Real Estate: Not Your Father's Retirement

Plotting retirement-age relocations can be difficult--especially at a time when real-estate prices have begun to slide and homes in many markets are now taking months to sell. For boomers in once hot markets that have chilled, it may make sense to delay big moves until supply and demand get back into balance. But boomers can also take comfort in the fact that whatever they do, there's no rule against changing your mind. Housing pros even have a well-developed lingo to describe these people: retirees who move to the sun belt, dislike it and move back home are called "fullbacks," while folks who retreat to an in-between location (say, a Chicagoan who moves to Florida and then Tennessee) are called "halfbacks." Then there are folks like Markie and Joe Cluff, who retired to an over-55 development in Chandler, Ariz., last year. Joe, 59 and a former building inspector, missed working, so he took a job as a quality-assurance inspector at the Phoenix airport. And they're already trading up to a second retirement home, this time at Sun City Anthem at Merrill Ranch in nearby Florence. They're proof of something that every golfer knows, and everyone planning retirement should remember: sometimes there's no shame in taking a mulligan.

© 2006