Although today’s harsh economic realities are making it more difficult for some Americans to retire, the Realtor.com data team set out to find markets where younger baby boomers and older Gen Xers could enjoy retirement comfortably, with reasonable home prices, a 55-plus population, and plenty of amenities. Check out the website’s top 10 affordable places—from Maine to Florida and Missouri to Maryland—that fits the below criteria.
For some, living in a sunny location with great weather—like Florida, California, or Arizona—is [still] a must-have,” says George Ratiu, manager of economic research for Realtor.com. But those popular retirement meccas are less affordable than ever. In fact, California and Arizona didn’t make the top 10 because home prices were so prohibitively high in these states.
To scope out the top retirement destinations, our team of data wizards scoured Realtor.com data in May for the 300 largest metros. (Metros include the main city and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas.) We looked for places with the most senior-friendly amenities in local homes for sale, including universal design and aging in place. For affordability, we factored in a year’s worth of median list prices from June 2021 through May 2022.
To figure out places already popular with retirees, we focused on metros with the highest populations of residents aged 60-plus using U.S. Census Bureau data. We also found the places seeing the largest increase in 55-plus folks. We also included metros with the highest number of businesses appealing to seniors in our ranking, using additional census data.
Finally, we capped the 12-month median list prices in our top 10 to $500,000 to ensure these places are still reasonably affordable. And we confined our list to just one metro per state to ensure the list’s geographic diversity.
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