Wife and I are wanting to move to a place that we can retire (wont retire for a few years but want to move before that). We are looking for a place with a nice downtown with shops/bars/restaurants that we could walk to from our house, say less than a mile walk. We have been looking on our own and so far have found 2 places, Lebanon, Ohio Lebanon, OH and Lakewood, Ohio which are nice but struggling to find a house. (It doesn’t have to be Ohio, we just live there now so its easier to look there).
Smallish city but fairly close (30 minutes) to a larger metropolis preferably with professional baseball near by. MLB or minors etc. Would prefer a house and not condo although its not off the table. $400,000 max mortgage.
Appleton, Wisconsin comes to mind. It’s a mid-sized city (about 75K), and part of a larger metropolitan area: the “Fox Cities” (about 250K people), which also includes Neenah, Menasha, Oshkosh, and several smaller towns. It’s about 30 minutes away from Green Bay, which is a bit bigger (100K in the city itself, 320K in the metro area).
I have friends who live in Appleton, and they love the downtown area, which has a large number of interesting restaurants and bars (and hosts an annual “Mile of Music” music festival). It’s a college town (Lawrence University), and has always struck me as being a bit more trendy and diverse than much of the rest of that area of Wisconsin. The city is usually near the top of the lists of “best places to live in Wisconsin.”
Appleton is home to the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, which are the single-A affiliate of the Brewers – and if you want to catch an MLB game, the Brewers’ home stadium is a fairly easy 100 mile drive.
As far as housing prices, the various sources I’m looking at (Realtor.com, Zillow, Rocket Mortgage, etc.) are saying that the median sale price in recent months is around $270K - $300K.
Hot Springs Ark. is nice little/big town. Historic downtown. Nice restaurants and bars and great hospitality.
People like to live in Hot Springs village a few miles away, a suburban area.
The water sports are a fun way to enjoy your time. Nice lakesides.
Medical is a big part of the draw. It’s an older demographic so the hospitals and clinics are numerous.
Shopping center’s are nice. The mall is basically no more. But I think that’s how it is most everywhere.
Cheaper cost of living down here.
The heat/humidity in the summer turns some snowbirds off.
My Daddy loved the resort feel of the place.
Of course he was a big gambler and loved the track. This was before we had as many casinos close as we do now.
I can highly recommend Northville Michigan. The houses on my street are going for $400k and that is the very bottom of the market here. For that, you get 1000 sq ft with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths on the first floor , a full finished basement of another 1000 sq ft and it walks out to the yard. And an attached garage. I just desribed my house.
The town has a vibrant downtown and it is growing, doubling its size with new development next year. How? They just torn down the horse track that was on the southside of downtown and its going to be spectacular. New shops, condos and green space. Its booming and I am looking to sell by the end of May.
Its a 10 minute walk to downtown and is next to the best ice cream shop in Michigan, a winery and an apple orchard. They have concerts downtown on Friday and the main streets are closed during warm weather. It minutes away from two major malls, theaters and countless restaurants of every type within 15 minutes drive.
I am retiring and moving to the Philippines for a change in lifestyle. But this place is great. Oh, and downtown Detroit is just 35 minutes away to the east and it is a great city now, not dangerous at all, much better than 20 years ago. Ann Arbor is just 30 minutes away to the west, another really great town.
I live 12 miles from Urbana, OH. It’s a nice small city, and is a fairly short drive from Springfield and Dayton. And I’m pretty sure it’s cheaper than the cities to the west that are along I-75 (Tipp City, Troy, and Piqua).
Our daughter lives in Xenia, which is also pretty nice. Though I like Urbana better.
Many college towns might meet your requirements. When we lived in the Chapel Hill, NC area, that certainly would do that. I’ve only briefly visited the area in the past 30 years and it’s changed a LOT, but might still work.
Something to think of though: Does the town have transportation available, if you get to the point of not being able to drive any more? In the 1980s, Chapel Hill did not have much. There were daytime buses (nothing on weekends). I don’t know what taxi service was like.
My daughter lives in a small town in Vermont that has, similarly, okay daytime / Saturday bus service but taxi service is unreliable at best; I once had to walk to my hotel, with luggage, when arriving by train at 11 PM. Likely you’d have better luck finding Lyft/Uber in a college town; the place in Vermont has none. Even a larger city may have taxi shortages; my in-laws lived in Palm Beach County, Florida, and several times, after a late-night ER visit, they had trouble getting a ride home. I had trouble in Phoenix, Arizona - also late-night, as it happened.
We joke about moving to my daughter’s town - but that lack of transportation is daunting.
And consider connectivity to outside areas in the transit evaluation. How near is the closest major airport? Is there train / bus service and if so, to where and how often do the routes run?
Harrisburg, PA may meet your requirements. You could get a nice rowhouse in the downtown area, within walking distance of the AA Harrisburg Senators’ stadium, for somewhere in the 200’s. You wouldn’t be too far from Philly or Baltimore.
Thanks everyone. have been to Harrisburg and we liked it. Urbana isnt far from us either. we will certainly check out each locations. as always I love the help on the SD
For a change of pace, what about Port Orchard, Washington? population 17 thousand, about 13 mile west of West Seattle. Either drive or take the ferries to catch a Mariners game, check out the museums and/or the famous Pike Place Market. Here are about 30 homes (with no HOAs) in the area: Port Orchard, WA Homes for Sale & Real Estate | Redfin
Harrisburg is a much nicer place to live than when I grew up there! We were out in the suburbs, but the city area did not have the best reputation. Lots of redevelopment has gone on since I grew up though.
Be careful of the flood risk, if you go near the water; I lived there during Hurricane Agnes and Elise, and lots of houses were flooded (the Shipoke area was hard hit, I think). I don’t know how badly the city was hit during more recent storms (Lee?).
But in terms of access to activities, it’s pretty decent. Lots of transportation options too, in terms of getting out of town - trains go east and west, and there is a decent small airport. There are city buses for in town (not so much out in the burbs of course). No clue what taxi service availability might be like. I suspect better than my daughter’s town, but similar to what we’ve experienced in Phoenix and Palm Beach County.
2 hospitals in the city (Harrisburg and Polyclinic, assuming Polyclinic is still around), Holy Spirit across the river (where family members tended to have elective surgeries), and Hershey Medical Center, which is Penn State’s medical campus. Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) is just 2 hours away if you need big guns.
I currently live north of Chapel Hill and worked at the University for a long time. The buses run 7 days a week now, and of course there’s Uber, but good luck finding a house in the OP’s price range. The median home price is almost twice that, and the cheaper homes aren’t going to be on the bus lines.
Grand Rapids Michigan. Lots of sports specifically The White Caps, minor league baseball, and The Griffins minor league hockey, and several festivals, including Art Prize. Museums, shopping, etc. The weather is probably not too much different from N. Ohio.
Or nearby Hershey, PA… they have great educational offerings, good transportation (trolleys!), a world-class concert venue… and it’s the only city recommended that has a mini-Disney (“Hershey World”) and an amusement park.
eta: I’m spoiled by living in a college town. If you’re over 60, you can take classes for free, and the University ID that they give you opens all sorts of other doors/discounts in town. Not to mention decent theater, orchestra and art museums/galleries.
So living near the many colleges in nice, warm North Carolina is very tempting. Although the winters in Minnesota and Wisconsin do such a good job of killing off vermin and nasty bugs…
A friend of mine had met his wife when both were students at Oberlin. Then he spent his career at Case Western in Cleveland. A few years before he retired, they bought and moved to a house in Oberlin and he commuted. They loved it. Although they eventually moved to Minneapolis where their son and grandchildren were.