Sebring Near The Top For Retirees
By BILL RETTEW

SEBRING — Sebring is affordable, warm and a retiree magnet.

We know that.

But there is more to Sebring that even its residents realize.

Of all the places to relocate, retirees find Sebring among the most attractive – or so a magazine claims.

“Where to Retire” magazine pegs Sebring at No. 26 on a list of the 100 most popular places to retire.

Sebring’s cost of living was rated at below average, with 4,659 retirees moving from out of state from 1995 to 2000.

Phoenix topped the list with an average cost of living and 41,000 net retirees who relocated.

Author Mary Lu Abbott gathered much of her non-subjective rankings from “Retirement Migration in America” by Charles F. Longino Jr., published by Vacation Publications.

The demographer and gerontologist, from Wake Forest University in North Carolina, studied U.S. Census data from 1960-2000 to track interstate movement for people 60 and over.

Mary and George Thomas Sr. are semi-retired and live part time near Washington, D.C. They discovered Sebring, and particularly the Spring Lake community, through word of mouth and a magazine article.

“We bought a villa,” said George Thomas. “It was priced too good to turn down. A lot of our friends gravitated to one coast or another but it’s crowded and expensive.”

The times are changing. Since Longino last looked at the numbers and made a similar list 10 years ago, Florida lost some of its luster for retirees. Sebring dropped two spots from No. 24.

Last decade, 22 of the top 25 destinations were in Florida. The most recent figures show only 16 of those top 25 are now in the Sunshine State.
Several places in Florida dropped big time: Miami-Dade went from No. 16 to 53; Pensacola area dropped from No. 42 to No. 98; and Fort Walton Beach-Destin slid from 65 to 100.

Nevada, Arizona, South Carolina and even Delaware stole some of the spotlight from Florida.

Abbott talked about the partial shift to the north.

“There’s more interest in four-season destinations than there used to be,” said Abbott in a phone interview. “They miss the change of seasons.”
They don’t want to “freeze to death” so retirees likely “escape” to a warmer area in the “dead of winter,” Abbott added.

The editor also noticed a trend for retirees to move from Florida’s East Coast to the West Coast and to Central Florida.

“Florida lost its allure since it got populated,” said the editor. “Although it’s still very, very popular.”

Russ and Lois Vaughn enjoy the lack of congestion in Sebring. Lois Vaughn enjoys all the activities at Buttonwood Bay.

The couple splits their time between Myrtle Beach, S.C. and Florida. Lois Vaughn plays bocce ball three times per week and enjoys the subdivision’s miniature golf.

Marti Hood dislikes the cloudy days in Indiana and enjoys regular Florida sunshine. She lived in several Florida locations during the past 15 years, but prefers the lack of traffic in Highlands County and the “friendly and nice people in a small town atmosphere.”