Home Prices Sizzling in Utah

Home sales prices for October are now in. 51 out of the 60 cities tracked by RetireHomeSmart.com show a gain over the average home sales price for 2005.

Paradise Valley, AZ continues as the top retirement city in home price growth at 90% over 2005 sales prices. State-wide, Utah is on the hottest pace with St George up 42%, Park City up 29% and Provo up 17% since 2005.

Northwest Hot!

The northwest region of the U.S. is popular with Coeur d'Alene ID, Coos Bay OR and Olympia WA all showing double-digit gains.

Northeast Not!

Retirement cities of the northeast are lagging others in home price growth with Portland, Maine down 7% and Ocean City NJ, Newport RI and Cambridge MA all with small losses.

Average home sales prices are updated monthly and you can check sales prices for all 60 of our top cities at RetireHomeSmart.com.

2005 Crime Data Now Available for Top Retirement Cities

RetireHomeSmart.com is the first site of its kind to adopt the recently released F.B.I. 2005 crime data. Our database of 60 top retirement cities now contains five years of crime data (2001-2005).

Our competitors are either late in incorporating new data when released by the F.B.I. or attempt to create an index or rating that conceals the impact of the raw numbers.

At RetireHomeSmart.com, crime data is reported as soon as possible after the data is released by the F.B.I. (2005 data was released September 2006). And data is reported as the F.B.I. reports it, by violent crime and property crime incident. We normalize the data by reporting crimes per 10,000 in city population.

Pinehurst North Carolina has Lowest Crime

Crime data is tracked for 5 years and bar-charted so you can see long-term trends. Of the 60 top retirement cities surveyed by RetireHomeSmart.com, Pinehurst, North Carolina reports the lowest crime. Naperville, Illinois and Yarmouth, Massachusetts are not far behind.

To view home sales prices, crime data and other important facts about the top retirement cities in the country, go to RetireHomeSmart.com today.

Paradise Valley Continues to Lead the Pack

Average home sales prices for July and August are now available. 50 out of the 60 cities tracked by RetireHomeSmart.com show a gain over the average home sales price for 2005. 23 cities now show double digit growth from last year.

With eight months of home prices in for 2006, Paradise Valley, Arizona continues as the leader with a sizzling 90% gain since 2005. St George, Utah and Southampton, New York follow with 40% and 32% gains. Home prices in Kailua, Hawaii are down 17% and Portland, Maine 7% to lead the laggards. Ten of our top retirement cities are showing flat or negative growth in average home sales prices year-to-date.

Average home sales prices are updated monthly and you can check sales prices for all 60 of our top cities at RetireHomeSmart.com.

2006 Mid-Year Home Price Review

June home sales prices for new and existing homes in our 60 cities are now available. 49 out of the 60 cities tracked by RetireHomeSmart.com show a gain over the average home sales price for 2005. In fact, 19 cities report double digit growth.

The trend continues with the western states realizing the highest gains. Paradise Valley is the leader with an eye-popping increase of 103% since '05. The average sale in '06 in this popular destination is up to over $2.1 million. Other western cities with large gains include St George and Park City with 35% and 22% gains. Southampton leads the "east of the Mississippi" destinations with a 27% increase.

Arizona, Utah, California, Washington and Florida are seeing the highest percentage gains for the first half of 2006.

Our top retirement cities are not immune to the housing slow-down. Home prices in Kailua are down 18% and Gatlinburg 12% from 2005. Of the 11 cities with zero or negative growth in the these first 6 months, 8 are eastern cities.

Average home sales prices are updated monthly and you can check sales prices for all of our cities at RetireHomeSmart.com.

Google Maps Among New RetireHomeSmart.com Features

A useful new tool now available to RetireHomeSmart.com viewers is Google Maps. Each City Report (e.g. Palms Springs, CA) displays a map that allows viewing of map data, satellite photos or a combination of the two formats for each of the 60 cities tracked in the RetireHomeSmart.com database.

Viewers can "zoom in" all the way to building rooftops (if in satellite photo mode) and "zoom out" to get a state or regional perspective. By holding the mouse down over the map, viewers can pan, or move, the map in an east/west or north/south direction.

Another new feature is called Cities by State and allows a quick comparison of Quality of Life characteristics for each city in a selected state. RetireHomeSmart.com tracks 60 top retirement cities in 32 different states.

Use RetireHomeSmart to help you make an informed decision about that retirement home, second home or vacation home destination.

60 Top Retirement Cities Now Tracked

With the recent addition of 10 top cities, RetireHomeSmart.com now tracks 60 of the most popular retirement and vacation destinations in the U.S.

New cities include:

Aspen, CO

Henderson, NV

Newport Beach, CA

Naperville, IL

Hanover, PA

Gatlinburg, TN

Athens, GA

Annapolis, MD

Middleton, WI

Paradise Valley, AZ

These new cities dominate the updated RetireHomeSmart City Rankings in several city Quality of Life categories: 4 out of the top 10 cities in Home Price Appreciation since 2001, 3 out of the top 10 in Water Quality and 5 out of the top 10 in Household Income. Even with this impressive showing, only one new city was able to crack the RetireHomeSmart Top 15 -- Athens, Georgia ranks as the 5th best retirement destination in the U.S.

RetireHomeSmart.com is the only city site that provides the most current data on home sales prices and is the site that provides the most useful data on air quality, water quality and crime.

Use us to help you make an informed decision regarding that retirement home, second home or vacation home destination.

2005 Air Quality Data Now Available

Air quality data for 2005 was released by the EPA this month. The data is now available in the RetireHomeSmart.com database for our top 50 retirement cities.

Pollutant Monitoring

The EPA monitors air quality throughout the U.S. Various statistics and summaries are produced from the raw monitoring station data. The pollutants tracked are carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and two categories of particulate matter (smaller than 10 micrometers and smaller than 2.5 micrometers).

Here at RetireHomeSmart.com we report what the EPA calls the Air Quality Index (AQI) - an approximate indicator of overall air quality. To simplify reporting of the AQI, the EPA separates air quality into four broad categories:

• Good
• Moderate
• Unhealthy for Sensitive Persons
• Unhealthy (includes sub-categories for Very Unhealthy and Hazardous)

Santa Fe has Cleanest Air; Palm Springs the Dirtiest

For the cleanest air, 9 out of the Top 15 cities were out west. Florida has an impressive record with all 4 cities that we track from the Sunshine State appearing in the Top 15. With the release of the 2005 data, the trend was for improving air quality conditions in the western cities and deteriorating conditions in the mid-western and eastern cities. Southampton, NY is an exception with an average improvement of 2% in the number of Good days for 2001-05. Though Palm Springs, CA has the dirtiest air, the city has managed to improve its air quality every year since 2001. At RetireHomeSmart.com you can check air quality for any of the popular cities in our database with a City Report. For a summary of the 15 best and worst cities for air quality, go to the Air Quality report.

Stay tuned to RetireHomeSmart.com for important news and data about your favorite retirement cities.

Home Prices for RetireHomeSmart 50 up 10% since January

March home sales prices are in. After a seasonal dip in January, home prices for our top 50 retirement cities are up 10%. This when home prices for the total U.S. are down for the sixth consecutive month as reported by the National Association of REALTORS.

Home prices for Q1 2006 are up in 45 out of 50 of our cities from 2005. The leaders are St George, UT at 32% higher and Hot Springs Village, AR at 30%. The laggards are Gulf Shores, AL and Kailua, HI which have seen home prices drop 19% from 2005.

Stay tuned to RetireHomeSmart.com for accurate, up-to-date home sales stats for the top retirement and vacation cities in the U.S.

February 2006 Home Price Update

My last report on home sales prices for the RetireHomeSmart 50 cities was early December. I showed you a graph that confirmed what everybody is saying about the summer of '05 being the peak of the "real estate bubble".

Well, with roughly 10% of February sales figures in, what we were seeing was either a short term lull or, perhaps, just a seasonal adjustment. Because average home prices are on the way up again. At least for those properties in the RHS 50.



Those with homes in any of our desirable cities are smiling again because average home prices are up 13.4% from the lull in 2005. The big winners are Durango(CO) at 24%, Hot Springs Village(AR) at 19% and South Lake Tahoe(CA) and Santa Fe(NM) at 18%.

Stay tuned to RetireHomeSmart.com for accurate, up-to-date home sales stats for the top retirement and vacation cities in the U.S.

RetireHomeSmart 50 Home Prices Up 21% for 2005

The media of late have speculated that the home price peak hit this past summer. In fact, data from the National Association of Realtors shows that the average price of an existing home across the nation peaked in August and has been lower every month since.

Of course, it takes more than 4 months of data to even hint at the bursting of a bubble that has been years in the making. NAR says that nationwide home prices were up 9.5% in 2005. Interest rates remain attractively low, economic prospects are good and boomers are hitting their peak earning years. Real estate will remain an attractive investment for many regions of the country, particularly for the 50 popular spots tracked by RetireHomeSmart.com.

The average price of a RetireHomeSmart 50 home gained 21% since January 2005, more than double the gain for the average home nationwide. The 50 cities in the RetireHomeSmart index have a strong appeal for the vacation home, investment home and retirement home buyer.

Comparing the average home price in 2005 with that for 2004, Gulf Shores, AL leads the pack with a 64% increase. We are not sure what is happening here but those rebuilding from the hurricane damage of the last couple of years are surely contributing to this outsized increase. Increases in Reno, NV (54%), Palm Springs, CA (42%) and Sedona, AZ (34%) indicate that the migration to the desert southwest is a long way from being over. The 41% increase in Kailua, Oahu, HI just put that heavenly hideway in Hawaii that much further out of reach.

On the other end of the spectrum home prices in Hot Springs Village, AR lost 8% from 2004 and Pinehurst, NC were flat from '04 to '05.

Check RetireHomeSmart.com for home price data for all 50 cities plus more information and tools to help you decide where to make that vacation or investment home purchase.