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Daily Real Estate News  |  June 12, 2007

Developers Home in on Retirees Who Stay Near Home

It’s a myth that most retirees pull up stakes and move to Florida or Arizona. In fact, retiring close to home is the norm rather than the exception.

An AARP analysis of U.S. Census figures from 1990 and 2000 shows that nine out of every 10 Americans 60 years and older were living in the same county they’d lived in five years before the surveys were taken; more than three-quarters had even lived in the same house.

Savvy developers are recognizing this reality and finding ways to benefit from it. Pulte has opened 53 Del Webb active-adult retirement communities since 2001, many of them in states not considered retirement meccas: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois.

Dave Schreiner, a vice president for Pulte homes, says his company started out building retirement villages in Arizona and California, where they served a minority who wanted to leave home in favor of a warmer spot. But by the mid-90s, Schreiner says, the company had switched its focus to building retirement villages near population centers all over the country.

“It's perceived to be a trend, but really, we were just catching up," says Schreiner. "There was a market there always; it was just a market that hasn't been served."

Source: USA Today, Adam Edelman (06/11/2007)