Announcing The Community Explorer – Find That Needle in the Haystack Community
Category: Active adult communities
December 5, 2023 — Announcing the Community Explorer. Finding the right retirement community – the one with right lifestyle in the right location, with the amenities you are interested in, plus the type of housing unit you want – is like finding a needle in a haystack. Announcing the Topretirements Community Explorer – the easy way to find the perfect active adult or 55+ community for your retirement.
Announcing the Community Explorer
For the next few days we are in a test mode with the Community Explorer. But you can use it to sort through communities by State/Country, Type of Amenities, Lifestyle, and Property Type.
Continue reading for more…
Here is how it works
First, select your Location by State or Country. This allows you to target the states you are most interested in. But you can try the Explorer over and over again.
Lifestyle. Perhaps golf, or boating, or the mountains. You can choose communities in up to 20 different lifestyles – from biking to urban.
Amenities. Pickleball is important to you? Select that, or almost 100 other amenity types from Aerobic Studio to (included) Yard Maintenance.
Unit type. What type of home or community are you looking for? Choose everything from Airpark to Waterfront properties – almost 50 in total.
Once you make your selection(s) the communities that fit them appear on the screen instantly. You can keep adding or subtracting choices to your hearts content, to find the perfect combination.
Try it now and Comment! It’s free using this link to the Community Explorer. In the next few days if testers like you approve, we will add it to the top Nav buttons in the next few days. Please check it out and let us know how it goes – did the selections work, were they relevant, how useful was it? We would love to have your Comments below.
Comments on "Announcing The Community Explorer – Find That Needle in the Haystack Community"
Margaret says:
I don't want to live in an "adult community" so this does me no good
Steve says:
I tried Texas, Golf community and Gated, and it said there were none that matched that. I happen to live in Robson Ranch, which is gated and a golfing community. The other community we were looking at, Kissing Tree, is also a gated, golfing community. The database behind this, still needs work.
Editor's comment: Thank you Steve, that is a very apt and helpful comment. That part of the Explorer definitely needs more work.
The root of that problem is complicated for the Golf, Boating, Gated, and a couple of other lifestyles. In our system, Lifestyle is driven by a list in the Cities database; it works for a lot of things like Urban and Cultural Center, but not so well for others. I did change Dallas and San Marcos so they have Golf as a lifestyle, but that is not perfect, because now that makes every Dallas and San Marcos Community in our database fit Golf - even if they are an independent living facility with nothing to do with golf. To fix that we will have to cross match Golf in the Cities database with Golf related Amenities. Unfortunately that is complicated and might take a while.
In the meantime I think we will put a note next to some Lifestyles suggesting folks will get better results using Amenities. If you go to the Amenities screen and select for golf there are a variety of choices: Miniature, putting green, pro shop, 9 holes, 18 holes, practice facility, and golf cart friendly. We are going to drop Gated as a lifestyle, but it will remain as an Amenity.
If you see any other issues, please let us know!
Kathy says:
I'd suggest adding Walking Paths to the Amenities list.
Editor's comment: Thanks so much for that. I swear we did have Walking Paths and/or Trails as Amenities, but somehow dropped them. Will work on that, it is a great suggestion. Thanks!
Admin says:
Hi Margaret: What kind of community would you like to live in? Unit Types offers about 50 choices, including: 55+, All ages, Active Adult, Cohousing, etc. See https://www.topretirements.com/community-explorer/ Hopefully one of those choices would work for you.
Daryl says:
I picked two lifestyles (coastal and outdoor oriented,) 14 possible amenities, and 7 unit types that were all first floor patio home types in South Carolina, yet it said nothing fit my criteria. So, what to mix and match to get an answer. Perhaps it’s trying to satisfy all instead of prioritizing a few ( “and” instead of “or.” ) And perhaps it would widen the search to choose proximity to coast, like beachfront, 10 miles, etc. Did I miss selecting proximity to healthcare, basic local needs like grocery stores, car repairs, etc? Perhaps being able to number your selections showing what’s most important to you. Outdoor walking paths, lots of trees, attractive landscaping are so important to me. I want to avoid that sterile suburban car-centric concrete-and-grass layout taking over everywhere.
Joan says:
I agree with Margaret, which is why I asked about the disappearance of the Retirement Ranger. That was really helpful for getting me started about 10 years ago.
Editor Comment: Thanks to Joan, Margaret, Daryl and many others for your helpful comments on the Community Explorer. They have all been helpful for improving the product. I will have a more detailed update on our progress tomorrow, but there has been some progress on many of the issues raised, including a bug we found and corrected. I miss the Retirement Ranger too - unfortunately it was a casualty of our site redo in April. Proved to be far too expensive to regenerate it after we made other improvements to the site. But it still might come back, or another iteration!