of Tax Advisors website. The only place we found that gives tax rates for all the states. The state tax tables are supposed to be updated for 2008 by March of this year. | |
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| | 7. Home Price Comparisons
www.ofheo.gov/hpi.aspx# - On the home price comparison front, let’s start at the official government source. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight is charged with accurately tracking real estate values across the country. They even compare and reconcile their data to the leading large private data firms such as Standard & Poor’s Case Schiller Home Price Index. This site features a basic and easy to use national map giving home appreciation rates by state. They even have their own home price calculator. A good place to start.
www.localmarketmonitor.com – The home value ratings link on this site is an interesting study even though it is limited to about 100 larger markets in the U.S. They provide their own conclusions about which markets are undervalued, which are fairly priced and which are overvalued.
www.zillow.com – probably the most well known site for deriving an idea of a home’s price anywhere in the U.S. In real estate markets where values have remained relatively stable I find this to be more accurate than in markets where home prices have seen significant fluctuation. To be accurate in a determination, zillow.com is just one tool to use.
www.housevalues.com – Compare their results to zillow.
http://hpci.coldwellbanker.com – this is Coldwell Banker’s home price comparison index derived from Standard & Poor’s Case Schiller home price index info. At least for the places I tried, I thought it produced close to acceptable results.
www.globalinsight.com – this is a printable PDF report that National City Corporation derived from global insight data and analysis. National City is a major U.S. lender who had a financial stake in understanding home prices and home price comparisons by market across the U.S. | |
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| | 8. Real Estate Investment
www.biggerpockets.com – When it comes to real estate investment sites I have a strong preference for the blog type sites. The reason is that they more typically devoted to helping and sharing information among investors rather than mentoring (or milking) investors for their money. I particularly like the straightforwardness and content of this site and think it is a good tool for any residential real estate investor.
www.EquityScout.com – I had a similar good feeling about the content on this site. It is more informative than anything and there seems to be no agenda other than providing good investor education and insight.
http://realestate.about.com – I encounter the about.com website for many different purposes. I am a little frustrated by all the links they have on each page, but if I sift through them I can often find some pretty helpful information.
http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html - John Reed has made a career as a real estate investment teacher and watchdog for the real estate investment business. He has been a commentator for CNN Money and MSN MoneyCentral. Read his reviews of various investment gurus and learn where not to waste your valuable dollars. When someone offers you their “secret” get rich quick investment advice, get quickly away. | |
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| | 9. Vacation Home Rentals and Trades
Today you can successfully rent or trade your vacation home or second home on your own without paying big fees to a property management or rental company. My wife and friends have enough personal experience at this for me to say with confidence that it can be done with just a little time and effort. The home trade sites, in particular, can be really eye-opening to the uninitiated since the benefits are great and, in most cases, you are not directly trading your home for somebody else’s. If you are not presently taking advantage of what these websites can help you do, they are really worth a look.
www.VRBO.com – this stands for vacation rental by owner. My wife has successfully placed many weekly rentals through this site for a minimal fee.
www.escapehomes.com – this is a leading site for vacation home sales and rentals. I have not personally used this website, but the database of listings is extensive.
www.thevacationexchange.com – A good solid trade to travel site based on a point system rather than having to go to the trouble of making direct trades. An excellent resource and an excellent value. I have personally used this one and can say that we have been 100% satisfied. I believe we paid less than 15% of the actual value for the homes in which we stayed. This is a great way to leverage the value of your vacation home or second home for a great, nearly free, travel reward.
http://www.tradetotravel.com/ - Fees are expensive here. The claim that they make on this website is that, through their trading process, you can expect to pay no more than 20% of what you would otherwise have paid to stay on vacation in homes of the quality represented on the site. This is luxury stays all the way.
http://www.itravex.com/Info/About - Another points based vacation home exchange site that does not require that you synchronize travel or trading with another home owner. Trade for another member’s home on a points based system that allows you to use another member’s home without necessarily returning the favor directly. Check it out. If you like to travel in style and save huge amounts of money at the same time, this may be for you. | |
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