Beaufort Ranks #4 In Best Places To Retire

Looking to settle down, empty nesters? Choosing a place to retire sounds easy — everyone has a dream city where they’ve always wanted to live. Sometimes, though, it isn’t as simple as packing up and moving to that beachfront property you’ve always dreamt of. And maybe it shouldn’t be.

After all, retirement will (hopefully) represent a big chunk of your lifetime. It’s important to live somewhere that satisfies all your care, community and transportation needs while still having enough culture and entertainment options to keep you happy.

FindTheHome has you covered in your search for “happily ever after.” The site’s data experts created a Retirement Index for every county across the U.S. based on five factors scaled from 1-100.

This list contains the community in every state with the best Retirement Index. The states are ordered from the lowest score to the highest score. Unsurprisingly, the top community is in Florida. But there are several surprising entries in the top five, including one Orange County that’s not in California.

The list puts Martin County, FL at #1 (the Palm City area), followed by:

2. Barnstable County, MA
3. Orange County, NC (Chapel Hill area)
4. Beaufort County, SC
5. Grafton County, NH
6. Washtenaw County, MI (Ann Arbor)7. Newport County, RI
8. Jefferson County, WA
9. Hamilton County, IN
10. Albemarle County, VA (Charlottesville area)

Beaufort County’s Retirement Index score was a whopping 98.4, and was only .2 away from the #3 spot.
Separately, Beaufort scores were:
Entertainment – 80.0 (amount of universities, recreational facilities, libraries and parks per capita
Community – 84.2 (high percentage of population over age 65 with college degrees)
Care – 85.3 (quality of local hospitals, nursing homes and home health centers)
Housing – 81.8 (market health score, median sale price, HPI forecast, high percentage of properties with rent under $1,500/month)
Convenience – 85.6 (WalkIQ and grocery stores/restaurants per capita)

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