Home After 55
Ever since Jeanne Bazemore was in her 20s, she liked the idea of living in an active retirement community one day.
"I'd see those brochures with the elderly couple playing tennis and I'd say, 'That's what I want when I get older,'" Bazemore recalls. "My husband, Butch, was not the same way."
But a casual visit to Solivita, a 55-plus community in Poinciana, a master-planned community in Osceola County, caused the reluctant spouse, to change his mind.
"The next thing I know, we're signing a contract," Bazemore, 59, remembers.
The couple sold their big home in Kissimmee and moved into their new, smaller home in Solivita a year ago.
And Bazemore hasn't slowed down since.
She plays tennis, works out and swims at the community's 32,000-square-foot Riviera Spa & Fitness Center and enjoys social events in the Starlite Ballroom.
If she liked, she could also play golf, paint or sculpt at the Waterfront Galleries, drop by the Investments Gallery to take a peek at the stock ticker, shoot a couple of games at the Billiards Gallery or eat at any one of several restaurants within the community, which is developed by Avatar Properties.
"It's like I'm dreaming," Bazemore says. "I keep pinching myself. And when Butch comes home, he says he drives through the gates and feels like we're living in paradise, a resort."
Gil and Phyllis Rifkin are equally excited about their new retirement home-to-be. The veteran suburbanites plan to trade their single-family home on a big lot in the Dr. Phillips area for a downtown address 16 stories high.
About a year ago, they signed a contract to buy a corner unit in The VUE, a 35-story downtown Orlando condominium building overlooking Lake Eola. They expect to move in about a year from now, when the building is complete.
The couple cemented their decision to shop for a condominium after watching last year's hurricanes rip 21 trees from their yard.
"We decided that, after living here this long, we should look for a change in lifestyle," says Gil Rifkin, 71. "We're looking forward to not having the responsibilities of a house. And I don't think a hurricane can get us up there. We'll be able to look down and see everybody else scurry around."
The Rifkins' new condominium, at 2,100 square feet, will be about the same size as their current home. And it comes with plenty of amenities, from the pool and health club to less common perks such as an interior dog park and a biometric security system that uses residents' fingerprints for access.
"It wasn't a matter of downsizing space, it was a matter of downsizing responsibility," Rifkin says.
Both the Bazemores and the Rifkins are typical of today's 55-plus buyers, says Bill Parks, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based consultant to builders of active-adult communities. Builders and developers are busy hiring consultants like Parks to help them figure out just where—and how—the coming hoard of rock 'n roll retirees wants to live.
There's plenty at stake. Nationally, the baby boomer market is 78 million strong. And while many will spend the rest of their lives in their current homes, between 50 percent and 59 percent plan to buy new retirement homes, according to this year's Del Webb Baby Boomer Survey.
And their housing choices are far from homogenous, says Parks. The first wave of boomers (those born between 1947 and 1964) are increasingly making unconventional choices.
Doing what the Bazemores did-trading old suburban homes in traditional neighborhoods for new suburban homes in amenity- and activity-rich adult retirement communities—is nothing new, especially in Florida.
But leaving suburbia behind for life in a multigenerational urban condominium, like the Rifkins are doing, is unique to this generation of 55-plus buyers. And the trend is growing.
"These loft and condominium projects being built in urban infill areas are not really targeted to retirees, but retirees are buying them," Parks says. "Condominiums are popular because they're not just low maintenance, they're no maintenance. That gives active people a tremendous amount of time to do things."
Hope McCampbell, vice president of marketing for The VUE, says she had expected most of the project's buyers to be young, childless urban professionals. But more than 40 percent have been 40 years old and older.
"We have a very high percentage of our buyers who are empty nesters who want the ease and the convenience and the quality of life that living in a condo brings," McCampbell says. "It's a lock-and-leave mentality."
About 90 percent of The VUE's 384 units have been sold, says McCampbell. But there are a variety of different types of units left, from a 568-square-foot studio to a 3,000-square-foot penthouse. Prices range from the $300s to $4 million.
The VUE isn't the only downtown Orlando condominium project proving popular with 55-plus buyers.
"I'm finding that with the empty nesters, some of them are taking the profit from the sale of an old home and buying more than one new home," says Phil Rampy, president and owner of Olde Town Brokers.
Rampy, with his business partner Craig Ustler, have developed more than 150 condominium units in downtown Orlando.
Many empty nesters are netting enough to buy a condo downtown and then another one at the beach, says Rampy.
"You're beginning to see people becoming very diverse about their homes."
And diversity is just what 55-plus buyers will find in Central Florida.
In addition to the condo high-rises and the master-planned communities where anyone can live, there is also a plethora of elaborate age-restricted projects. Indeed, Orlando is encircled by such communities throughout Osceola, Lake, Marion, Sumter and western Volusia counties.
The Villages, for example, straddles Lake, Marion and Sumter counties. The 23,000-acre retirement mecca, which boasts two town centers and its own daily newspaper, sold nearly 4,000 homes last year. That ranked it as the fastest-growing master-planned community in the United States.
Lake County has also become home to similar—if less sprawling—communities, including The Plantation at Leesburg.
The Plantation advertises itself as a less-busy alternative to The Villages. But life there can still be as hyperactive as residents like. The development employs three full-time coordinators who oversee more than 100 weekly activities.
The 1,759-acre community, located on U.S. 27 six miles south of downtown Leesburg won an Award of Merit for planning and growth management from the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council.
The Plantation at Leesburg Limited Partnership is developing the community, but Lakewood Development Company is the general operating partner.
The Plantation offers a choice of more than 25 single-family models with prices ranging from the $180s to $300s, including home sites.
Pringle Development, which has been building 55-plus communities throughout Lake County for decades, has developed different themes for each of its communities.
Its past successes include Royal Highlands, a golf course community, and Royal Harbor, with a nautical theme tied to its location on Little Lake Harris.
Royal Harbor was so popular, in fact, that Pringle decided to make its newest development, The Lakes of Mount Dora, a waterfront community as well. There was just one problem-the site where it was to be built encompassed no bodies of water.
"The community had originally been designed with a golf course," says Brian Nagle, Pringle's director of sales and marketing. "But then our owner and founder, John Pringle, said, 'Let's just dig out the tees and greens and fairways and make lakes.' Golf courses are popular, but water is even more popular."
Even before the lakes were dug and filled with water, 230 of 950 home sites were sold.
"That was asking a lot of buyers, to believe that the lakes were coming," he says.
But believe they did. Now buyers can see the water and soon, the community's clubhouse, which will sit on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by newly created lakes.
Home prices in The Lakes of Mount Dora will range from $200,000 to $500,000.
Meanwhile, south of Leesburg on U.S. 27, Pringle is developing a community designed to celebrate Florida in its more natural state.
The Legacy of Leesburg will feature 950 homes built around natural conservation areas on an unspoiled stretch of the Palatlakaha River. More than half the community's home sites have been sold.
Another new Pringle project, The Heritage, will have just 182 home sites on S.R. 48 near U.S. 27.
"It will be smaller, more cozy and neighborly," says Nagle. "There'll be front porches, and residents will be able to walk to the clubhouse."
Many baby-boom buyers are looking for age-restricted communities that are part of multi-generational developments.
Victoria Park's Victoria Gardens neighborhood should please those who want to live next door to other 55-plus buyers, but across the street from young families.
A gated community for active adults, Victoria Gardens takes up one quadrant of Victoria Park, a 1,859-acre development in west Volusia County being developed by The St. Joe Company. Two other portions of the quadrant, created by the intersection of Orange Camp Road and Martin Luther King Beltway near DeLand, contain the multi-generational neighborhoods of Victoria Commons and Victoria Hills.
At Victoria Gardens' core is a clubhouse featuring a café, a ballroom, a billiards room, a card room, a demonstration kitchen, an arts and crafts room, a business center, a computer lab, a fitness center, a resort-style pool and spa, tennis courts and community gardens.
Such separation between generations means 55-plus folks won't have to hear "Marco Polo!" shouts at the community pool—unless they want to.