Cheapest college towns for retirees
Retiring to a leafy college town is a fantasy shared by many people I know, me included. We envision good, cheap restaurants; abundant movies, lecture series, and book stores; a happy, youthful vibe in the air— and no requirement that we do any actual school work.
So it was interesting to see real-estate giant Coldwell Banker’s new survey of 120 college markets
across the U.S., ranked in terms of affordability. (The survey uses a 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home for comparison purposes, and while that may be bigger than many of us will need, it’s probably a pretty good proxy for housing prices generally.)
My own alma mater came in near the bottom, with an average house in excess of $663,000, which makes it unlikely I’ll be heading back there, older and wiser, when the day comes. But many other places on the list had average prices well under $200,000.
The three most affordable college towns were: Akron, Ohio, home to the University of Akron (house price: $122,000); Muncie, Indiana, with Ball State University ($145,000); and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the University of Michigan ($148,000). In case a Midwestern winter isn’t your idea of retirement bliss, three Texas cities also made the top 10: Fort Worth, Denton, and Houston. You can read the full list of 120 college towns by clicking on the link above.
We have other advice on this site that may help in making your “where to retire” decision, including:
So it was interesting to see real-estate giant Coldwell Banker’s new survey of 120 college markets
across the U.S., ranked in terms of affordability. (The survey uses a 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home for comparison purposes, and while that may be bigger than many of us will need, it’s probably a pretty good proxy for housing prices generally.)
My own alma mater came in near the bottom, with an average house in excess of $663,000, which makes it unlikely I’ll be heading back there, older and wiser, when the day comes. But many other places on the list had average prices well under $200,000.
The three most affordable college towns were: Akron, Ohio, home to the University of Akron (house price: $122,000); Muncie, Indiana, with Ball State University ($145,000); and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the University of Michigan ($148,000). In case a Midwestern winter isn’t your idea of retirement bliss, three Texas cities also made the top 10: Fort Worth, Denton, and Houston. You can read the full list of 120 college towns by clicking on the link above.
We have other advice on this site that may help in making your “where to retire” decision, including:
- A blog post with links to two recent lists of best places to retire.
- Our own retirement readiness quiz.
- Retired readers talk about their best (and worst) planning moves in an exclusive Consumer Reports survey.
- An overview of places to retire, including college towns, with tips on how to compare them.
Greg writes the “Retirement Guy” column each month in the Consumer Reports Money Adviser newsletter.
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