Finding Your Retirement Home

Selecting the right city for your retirement is perhaps the most important step in the retirement process. However, it's not the last one. After all, you're not going to sleep on a park bench for the next twenty years, are you? No! You're going to find the home of your dreams and you're going to live in it. The three most important words when you're in the process of selecting a home, whether it's in Boca Raton or Oakville: real estate agent. Hiring a real estate agent is a favor to yourself, since it makes the whole process easier. The next best thing you can do? Read our series of articles on finding your retirement home.

When you're shopping for a retirement home, you're not just looking for A home. You're looking for THE home. The home you were dreaming about during the years you were crammed into one of those Brampton condominiums. When you're retired, you're completely justified in wanting your home to be perfect. While it's unlikely there's a home out there that has everything you want, you should make a checklist of the features you're looking for anyway. We can help you decide what to put in the must-have column rather than the would-like column and how to reconcile your idea of perfection with reality so it doesn't feel like you're settling.

If your list of wants is very specific, you may want to consider building your retirement home yourself or having it commissioned. There are plenty of eccentric homes in Hudson Valley cities where styles have been melded or secret passages have been added. Many of them were built by retired people, since they were planning on finishing their lives there and didn't have to worry so much about resale value. If you're considering building rather than buying, we can help you figure out if it's worth it.

If you're a person who likes to work with their hands, building a house isn't necessarily the only option for you. There are plenty of Rockwood homes for sale that could use a little fixing up. Once you're retired, you have lots of time for home renovation projects, so by buying a fixer-upper you not only save money on the purchase but you get something to do all day and your heirs can reap the return on your investment. If this is something you think you might be interested in consult our guide on house flipping for retirees.

Those who cringe at the very idea of carpentry or valve repair might be more interested in our article on retirement condos. Condos are like apartments in that all the maintenance is done for you by an on-site super, freeing you up to play racquetball and take long baths instead of messing around in the electrical box every time you blow a fuse. Condo living is becoming more and more popular, especially among retirees, because not only are the mundane tasks like lawn mowing or snow shoveling taken care of for you, but there is also the option to time share so you can live in more than one city.