Will These House Hunters Find Their Dream Homes?
City or country? Downsize or expand? Follow 10 people through bidding wars and tough choices on the road to their new home
Top center tiny house, Shutterstock; all others, Getty Images (5)
Downsizing has its upsides. Research shows that older Americans who move as part of a retirement plan tend to be happier than those who stay put. Here’s a look at where and why several age-50-plus single people and couples are relocating.
We invite you to make your own picks by scrolling to the bottom of each scenario. Click on the winning home button to read about each home and see how your picks stack up against our home hunters’ final selections. (Note that in some cases the choices described reflect representative examples rather than actual properties considered, and prices are largely pre-pandemic.)
The Scenario: Small-town charm
Photo by Theo Stroomer
House hunters: Franck and Tracy Louis-Marie, 52 and 57
The minute their nest emptied this year, the Louis-Maries decided to leave Los Angeles. “We literally wanted to blaze new trails,” Tracy says. “And drive fewer freeways!” Franck adds. On the wish list: a city on a “human scale, definitely not sprawling,” Franck says. Someplace, Tracy explains, “where people walk along a tree-lined Main Street, with public art and historic buildings and friendly mom-and-pop shops.” Also, access to the great outdoors. And after years of mostly renting in L.A., they wanted to own a two- or three-bedroom home with a big yard.
Budget: $450,000
Moving from: Marina del Rey, California, apartment rental
Family status: Married 25 years; two 20-something kids
Employment: Tracy: part-time adviser to companies on social-impact policies; Franck: art director for entertainment companies. Both work remotely.
Forever home contenders
1. Grass Valley, California
2. Grand Junction, Colorado
3. Portland, Oregon
The Scenario: Time to Super-Downsize?
Reed Young
House hunter: Betsy Barbour, 66
When rising fees priced Betsy out of her condo, she needed a housing solution she could cover with partial Social Security, part-time jobs and limited savings. “I couldn’t afford to completely retire,” she says. She sold her two-bedroom condo for $75,000.
Budget: $500/month
Moving from: 1,200-square-foot Fort Myers, Florida, condo that she owned outright
Family status: Divorced; one adult son, one grandchild
Employment: Retired field linguist (she created written languages out of oral ones); working part-time jobs as a specialist in cross-cultural communications
Forever home contenders
1. Fort Myers, Florida
2. Tavares, Florida
3. Fort Myers, Florida
The Scenario: The Cabin Is Calling
Ackermann Gruber
House hunters: Chris and Kathleen Rewey, 69 and 53
The Reweys expected to retire to a house they built years ago outside Madison. But when COVID hit, Chris obsessed about a log cabin his dad’s dad had built on a lake in northern Wisconsin. “My uncles sold it in the 1990s, leaving a hole in my heart,” he says. Meanwhile, in 2021, the couple bought a winter home in Panama City, Florida, where they could work remotely and rent during the summer. With winter covered, whither the rest of the year?
Budget: $560,000
Moving from: Madison, Wisconsin
Family status: Married 25 years; no kids
Employment: Chris: head of a software company; Kathleen: sales executive for a social-care organization
Forever home contenders
1. Panama City, Florida
2. Minocqua, Wisconsin
3. Eastern Tennessee
The Scenario: Follow the Parents or Fly Free?
Caleb Alvarado
House hunter: Laura Campbell, 55
Laura’s active 80-something parents regularly rented a winter place in Florida, so she decided to move south from the family’s Connecticut base and stay in Florida year-round. “It was important to me to be close to them,” says Laura, who arrived in Delray Beach in October 2019. Then came COVID-19. “My parents decided they wanted to live out their whole lives in Connecticut, where they still had so many friends. I had a big decision to make.”
Budget: $2,200/month
Moving from: Delray Beach, Florida, apartment rental
Family status: Divorced; two adult sons
Employment: Life coach and consultant
Forever home contenders
1. Golden, Colorado
2. Delray Beach, Florida
3. Woodbridge, Connecticut
The Scenario: A Place for Dad
Gabriela Hasbun
House hunter: Bob Grant, 71
Grant was living in a condo near the Vegas Strip when he had a stroke seven years ago. In California, his five children — all ex-pro athletes — rallied, and his daughter, who lives in the Bay Area, took Bob in. But after several years, she simply found it too hard to care for Grant and three (now four) young kids.
Budget: $175,000
Moving from: Las Vegas condo
Family status: Divorced; five adult kids, 10 grandchildren
Employment: Retired chemical engineer
Forever home contenders
1. Bay Area, California
2. Bay Area, California
3. Bay Area, California
The Scenario: Sellin’ Off, Movin’ On
Peter Ross
House hunters: Quinn and Vivian Golden, 61 and 59
“We told our kids, ‘Mom and Dad aren’t going to retire here, so grow your wings and fly,’ ” says Quinn, whose job “got COVIDed” in 2020, as he puts it. The Goldens sold their 2,200-square-foot hilltop cabin for $400,000, and sold motorcycles, boats, even a Model A Ford, to help bridge the gap until full retirement. But they needed a place to live.
Budget: $400,000
Moving from: Alton, New Hampshire, hilltop log home
Family status: Married 36 years; six adult kids
Employment: Quinn: retired paper-mill sales professional; Vivian: retired stay-at-home mom
Forever home contenders
1. Portland, Maine
2. Everywhere Road Trip
3. Dansville, New York
The Scenario: Eyes on the South
Andrew Hetherington
House hunter: Donna Deans, 68
Donna Deans arrived in New York City in 1977, right after finishing college. She had planned to live there forever. But when the pandemic shuttered the furniture company where she worked, she kissed the Big Apple goodbye, looking to the South. Her $1,700-a-month, rent-stabilized one-bedroom place was “a bargain for New York City,” she says, but not cheap enough to allow her to live off Social Security and her 401(k) for the rest of her life. Her goal: to find someplace under $1,200 a month in a modern building, with a deck or garden. And “you don’t move to the South without excellent AC,” she adds.
Budget: $1,200/month
Moving from: Brooklyn, New York, apartment rental
Marital status: Single; no kids, dating
Employment: Recently retired furniture salesperson
Forever home contenders
1. Sanford, Florida
2. Wilson, North Carolina
3. Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia
David Hochman, a contributing editor to AARP The Magazine, is a journalist and features writer based in Los Angeles. His December 2020 AARP Bulletin story on nursing homes, “18 Weeks,” has won several national awards.