The Asheville area has been a popular spot for retirement for many, many years. With the natural beauty, central location, moderate weather, vibrant arts scene and plenty of good mountain air, it's a natural choice. The North Carolina Mountains around Asheville are dotted with many quality retirement communities. Retirees to Asheville tend to be very active.
Asheville has been featured many times as one of the top places in America to retire. Watch the CBS Sunday Morning show feature on retiring in Asheville. It's a great introduction.
TopRetirements.com continues to rank Asheville as the top city in America to retire. Read more from TopRetirements.com from their 2008 rankings:
Asheville, North Carolina remains the runaway favorite dream retirement town. Asheville is a prosperous small city of just over 70,000 in the Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina. Because of its charming environment and mild weather it has long been a desirable retirement community – from the rich and famous to ordinary active adults 55+ in quest of beauty and a nice climate.
The Vanderbilts built an enormous estate near here, the Biltmore Estate, which is the largest private residence in America with 250 rooms. It is open to the public year around and well worth a tour. Frederick Law Olmstead, America’s most distinguished landscape architect, who also designed New York’s Central Park, planned its gardens.
Golf and outdoor activities are popular. Many developments are built around lakes. Downtown Asheville has a comfortable feeling where walking around the town is a pleasure. It has a great collections of art deco architecture, antique stores, art galleries, and boutiques. The stylized details found in Asheville's early art deco and gothic buildings echo the pre-depression heyday of the 1920's. Those who prefer the outdoor cafe or coffee house setting will also find themselves at home at the many cafes.
The people are friendly. Asheville's people range from artists and musicians to corporate executives, merchants and entrepreneurs. It is easy to park on street or on a parking deck, then stroll through the streets.
There are many retirement communities and places for active adults in the region. There are a number of condos downtown. Prices can be very different depending on the development and/or neighborhood. The NC. Association of Realtors showed the median price of 90 homes sold in January 2009 to be about $310,000. In December 2008 the average cost was $266,000. Zillow.com shows a median price of $251,000. Real estate taxes on a $200,000 home would be just over $2000 per year.
Asheville Retirement & Relocation Resources
Welcome to the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement
The North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement (NCCCR) is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed learning community dedicated to promoting lifelong learning, leadership, community service and research. We opened our doors in 1988 as a department of the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA). Their goal is to enable our members to “thrive” in life’s second half. The Center embraces an unusually comprehensive array of programs in the arts and humanities, the natural world, civic engagement, wellness, life transition and retirement relocation planning, intergenerational co-learning, and research on trends in the reinvention of retirement. NCCCR is housed in our their building, Reuter Center, on the UNCA campus. The collaborative member-staff led organization operates as a public-private entity with two-thirds of our budget derived from fees and one-third from state funding. Approximately 450 members volunteer each year to do everything from teach, serve on committees, run research projects, mentor undergraduates, and provide consulting to other UNCA departments. The Center’s uniqueness has earned it frequent mention in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney, Business Week, Kiplinger’s, and The Christian Science Monitor, and on websites such as CNN.com, AOL.com and many others. Read more about NCCCR.
See our Asheville Relocation Guide.
Order Retirement Info from the Chamber of Commerce.
Asheville Demographics and Regional Info
