Options other than living with family in retirement

    If you don’t think that living with family would be good for you, there are other housing options to consider. Barbara Corcoran, in her book Nextville: Amazing place to live your life (2008), beautifully lays out a myriad of “amazing places to live your life” and discusses some creative forms of shared living arrangements.

One such option discussed by Corcoran is the “Golden Girls” house. In this situation, two to four individuals (typically family, friends, or a combination of) decide to live together to share housing and living expenses. They may also decide to assist one another with household chores and maintenance, as well as personal or medical care. They move into a house currently owned by one of the housemates or decide to buy a new place together.

The benefits of this situation, such as companionship and financial security, can be wonderful. But it comes with its risks.  Just as one should always “test drive” a new location, one should also “test drive” new housemates.  In both instances, the recommendation is to take a vacation … spend time in a potential location just as should with potential housemates. While you may have been friends with someone for thirty years, that doesn’t mean that you can live together. The same questions that should be asked when living with family (see April 1 post) should be asked of friends.

Another such option Corcoran presents is cohousing, a term she says was coined by architect Charles Durrett. Modeled after communities established in Denmark, friends set  up shared housing communities to “age in place.” These individuals “garden together, cook meals in groups, and look out for anyone in the group who gets sick or needs help (Corcoran, 2008).  Everyone contributes to the success and well-bring of the community and its members (making some consider this a modern day commune).

A housing option more frequently considered is an active adult community. These types of communities allow residents to participate in golf, tennis, hiking, biking, boating, and/or fitness classes together, while maintaining a more independent approach to living and financial decisions than cohousing. The objective of active adult communities is to make activities and compatriots easily accessible without the burden of having “to assemble a group, create a neighborhood, or even figure out how to share a house” (Corcoran, 2008).  However, the idea of community may be in name only; connections among residents are much looser than in the previously mentioned housing options.

Before deciding on an active adult community, some tough questions need to be asked here as well. Many such places were hit hard by the recent economic downturn and you don’t want to be stuck footing the bill for past mistakes or misfortunes. Such questions include: how long have you been open, what’s the financial health of the developer, what does the home-owners fee cover, how often has the association raised fees, how much does the association have in reserve, what is the plan for capital projects, what maintenance is the association responsible for versus the homeowner, etc.? The last one is particularly important - understand state and local definitions of condo versus townhome versus adult community and how these compare to what’s in a development’s Offering Plan and Deed, Covenants, and Restrictions. If they don’t align, you could be in trouble down the line.

This entry was posted on 10. April 2010 at 14:36 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.