Americans decide that a few devastating hurricanes per year combined with astronomic property values are not an attractive combination and start leaving and avoiding Florida.

Comments

[JorgXMcKie]

I wonder how much your local culture and childhood determine what kind of moves you make? For instance, while I'm not going to retire for a while, if I wanted to go someplace reasonably priced where I could do almost all of the things I wante to on a fairly regular basis and have decent weather, I would probably move to Southern Illinois or Southern Indiana, or possibly Western Kentucky. Why? The weather is good, the living expenses are cheap, I don't need 4-star restaurants or big-time entertainers very often, shopping malls don't lure me, etc, etc.

I like good books and good friends and good food (a lot of which I can cook myself) and good drink and good conversation. Why should I pay out the nose to live in Florida or Arizona or California?

Heck, I live outside Detroit now, and I'd be perfectly happy ot retire right where I am. Only moving closer to family might change that. (I grew up in Western Illinois and my family is still there and my wife grew up in South Suburban Chicago.)

Anyway, given DVDs and the Web etc I predict that parts of central rural America will begin looking much more interesting to those whose background enables them to see the usefulness of the place. If I sold my house today, in a down market, I could move to Southern Illinois and have as good or better plus a few acres of woods and a pond and lose mostly only the traffic.

[kyle8]

I feel the way you do Jorge, My Ideal retirement home would be somewhere in that temperate belt that runs along N. Carolina, Tennessee, Virgina, W Virgina, Kentucky, parts of Ohio and Indiana, and Missouri.

Having lived all my life in the hot, humid, gulf area, I could never understand why people LIKED to move here.