Boomer Boomtowns: America’s 10 Fastest-Growing Retirement Hot Spots

By Lance Lambert | Jan 21, 2019

There has never been a generation quite as consequential as the baby boomers. They forever transformed music and politics, ushered in the computer era, pioneered fanciful notions like free love, recreational drugs, Amazon.com, and Hot Pockets. So what do they do for an encore?  Completely reshape retirement.

Get ready for a graying tsunami: Nearly 50 million of the enormous cluster of 74 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 have yet to hit 65—with around 10,000 a day making that milestone over the next decade.

This massive surge of retirees is already reshaping real estate markets across the county. In fact, nearly 1.2 million people 55 or older relocated out of state last year, the highest number on record. Where are they all going? This generation of Americans, renowned for doing things their way, are eschewing some of the traditional communities favored by their parents in their later years. So realtor.com® set out to find the nation’s fastest-growing retirement destinations.

“Baby boomers are so hard to pin down,” says Rodney Harrell, director of livability thought leadership at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “There are so many of them, and they’re choosing a wider range of options than previous generations. …There’s no one size fits all.”

All the places that have made our list are walkable, tourist-friendly destinations—and that’s where the similarities end. Many of these retirement havens are in warmer climates in the South and Southwest. A few are in the chilly Northeast and Midwest, and one is about as far north as you can get without going to Alaska. Some have long been popular with seniors, while others were places where new retirees vacationed as children. And those that can’t boast ocean, lake, or mountain views often make up for it with their dry heat.

One troubling note: Boomers have less in retirement savings than previous generations, a vexing problem, since they’re expected to live longer than their parents, according to the Stanford Center on Longevity. They’ve only socked away a median $209,000—while one in three have no nest egg at all for their so-called golden years. This explains why some of the more luxurious locations on our list are popular with more affluent boomers, while the appeal of others lies in their affordability.

We came up with our rankings by looking at every metropolitan statistical area* and zeroing in on places where at least a quarter of the population are age 60 or above; we perused our listings for phrases such as “aging in place,” “senior-friendly,” and “ground-floor master bedrooms.” Then we looked at the number of folks ages 55 and up who moved into new metros between 2016 and 2017.**

Since not everyone who lives in a retirement town is there year round, we added in the increase in the percentage of second homes in these metros. And we only included two metros per state, to ensure some geographic diversity.

So where are the places that are booming with boomers?

“They did a great job keeping a small-town feel. We don’t have anything that is too commercial, not even a McDonalds drive-thru,” says Patricia McGuire, a broker associate with Coldwell Banker Sunstar Realty, describing the area. “Instead, there’s lots of walking tours and bike paths.”

Retirees especially like Punta Gorda Isles, a neighborhood of single-family homes offering breathtaking views of the ocean and easy access for boaters. Homes range from $200,000 to over $1 million.

But the cherry on the top of Punta Gorda for aging Americans is that there is no state income tax to eat away at their nest eggs. Nada. Zero. Zilch.