Lists of Top Places to Retire and similar rankings are published for the benefit of their publishers, not their readers. They help build traffic to web sites and sales of magazines. They are either utterly subjective, the fanciful notions of whoever is putting together the list (in the most egregious cases, advertisers tend to wind up suspiciously near the tops of many rankings); or they are a pure popularity poll, a battle worthy of Jerry Springer ("How many of you think St. Pete is the father, how many of you think Naples is the father?"). Folks who have plunked down a solid six-figures for a home are not going to fess up to the fact that their choice was anything but the best. On the contrary, if you eventually buy a home in their towns, that will help stabilize their own home values.
And so we come to the annual "Most Popular Places to Retire List for 2015" at TopRetirements.com, a web site I visit a few times a week for insights into what many people are saying about their searches and their choices for homes in retiree-friendly areas. I like Top Retirements Publisher John Brady's forthrightness about his list -– it is purely a popularity contest, he says. Take it, I say, with a lump of salt.
Asheville, NC is up there at the top of the list of most popular places to retire. Mountain Air, about 20 minutes north of the city, is up there in terms of elevation, more than 4,000 feet. An airstrip bisects the golf course at the top of the mountain.
Still, the list itself, and others like it, are fodder for those of us who care about choices for retirement locations, and a good jumping off point for discussions comparing one town to another. (The Top Retirement poll does not include specific communities, but many of the comments are from residents who tout the communities where they have chosen to live.)
A few things stick out for this correspondent in the latest popularity contest. First is the diversity of the Top 10 choices, with seven of them located on a coast and two of them in reclaimed desert. And, yet, the overall #1 choice of those who visit the Top Retirement site is Asheville, NC, a mountain-oriented town often described as a "Little San Francisco," for better or worse (better, in my opinion, because it is the only such town east of the Mississippi). Asheville, for all its popularity, is a bit sparse when it comes to diversity of well-regarded golf communities, at least in the immediate Asheville area, where you will find Biltmore Forest and The Cliffs at Walnut Cove on the high end, and Reems Creek and High Vista at a level just below (the latter two golf courses are open to the public, the first two strictly private). But if you are willing to venture farther afield from Asheville, say 30+ minutes, Mountain Air to the north, at an elevation nearing one mile, and Champion Hills and Kenmure in the Hendersonville area on the south, are outstanding choices for those looking for mild summers and tolerable winters. (This winter has been a bit of an anomaly.) Side note to pilots: Mountain Air maintains a mountaintop airstrip that bisects the Scott Pool golf course.
