From RV enthusiasts to Jimmy Buffett fans to yogis, there’s a niche retirement community for almost everyone.
Via Kiplinger.com
Moving famously like a pig-in-a-python through the economy for seven-plus decades, Baby Boomers have been shaping consumer goods and services since they were in onesies. Now, history’s most influential generation is fueling the growth of the next logical sector: the niche retirement community.
Niche retirement communities are exactly what they sound like. They’re residential developments, urban, suburban and even seafaring, designed to appeal to narrowly cast affinity groups–from Jimmy Buffett fans to yoga practitioners. And they come in almost every type of senior accommodation — from active to independent, assisted living through continuing care.
Niche projects account for a small percentage of the nation’s 50,000 or so senior communities and facilities. But they are “the segment to watch,” says Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University, and a consultant to the field. There are five to six dozen university-based retirement communities for retirees who want to return to the student and academic life. There are some two dozen properties focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors. There are retirement communities for retired postal workers, equestrians, environmentalists, RV enthusiasts and Parrot Head fans of singer Jimmy Buffett. Even Disney is getting in on the action; it’s about to launch Storyliving, a planned community in California “for the next chapter of your life” that includes a 55+ neighborhood.
Boomers, who are hitting 65 at the rate of 10,000 people a day, are buying in.
- In November 2017, when Buffett announced his first Latitude Margaritaville in Daytona Beach, Fla., an active-living property for people “55 and better,” more than 150 fans and other lovers of the flip-flop life camped out overnight at the sales-office for first dibs on 300 properties. Today, Latitude Daytona Beach is a planned community of 7,000 people and there is a waiting list for homes under construction. There is another Latitude in the Florida panhandle, one in North Carolina, and two or three planned for Texas.
- In 2016, when the Delaware-based Kendal Corp. announced Enso Village, a life-plan community devoted to Zen tradition in Northern California’s wine country, 1,194 people put down $1,000 for a priority reservation; when the 275 units went on the market in 2020, they sold out in four months; Kendal is now developing a second Enso Village in Southern California.
- Nalanda Estates near Sarasota, Fla., which describes itself as an Active Indian Retirement community of 83 homes, states on its website it is sold out.
- Florida’s The Villages–renown as a hotbed of conservative politics and libertine social lives–has sold some 70,000 houses.
“A developer could open a Grateful Dead community and fill it quickly” says Carle. “I can virtually guarantee it.”
Read more: Kiplinger.com
