Module 6: How to Visit an Active Adult or 55+ Community

We've only visited one place and we plan to move there a bit more than a year. Let the internet do the work for you! Use extreme searching. Do view the community from the satellite view - do you want all houses to be looking just like each one, house after house, so close together? If the community has a garden - find the garden in the satellite view - did the property place the garden under high voltage electrical rabbit ear towers!? Also is the community near a copper mine - if so think about trucks, noise, and dust created. If the community is new still view it from satellite, granted the image might not be that updated, but you should be able to tell if you like the layout of not. One can tell how big a pond/lake is in relation to house sizes. Search online for the rules - do they require curtain going up within three days of purchasing the house - yes, you can find this out. Use bestplaces.com to check weather, jobs, ages, political sides, etc. Google county and city tax information. Does the community land in two different counties - is one side of the community supported by a higher tax base - such as a boating yacht club, and the other side of the community in a different county isn't - do you want to pay a lot or little in property tax. Also will you be paying both country and city property tax? Is the community and county pet friendly - what is there max. number of pets in the household? Do they count something small as a bird as one item? Is it tax friendly? Is it in the state of extreme weather - hurricanes, tornadoes - your insurance would be higher. Will you fellow neighbors be snowbirds and you'll be left at the community by yourself? We had ruled out FL and I didn't like the lack of water in AZ. I had always searched gated and age restricted on 55places.com. TN appealed to me due to no state tax on 401K/403B, etc. but I didn't like their gated and restricted communities - so I took off those filters and found a community that is close to being practically perfect - perfect enough! And think of all the money and my vacation time we saved but doing the research online.

I don't know why, but I was always very timid about visiting active adult or 55+ communities when we were driving by one. Even though I was very curious to see what they were like, I was put off by the guards at the gates and the thought of enduring a sales pitch. Even when we stopped and were granted permission to drive around, I still never learned very much. You don't get a good sense of anything from that: the amenities, the people that live there, what the homes look like, what it is like to live there. So finally I realized the smart thing was to stop at the gate (calling ahead to get an appointment is better) and go to the sales office or model home. You learn so much from these short visits, and so if they offer to drive you around the community it is even better. You will see much more and have time for the questions that come to you. Go for it!

I've read many times that when looking at long term care facilities for a loved one that it's good to stop in unannounced to get an idea of how the place is when they aren't expecting a visit. It would be good if that same principle was possible for 55+ communities. Sales people and the home owners they have cleared to speak with potential buyers aren't there to point out the warts! That' s why it's such a good thing to rent in an area and meet people who live in the community, google the name of the developer and the work "complaints" - its an eye opener and many of the comments will be from disgruntled buyers, but you can get an idea of the issues and sometimes a hint on the responsiveness of the builder. Also, if you are considering a place that it not fully built-out and run by the homeowners try to find out how the transfer of the HOA went in other communities the builder has put up; we rented in a place that was in the process of such a transition and it wasn't (and still isn't) pretty. Read the very small print on all documents, but the sales documents and the HOA documents and also be familiar with the laws in the state you are moving - some states seem to be pro consumer while others are pro builder.

Our friend and colleague Ted Carr is writing a series around his choosing and moving to an active adult community in the Phoenix area. It is pretty good and worth reading (he also has podcasts you can listen to). His site is retirehoppy.com

My wife and I are in the process of investigating 55plus communities. We’d like to move to a community which is very golf cart friendly, where we can get around the community (shopping, dining, entertainment and activities) using a golf cart, similar to what the Villages offer. Is there any way I can sort on communities that are “golf cart friendly” rather than diving into each community listing see if this applies.

Editor's note: Many people find the golf cart lifestyle a good one. You can use Advanced Search on the site (see Search in top navigation) to select by golf cart friendly to help narrow down the search.

My wife and I drove by an active community in North Carolina with a big gate and guard. She said why we go in and see what it looks like. So happy we did! Told the guard we wanted to look around and he directed us to the visitors center, where we met a helpful rep. She drove us around and that gave us the chance to ask questions and see things and hear details we would have missed ourselves. Turns out the community wasn't for us, but at least we found that out, as well as useful details to consider in our search.