Retire here?
Where to Retire magazine -- because there's a magazine for everything -- says its March/April issue will feature "eight hip cities for urban lifestyles." One of those hip cities: Baltimore.
"Baltimore has a vibrant, revitalized waterfront, museums, world-class medical facilities and everything from historic brownstones to new luxury townhomes," said magazine editor Mary Lu Abbott in a press release.
The other cities on the list are Charleston, S.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; Orlando, Fla.; Fort Worth, Texas; Denver, Colo.; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle, Wash.
Abbott said a requirement -- beyond hipness -- was "unusually good buys in housing."
What do you think, Baltimore folks?
If you're at or near retirement age, what's your idea of a good place to settle?
Categories: We're No. 1! (Or thereabouts)
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Comments
I'm curious what criteria the magazine were using. That's a wide range of urban cities - Atlanta and Orlando are very different than Portland and Seattle.
Posted by: kevin | February 10, 2010 9:59 AM
I'm surprised that they included MD. I know several retirees that left b/c of MD's high taxes, to move to a state with warmer weather and lower taxes.
Posted by: Ron | February 10, 2010 10:30 AM
Like in the Johnny Cash song... I've been everywhere man and I can tell you emphatically that there is no ONE place that has it all. It just doesn't exist.
The next level of the discussion is about how much cash and income you will have available to set yourself up and your ability to have access to a mid summer and/or mid winter option to escape the season you are most uncomfortable with.
But if you were forced to pick just one place and "vacation" was still defined as daytrips and the odd 10 days here and there... then you could indeed do a LOT worse than Baltimore as the base for your life.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 10, 2010 10:50 AM
maricopa az as housing prices are 1/3 of howard county. income tax is 3.84 % not 7.25% as in md. also property taxes are 1/2 of howard county. plus i do not have to deal with repeated outages from bge in 2009 and 2010.
Posted by: joe thompson | February 10, 2010 12:56 PM
Thats just nuts. People retire from Baltimore not to it. The taxes are too high, housing costs too high, basically a high cost of living. The weather is not great either. The plus is close to DC and Philly and good restaurants. But retirees will get no early bird specials at those restaurants like they do in Florida.
Posted by: ASH | February 10, 2010 1:05 PM
why would you retire to anywhere is maryland, it's tax hell.
Posted by: double b | February 10, 2010 4:51 PM
Some recently retired good friends of ours decided to retire here in Baltimore largely because they considered housing to be a much better value here than in NYC or DC. Yes, B-more certainly has higher taxes and insurance premiums than the surrounding counties but so do most other "big" cities with lots of cultural amenities. I grew up in B-mores suburbs and bought a rowhouse in the city 19 years ago for the same reason: it was an incredibly good value. Real estate has definitely become more expensive in some parts of B-more over the past decade (at least in certain neighborhoods around the harbor) but there are still many great housing values in interesting neighborhoods throughout the city. Maybe that's why the article mentions Baltimore as a good retirement option. But a hip place to retire? Now that's pretty amusing..
Posted by: bob | February 11, 2010 8:54 AM