Is Detroit the next retirement hot spot?
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Lately I’ve been thinking about retiring to Cleveland. Oh, sure, laugh, but hear me out.
Cleveland has (1) museums with parking by the front door; (2) a beautiful lake; (3) the Cleveland Clinic and other great health resources; and (4) a convenient airport. Oh, and one more thing: Cleveland has really cheap real estate. So I could take my Washington-Baltimore corridor housing money (median home value, $310,000) and trade it in for an average Cleveland house (median home value, $114,000). And THAT would give me almost $200,000 worth of cash that I could use to fly to Key West or Cozumel for the winters, even if I didn’t downsize my house.
Yes, rust belt real estate has taken a hit, and so have some previously popular retirement spots like Phoenix and Las Vegas. That got me to thinking: How low do prices have to go before they attract new immigrants? And can you save enough by moving to one of those beaten down cities to come away with change-your-lifestyle cash?
I asked Zillow, the real estate research website, to run some numbers and provide a sanity check. “It’s an intriguing concept,” Stan Humphries, the firm’s chief economist, said tactfully. ”The savings that people could see by going to some of these cheaply priced markets do add up to real savings, and they could use the savings for travel or other discretionary items.”
Zillow crunched the numbers like this: First, they looked at all metropolitan areas that had below-average median home values. Then, they eliminated places that didn’t have convenient and busy airports, so travel wouldn’t be a problem. They ranked cities by low home values and property taxes, access to healthcare and airport size. And came up with this top ten, ranked here by their median home value.
| City: | Median home value: |
|---|---|
| Charleston | $72,200 |
| Detroit | $76,500 |
| Memphis | $96,700 |
| Pittsburgh | $107,700 |
| Tampa | $112,600 |
| Cleveland (yes!!) | $114,300 |
| Orlando | $119,500 |
| Las Vegas | $127,100 |
| Phoenix | $130,800 |
| New Orleans | $152,900 |
Of course, not everyone will want to spend their golden years in Detroit or Cleveland. But for me, these cities would feel more like home than you might expect.
For starters, they both have losing football teams, too.
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Also consider the fact that Michigan does not tax pension income.
Pittsburgh, where I’ve lived for over 25 years, is a great city. Low crime, low cost of living, wonderful neighborhoods, excellent healthcare and oh, yea, we have a football team, too
It’s important for people to understand that not all “rust belt” cities are created equal….
Seriously, it’s the sort of place you can live cheaply — and then use your leftover money to travel with. Personally, I love San Diego, but I really don’t want to worry about losing my house to a wild fire, or live in Florida and worry about a hurricane. A couple of months of snowy weather is fine. Just put some logs on the fire and snuggle with the cats. It makes Spring so much more thrilling….
As a near-retiree, I hear you when you say that low taxes and healthcare are more important than the weather sometimes. The problem with “access to healthcare” for retirees under 65 is that there needs to be a state exchange for individual health insurance policyholders – otherwise you could have Cleveland Clinic and not get an insurer to write you a policy – access means access to providers AND insurance for those of us not on Medicare. Many retirees are not Medicare-eligible and have pre-existing conditions. Many insurance cos are just refusing to insure rather than waiver these conditions. So the concept is correct, but the devil is in the details. Let me know where I can get insurance and providers w pre-existing conditions under age 65 and I will be there!!!
Linda please! You will not retire to Detroit. Nobody would retire to Detroit. You would retire on January 1st and be robbed or mugged the first time you left your house after dark.
Great Picture Just where I want to retire To shovel snow in my Golden Years or I can go out and get shot in big Detroit City
After living moat of my life in San Diego, Las Angeles, New York City, and then Connecticut, I have now lived in Akron, Ohio, just south of Cleveland for 5 years and my quality of life has never been better….I dont wait in lines for movie theaters; I very rarely have to make reservations for dining out in restaurants; I hear quality symphonies for half to one quarter the price in NY or LA; I go to (and are a member of)exceptional Art and Natural History museums in Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton; All of my health care needs are serviced by University Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic; my property taxes are low; my food prices are less….And I put up with much less snow than either New York or Connecticut….What’s my downside? Listening to uninformed people like waldo13 and rufusdaddy who have no idea what they’re missing here in the rust belt….But, then, maybe that’s a good thing…
Waldo suggests an interesting point, Here’s a fact: The Mayor of Detroit recently proposed bulldozing 45 sq.miles of outlying real estate around Detroit proper and turning it into farmland so that citizens who chose to relocate toward the city center would have access to fresh food. Naturally the soil would be vigorously tested for contamination-yeah right- then small farmers would be sold land at market adjusted rates -sure- More likely, Insaneto Corp. will buy all the land spray it with Herbipesticide #3 then plant genetically horrified crops and dump them on the markets in town. Lets see if the owners of Whole(paycheck)Foods Markets and Stonedfield Farms eat the food labeled “conventional” meaning sprayed with the DDT the us sold Mexico-not- Boycott WholeFoods & Stoneyfield Farms and tell them to stop bribing Tom Nutsack over at the USDA to poison our children.
Jeeze Linda your hilarious. Maybe you should try writing for Sat.Nite Live they could use a comic like you… .
There’s a giant disparity between living within the city of Pittsburgh and living within Detroit and Cleveland. Sure Detroit and Cleveland have nice suburbs, but who wants to live miles outside the city just to find neighborhoods that are decent enough for people of retirement age to live in? The main reason one lives within the city is to enjoy all that the city experience has to offer.
I’m a Cleveland resident not even close to retirement age that knows the city like the back of my hand and there’s only two spots in Cleveland (outside of the very overpriced and underpopulated Downtown)that are anywhere near reasonable for retirees: Little Italy/Murray Hill and a small area of West Cleveland that shares a border with the suburb of Lakewood. Even with two decent areas established, you still have to deal with services that have been slashed in the city due to lack of funding and the fact that the public transportation is far from efficient and safe. The light rail to the airport is the exception, but everywhere else you’d travel to would require a vehicle.
There are areas of Detroit that are stereotypical danger zones. The lifestyle of poverty all around you is not pretty.
However, these are dominantly within Detroit city limits. The metro area has plenty of $40,000 houses in decent, safe areas.
Linda is smart to suggest this. Snowbirding to vacation rentals is extremely common, and Michigan has a lot to offer during the summer if you get north of Flint. Not being tied to real estate lets you explore a different place every winter.
I think by retiring in Cleveland she means Shaker Heights, Rocky River, Bratenahl, or Chagrin Falls. In Detroit she probably means Grosse Pointe, Birmingham or Bloomfield Hills.
Trust me, 76K in Detroit will buy you a city block with homes or a mansion. You will not get homeowners insurance and car insurance will be in the stratosphere. personal security? Good luck with that!
The real question is: would this be an investment or would you be overpaying even at these relatively low prices?
I think we all know the answer to that.
@tjr – Shaker Heights?? Been there. Done that. Crime is on the rise in the past 5-10 yrs in a horrid way. And the educational system is on the way down. Sad but true. I was a parent in that system, I know.
As everyone has mentioned, every city on the list is the dregs in terms of crime/personal safety. Every last one ranks at 10 or below on a scale of 1 to 100 (100 being the safest cities in the US). NYC is a 33, to put it in even greater perspective. Perhaps, some of these cities (Vegas? Tampa?) will see a resurgence. But I wouldn’t suggest buying property there now. Those prices are only going down, and there’s no guarantee (or reason to believe) that they will rise by any appreciable amount in the near future (think 10 yrs+).
A better story would have been one that highlights the interesting options of retiring in a US college town (Raleigh/Durham – if you want sun, Madison WI – if you can tolerate snow). That would have been a piece worth reading.
I have been thinking about retiring to a ” better place” to live and getting out of the congestion, the traffic, the high price of health care, etc.
I have decided that instead of the perfect city or area to retire, family, friends and a sense of christian community are more important than housing prices, or distance from the airports. I want to live within 20 minutes of my children and grandchildren. Ten minutes to a church, bank and parks.