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Try It NOWCategory: Financial and taxes in retirement
Probably you get a lot of newsletters from your financial advisors. We confess we don’t pay too careful attention to most of them, but recently a newsletter came in from Vanguard that we thought was particularly helpful. Although the focus of this site is primarily to help you choose the…
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
May 20 -- The National Association of Realtors announced that home prices slid over 7% in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the year earlier period. Although sales volume is down as most buyers continue to stay on the sidelines, there is one category of sale that is hot right now - foreclosures.
In Southern California almost 38 percent of overall sales in April were from foreclosures. These increased sales will probably benefit the overall real estate market, including homes in active adult communities. The sales gains are clearly coming from lower prices - as banks take action to get non-performing assets off their books, prices go down. In fact there are reports that certain funds are taking big positions in buying foreclosed properties, often for cents on the dollar.
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Category: Active adult communities
May 13 — A report from Arizona State University’s Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness brought some welcome good news to the Arizona market for active adult communities recently. The school found that price drops in the area of over 30% helped spur increased sales in retirement communities among snowbirds…
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
New home sales fell 8.5% in March, according to the Commerce Department. The vacancy rate for homes is at 2.9%, the highest level recorded since the Census Bureau started keeping track in 1956. Over 18 million U.S. homes were empty in this year's first quarter. Sound like bad news?
Not everybody thinks so. There are those who believe that the bottom of the real estate market is either here, or will be here soon. The optimists, on whose side Topretirements rests, believe that the mismatch between inventories (still way too high), demand (pathetic), and prices (still too high in spite of very big reductions in some markets) will eventually be resolved and the real estate market will return to equilibrium.
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Category: General Retirement Issues
April 21 - You know there is a movement afoot when both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times offer up features on retirement communities during the same weekend.
The Journal's article was excerpted from a book by Andrew Blechman called "Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias". In it Mr. Blechman wonders why a couple that he is friends with have decided to move to The Villages, the giant active adult community of 75,000 souls near Ocala, Florida. He describes in great detail what The Villages is all about - endless activity at a reasonable price in pretty good weather. In our opinion
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Category: Active adult communities
April 15 -- Imagine a town where a surprising number of residents have 2 golf carts - and only 1 car. Where the supermarket and high school have special golf cart parking lots. And where 72 of the 80 motor vehicles reported stolen last year were golf carts. That's Peachtree City, Georgia, one of America's largest planned communities -a perfect active adult community for many.
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Category: Active adult communities
April 9 -- For Sequoya, moving into a 55+ community in Yuma was "... boy what a mistake!" Similarly, Kimojimo "tried (a community in FL), lasted 9 months, and couldn't WAIT to get out!" Yet Bill55, who worked for years for Del Webb, "... met countless people who had no intention of living in an adult community. But for one reason or another they decided to give it a shot and I would see them around the community day after day taking part in all sorts of activities. At least 95% of those people said that moving there was the best decision of their lives!"
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Category: Baby Boomer Retirement Issues
April 5 -- You've heard of the U(na)-Bomber and U-2 the rock group. Now get ready for another U, the U-Boomers. Forbes Magazine recently published an article that differentiates among different sub-sets of baby boomers. The U-Boomers are a huge segment that constitutes about 24 million of the 76 or so million baby boomers out there.
The "U" stands for uncompromising, so U-Boomers are folks who intend to maintain their lofty lifestyle aspirations - but who won't necessarily have the financial means to execute on those dreams.
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Category: Green Retirement Communities
March 31 -- Baby boomers are known for their devotion to preserving the environment - at least when they are not driving their SUV's. So the big question is, will the folks who pioneered Earth Day look for green (sustainable) retirement and active adult communities? Just as important, will the marketers of those communities recognize the need and make the product available in an appealing concept?
We recently came across some examples of green communities, which is encouraging. Shea Homes, a large national home builder, has announced that environmentally friendly homes will be the focus of some of its new developments in Florida and other sun belt states. These homes will be so-called "eco-friendly", and will have energy saving features such as solar attic fans, motion-sensor triggered lighting, energy-efficient windows and appliances, and garages with electric-vehicle charging stations. Some materials like insulation will be recycled. According to a report in Off the Grid, Shea says
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Category: Retirement Real Estate
March 28 -- January housing statistics from Case-Shiller were released this week - and the news continues bad for sellers, good for buyers. Of the 20 metro markets that this firm tracks, only 1 metro managed higher real estate prices vs. the year ago period, Charlotte (+1.75%). The 19 others had declining prices, with 10 of them experiencing double digit declines. Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego had the biggest drops (Las Vegas went down over 19%). Overall the 20 city index showed a 10.7% decline in January 2008 vs. Jan. 2007.
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