Jeana, thanks for the interesting link. I put it into an active link so it is clickable.

Please note, I'm taking my computer to the shop tomorrow, for at least 2 days, so it might be a while before I can post much. Not dropping out of sight, just fixing things.

Here is a link that might be useful: Boomers Aging In Place

Thanks moccasinlanding = I'm computer illiterate compared to most of you all here!!!

~Jeana

For some time, I have been fantasizing about investing in a small single family home. Buy, rent, and hold. When/if the market recovers, there will be many people, including baby boomers, looking to slip into the market and into entry-level smaller homes. In 10-20 years will we look back with regret that we missed an amazing opportunity to invest in real estate? I am no expert and I call this "dinner-table talk!"

I appreciate this "age in place" concept. Good article with lots of valid, common sense, points. I like the way it links retirement to real estate. Baby boomers like myself, will have more options than the generations before us that flocked to Florida for their retirement years.

So what do you think? Small, entry-level home, great location, good neighborhood, low maintenance - smart investment now or foolish? Could it be any worse than what's been going on with my 403B plan at work?

Dinner-table talk....

Well, Traceeeee, please pass the grits.... :)
Dinner table talk, luncheon fare as well.
I know a good friend who has bought several houses which were less than $50K and she is betting just what you are saying. For now, she and her partner are renting them out. She has a home on the water, with tall steps to reach the living levels. So while she can manage the steps, they are living high and mighty. But she considers a future time when they will--or she will if that is what the future holds--move to a smaller home in a tighter neighborhood. She is the one who found my little stucco cottage, just like she was the one who found our home on the water, which was subsequently 3 months later destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. So she is a very savvy lady about real estate.

She has no romantic fantasies about her houses, which is unlike myself. I could not resist the urge to make a house as perfect as I could. She looks at it from the sellability and from the payback on her investment in it. Also, she finds properties which are way under the valuation in asking price.

I'd say when you go shopping for a house that you consider such an investment, go like you would grocery shopping. DO NOT GO WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY. And do not fall in love with the house. Keep it business not romance.

I have always been a hopeless romantic. I am a great "idea" person. I've not been so great at executing my own dreams, just dreams of others. That's why I may have to depend on others in real estate that I know to perhaps execute my dream of an "alternative retirement lifestyle". What I'd REALLY like to do is buy an older, established neighborhood of 60's-70's modest ranch homes & rehab them into a retirement community. One thing I've noticed in the years of looking at ranch homes for sale is that it seems that most of them are currently owned by older people (who haven't done ANYTHING to their homes in 40-50 yrs!!!)in ranch home neighborhoods. I don't know how this could work, but I would buy all the houses, rehab them, & anyone over 50 could keep their home. One of the homes would be rehabbed to be a community common house with a pool, exercise room, activity room, office, etc.

There are soooo many neighborhoods like this here, with so many older people who are TRYING to age in place without a lot of family support cause their kids are living all over the country. They don't want to give up their independence, but struggle with upkeep & maintenence.

I wonder if dreams can come true...

~Jeana

Well this baby boomer has landed in the final home. I would think by now boomers should already be in their final homes with no mortgages car payments or credit card debt.Just the usual monthly bills. Thought that was the big goal or picture in life.

Guess we have a different out look. we have had rentals and they are a total pain. You might buy it for future retirement but you might not have a house to retire into after being a rental for many years.

We spent our money making our house what we want and need to live here for a very long time. Keep the rest of the money for retirement. I will fully retire in a couple of years or sooner. DH has been fully retired for a few years.

Guess it is a really hard call. I know of one internet friend trying to make the decision on where to move to from CA. She is agonizing over this decision. So glad we are settled.

thanks, i will have to show this to my mother

I think it's great that some baby boomers have settled & found their forever home. But a lot of us boomers have been busy moving for their jobs, & then in the meantime, their kids have been scattered around the country for their own careers. Soooo, do I go to Raleigh where the weather is great but my daughter who resides there would probably never come visit me with her jet-set lifestyle??? Or to Indy where my grateful son is but not that great of winters...or just say here, 10 hrs away but familiar, where brutal snows fall but we aren't crippled by it???

I'm not agonizing so much for myself as for others in the same situation.

~Jeana

Jeana we get the snows here too. I love the snow and like you they do not cripple us for the most part. Some times slow us down as far as plans go. But then what hurry are we in any more? We can always go to town the next day or week if the weather is that bad.

25 years ago we moved away from family. I know how that can be. Since we do not have kids it does make decisions on where to live easier. That family we moved away from are gone now.

We moved into this house three years ago. My husband is 71 now. 9 years older than I am. So for us it was getting pretty close to being a must to get settled. Our last move here ,as all of them, we did all by ourselves just the two of us. I do not think I could do that kind of heavy lifting even just three years later. I had a large tumor on my back then and it was hard for me to get all the packing and cleaning and move done. NOW I have psoriasis and am even less well then I was when I had the cancer. So you never know when some thing like this will strike. I am a little better but could not face a move.

We were not panicked to get moved in a hurry but after the winter we had in the house before this one we knew we could not stay up there on that hill. Way too many nights worrying what if some thing happened to my husband and he needed medical help and the ambulance would not be able to get into the 1/4 mile long snowed in by say 3 foot deep driveway.

We actually have been semi retired for 25 years. Both of us have worked on and off as we chose to. There really are no jobs here in our little town.The phone company is the largest employer. Then the school. One big reason we like it here as not many people can live here.We found it actually cost a person quite a bit to work. We live very simply.

Chris

I'm a person who takes risks and always have so to purchase an investment in real estate would be very easy for me to do. What have you got to lose?
In my life I've purchased six pieces of real estate and have owned four at the same time. The last one was purchased ten years ago and I was 62. It was for us. We bought a home on a lake in Maine but kept our winter home. I paid cash out of my IRA knowing that it would only gain in value.
Many would say I was taking a risk but I never thought so. First of all, it would never lose value and I knew I would retire in a few years and it would increase my joy of living.
At 72 now we're looking for a place in Tn. as in investment. My sister lives there and we go and stay with her during the worst of winter but I'd like a small place of our own. This time I agree with others that it might be crazy lol.
Our money is making nothing. The Maine house cost me 90,000 grand and is now 500.000 so, if you can find one with a good location and not too much work needed, do it.
At any time you can sell it for more than you paid and that's better than our investments are doing.