This article tries to exocitize (and perhaps fetishize) something I'm quite familiar with, so I figured I'd share my perspective. My parents live in one of these such communities in Florida and I'm afraid they're much less outlandish and exotic than you might expect. When people get to retirement age, they suddenly have have more time than they've had in 40 years, and they're unsure how to spend it. These planned communities (Margaritaville is mentioned in the article, but Century Village is the undisputed king of south east Florida) help solve that problem - lots of facilities and activities and most importantly, lots of people who suddenly have the same problem.
The thing that's striking about these communities is that they're extremely lucrative business opportunities. Obvious revenue streams come from initially selling the lots, but I'm sure they're making a ton of money from the quarterly association dues and the incidental fees and concession sales.
My mother lived near a golf course that was for many years disued. Eventually, an investment group purchase the course for low seven figures, and then turned around and developed it into a retirement community with 150 lots, selling each (with a semi-customized, templated house on it) for mid 300s. I'll let you do the math, but they made a fortune.
If you take away one insight from this article, it's that the middle class from the last 40 years needs a place to retire to that doesn't have snow or high taxes and there's a lot of money to be made from this opporunity.
Retirement income can't support high annual tax burden unless you're at the upper end of annual social security benefits and have a significant asset base (whether that's capital market investments or real estate rentals/commercial real estate throwing off passive income).
It's why people accumulate wealth in high cost of living areas (typically, where wages are higher), and retire/move to low cost of living areas (pre remote work normalization). High taxes are drag on quality of life when you're on a fixed income and you’re not dependent on services high taxes would provide.
The thing that's striking about these communities is that they're extremely lucrative business opportunities. Obvious revenue streams come from initially selling the lots, but I'm sure they're making a ton of money from the quarterly association dues and the incidental fees and concession sales.
My mother lived near a golf course that was for many years disued. Eventually, an investment group purchase the course for low seven figures, and then turned around and developed it into a retirement community with 150 lots, selling each (with a semi-customized, templated house on it) for mid 300s. I'll let you do the math, but they made a fortune.
If you take away one insight from this article, it's that the middle class from the last 40 years needs a place to retire to that doesn't have snow or high taxes and there's a lot of money to be made from this opporunity.