Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Dateline: Fort Myers and Miami, Florida. Your Topretirements editor is spending a few days in South Florida. Realizing that the region is one of the 3 hardest hit real estate markets in the country (along with Phoenix and Las Vegas), we wondered: what would this meltdown look like in person? Since retirement in the warm climes of South Florida is the dream of many a baby boomer, here is our report on what we can see by looking out the window, jogging through the streets, talking with folks, and reading the newspapers.
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Published on March 1, 2009
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
If you could buy your dream home and save $200,000 or more, would you be tempted? For many retirees, the news reports of homes selling for half what they were 3 years ago are interesting. In fact, in many areas of the country the prospect of a bargain-priced distress sale has become so attractive that sales of new homes have just about stopped. In case you are thinking about plunging in yourself, we have prepared some background on the issues involved in this topic for our Topretirements.com visitors.
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Published on February 22, 2009
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Category: Home and Garden
Most baby boomers are currently in a "hold" mode. For them, waiting out the economic storm means postponing their retirement or second home purchase. To help you while away the time, we've come up with an armchair/dinner table exercise - what are the "must-have" features you (and your S.O.) must have in your new retirement home?
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Published on February 15, 2009
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
It's not a contest anyone wants to win - whose housing crisis was the worst in 2008. The contenders: Phoenix, Las Vegas, South Florida - all with year over year price declines of 30% or more.
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Published on February 9, 2009
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Category: Active adult communities
If you haven't noticed, not every active adult community is created equal. Depending on the skill and commitment of the developer, the community can be interesting and an easy joy to live in - or boring and inconvenient. Some of the most interesting examples of the best community designs are evident in the 2008 Best in American Living Awards (BALA), which were just announced. The awards are sponsored by a panel of judges put together by Professional Builder, a division of the National Association of Home Builders. There are a number of categories (and all of the winners are worth looking at), but this article concerns the 2008 winners for the Communities division. Common
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Published on February 3, 2009
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Category: Financial and taxes in retirement
Ask any 4 people when they intend to start taking social security benefits and you might get 4 different answers. Ditto with how long should you keep working and how that work will impact your social security benefits (short answer: working longer is usually a good thing for your benefits).
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Published on February 1, 2009
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
For millions of baby boomers, adult communities and 55+ communities are a great retirement option. For these retirees, having everything pre-packaged; from recreation to housing and even to even friends; has a lot of appeal. But for many other boomers, the active adult community is anathema.
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Published on January 26, 2009
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Category: Active adult communities
Note: This is our 2009 article. We updated these active communities trends in 2011 based on interviews with 6 industry experts and comments from our members. Both articles make for interesting reading.
With a fresh avalanche of baby boomers sliding into senior-hood every day, there is a lot of interest in 55+ housing trends. This article provides the Topretirements list of the top 10 active adult community trends for 2009. (We did the same exercise for 2008. There are many similarities on both lists, but also some new ideas).
The ultimate trend for 2009 – and the great unknown – is will the real estate
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Published on January 19, 2009
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
Topretirements is thrilled to announce that our frequent contributor, Betty Fitterman, has agreed to be a guest columnist on this site. Her new column will appear in our Tips and Picks Section under the heading, Betty’s Thoughts on Retirement. As many readers will remember, Betty has already contributed one…
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Published on January 15, 2009
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Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
Thanks in part to last year's energy crisis, biking is hot again. At least $4/gallon gas had one side benefit, it made us aware of the joys and simplicity of our bicycles for transportation and recreation. Knowing that many retirees are looking for bike-friendly retirement towns, we recently authored an article that highlights 15 top bike-friendly cities. You can see the in-depth article in our Tips & Picks section - 15 Great Biking Towns for Retirement. The article discusses bike-friendly towns in 3 categories - those set up for bikes as the best form of transportation, those who have wonderful bike trails, and finally - towns that either have or are near the best mountain biking.
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Published on January 11, 2009
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