Category: Active adult communities
February 8, 2017 -- This article is the 3rd in a series written by Jay Michaels on his pursuit of the perfect retirement community. Now, five years after the second installment, he and his wife Jane have gone a long way (and then again not so far). Here is their update (links to Parts 1 and 2, both highly recommended for their site visit and decision process details, are below).
Jay Michael’s tour bus ran out of gas
Several years ago I wrote about our travels to find a new place to live after my retirement, and these were published on the Top Retirements blog. My wife and I had travelled thousands of miles and visited over 60 communities intermittently over a two year period from 2011-2013. We finally made a decision in 2013 on where to retire, and enough time has passed for me to now summarize our decision and how it has worked out for us.
Where did we end up?
My brother gets a laugh from people when he tells them I travelled for two years investigating the best place to retire and picked Cleveland, Ohio, as my destination. As you will read below, however, Cleveland has some really big and nice surprises, and I feel its reputation is not accurate or justified in many ways.
The place we picked is a golf community in Avon Lake, Ohio which is about
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Published on February 7, 2017
Comments 10
Category: Active adult communities
January 31, 2017 -- We think a lot of people looking for a place to retire get intimidated when they start to visit active adult and 55+ communities, particularly if they roll up to a gated entrance and face a guard with a clipboard. They might think, "Gosh, maybe we don't belong here", or, "I don't want to go into the sales office because they are going to give me a hard sell". So we asked some of the professionals we know, advertisers at Topretirements all, how they would advise baby boomers who want to visit and find out more about a community. While we were at it, we tacked on a few other questions about what makes their communities unique, desired amenities, and how they see the current market and the future. We hope you enjoy it.
The questions
The format here is that we will print out each question, and then give the answers from each of our 4 active adult community executives. Thanks to them for taking the time to share their
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Published on January 31, 2017
Comments 17
Category: Active adult communities
Nov. 18, 2016 -- Ask a group of retirees what they think about living in an active adult or 55+ community and you will get a wide range of responses (as we did in our recent Member Survey). Most people seem to think they are OK. But a common anecdote you will hear from a certain subset of folks is that they cannot/will not to live in a community that has a Community Association (also known as Home Owner Associations - HOAs). Their attitude seems to be that HOAs are a loathsome bunch, dominated by cliques on power trips. In this article we will explore attitudes towards HOAs as reported in some actual surveys, as well as why they sometimes generate negative opinions. In this we were fortunate to receive input from Joe West, CEO of the Community Associations Network, the largest free website of information for people on HOA boards.
Actually, most residents are positive about their HOAs
By large majorities, most of the people who actually
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Published on November 18, 2016
Comments 20
Category: Active adult communities
November 9, 2016 -- Many, many thanks to the 756 Topretirements Members who took the the time to fill out our most recent survey on retirement community preferences. You are good people - thanks!
Your input confirms some of our hypotheses and offers fresh perspective on others. One surprise was your favorite amenity - walking trails! You made hundreds of excellent comments to several of the questions - we just wish we had room to highlight every comment because they all offer a unique perspective. Here is one, describing the type of community someone is looking for, that is fairly representative: "Large, walkable, active community with urban area nearby for culture, restaurants etc. A Clubhouse with social clubs will make it easy to make new friends."
Highlights
Everyone has their own unique take on retirement, that much is obvious from these results. That is particularly true if you look at the 327 comments made to Question 10, "Please describe your ideal retirement community". Here are some
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Published on November 8, 2016
Comments 63
Category: Active adult communities
October 6, 2016 -- Our new list of the 100 most popular 55+ and active adult communities at Topretirements for 2016 is here, and there are surprises and new faces galore. There is also plenty of consistency - most of last year's top 10 communities are back. We think that looking at the kind of communities that our visitors and Members are most interested in is valuable - particularly to see the types of 55+ communities that generate interest, and where they are located.
Speaking of our top 100 list, we want to stress that these are not necessarily the "best" 55+ communities - however someone might determine that. Rather, The top 100 communities were chosen on the basis of visitor popularity at Topretirements during the period January 1 to September 30, 2016 as reported by Google Analytics. The communities whose listings were viewed by our visitors the most were determined to be the winners. Please see the end of article for more details
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Published on October 5, 2016
Comments 23
Category: Active adult communities
June 16, 2016 -- We've been wresting with a question about active adult and 55+ communities. The question is: does one side of the of the USA have a better range, selection, and type of active and 55+ communities than the other? Does the East (from Maine to Florida and west to Wisconsin and Louisiana) offer more, or is the Western half of the country (from Kansas to Hawaii and parts North and South) the one with more interesting active adult possibilities? The obvious answer finally came to us - ask our Topretirements Members - you have a range of collective experience that is incredibly valuable! So we are asking you at the end of this article to share your point of view about the areas that provide the best options for active adult living.
Part of the reason we ask comes from the challenge we continually face in adding new active adult and 55+ communities to our database. Although it usually easy to find a community we haven't yet reviewed in the Eastern part of the US on any given day, it is much harder to discover new or existing ones from the West. Which leads us to believe that perhaps the fence is much greener if you decide to retire somewhere in the East. But perhaps it is, as several frustrated
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Published on June 14, 2016
Comments 21
Category: Active adult communities
December 1, 2015 -- We are very happy for the folks who find their perfect place to retire -it is wonderful that you can live your dream. But we know there are many others who haven't found their Goldilocks place, yet anyway. For those who haven't, perhaps your experience is something like... the right community is too old... HOA fees are too high or restrictive... they have amenities you don't want... too many young people... or, it would be perfect, except it's in the wrong place. But maybe the problem is that your community hasn't been invented yet. Perhaps it is up to you to build it yourself.
Nextavenue.com had an interesting article, "Not Your Mother's Retirement Home", that discusses different
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Published on December 1, 2015
Comments 22
Category: Active adult communities
December 12, 2015 -- Where do you stand on active adult communities - are you a person who can't wait to move into one, or do they represent the type of place where you wouldn't want to be caught dead? This article will address the question - is an active adult community right for you. We will talk about the advantages, disadvantages, and peculiarities of this type of retirement lifestyle. But mostly we hope you, our Members, will share your thoughts in the Comments section at the end of the article. Your insights will help the rest of us learn how different people feel about them, especially those who have actually resided in an active community.
The original active community was Sun City, located northwest of Phoenix, Arizona. Founded by Del Webb, it is still going strong, 55 years after it opened. The one that most people in the eastern part of the U.S. know about is The Villages, a community of over 100,000 with 33 golf courses and 3 town centers, and that sprawls over 3 counties in Central Florida. Active communities range from other ultra large communities like California'sLaguna Woods Village with its 230 clubs, to very small communities like the thousands listed in our Directory of Active Adult Communities.
What is an Active Adult CommunityThe common denominator is that the term "active adult communities" describes a very
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Published on November 2, 2015
Comments 134
Category: Active adult communities
October 3, 2015 -- The think we love the most about the 2015 list of the most popular active communities at Topretirements is that there are so many newcomers - 36 communities are new to it this year! It is great that there are so many new faces - even more interesting places for our Members to explore. Another huge piece of news from the 2015 results is that our long-time, undefeated, #1 community, The Villages, was narrowly edged out of first place by another perennial top 10 finisher, Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill, NC. The 2 communities could not be more different - in scale, amenities, and feel - it's refreshing to see such variation in the choices available to retiring baby boomers.
Speaking of diversity
The 2015 list has some unusual and exotic choices for retirement
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Published on October 3, 2015
Comments 22
Category: Active adult communities
July 4, 2015 -- It's out there somewhere, the perfect place for you to retire. A community with the right combination of activities, ambience, neighbors, type of homes, etc. that matches exactly to what you are looking for. The reality is there might be dozens, even hundreds of places that where you can retire happy, if you can identify and analyze them. This quiz will take you through the major issues that will help you understand and rate the communities that are a good match for you.
About this checklist/rating sheet
For each question there might be several answers that describe you and your preferences, so choose as many as fit. Once you complete this form you will have a better idea about your overall preferences. Then, by rating different
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Published on July 4, 2015
Comments 58
