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Try It NOWCategory: 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Category: Active adult communities
The average age of active adult and retirement communities was reasonably stable - until now. While the original active adult communities like Century Village and Sun City have been getting older as their early residents aged in place, this was countered in the overall population by residents in newer communities, who tend to be on the younger side. Enter those darn baby boomers, the oldest of whom are now turning 63.
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
The deluge of unending bad economic news is enough to make Pollyanna turn downright crabby. Stocks are down, Madoff type pyramid schemes are up, and real estate can barely be given away in some parts of the country. What is worse is that Americans have forgotten their economic history. Lost is the experience we learned the hard way - that lack of confidence fuels the downturn – individuals and businesses continue to feel worse, cutting back more, so more and more people lose their jobs. The bad news cycle just goes on, until some magical day (Inauguration Day!?) when confidence returns, people start spending again, and businesses feel like they have to hire more people to keep up with demand.
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
As 2008 draws to a close and fond memories of the holidays begin to recede, here's a wish for much better retirement and retirement community news next year.
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