Best Places to Retire: San Francisco, California
San Francisco isn't most people's idea of a retirement spot. It's really expensive, it's loud, and it's crowded. None of which fazes Alan Entine, who, at 71, is moving into the city next spring. Entine has always been an urban guy; he spent more than 60 years in New York, from childhood through a long career as an associate dean at Columbia University.
Ten years ago, when he retired, he and his wife migrated south to a bedroom community in Cary, N.C., where it was quiet and green—everything retirement is supposed to be. But "I was bored out of my gourd, frankly," Entine says. "I'm not a golfer; I'm a city person. I grew up listening to garbage cans at 2 in the morning." When his wife died a few years after they moved, Entine began searching for a new retirement plan.
He found what he was looking for in San Francisco. Entine's daughters and grandchildren live in the Bay Area, which gave San Francisco everything he needed—family, a change, and, equally important, a walkable city. "A retirement community doesn't appeal to me," he says. "I like the vibrancy of a city. I like public transportation." San Francisco's natural beauty didn't hurt, of course.
And this past summer, Entine bought a place in the heart of downtown, where he'll be one of the first residents in a new high-rise condominium just blocks from the bay. His home is small (850 square feet) and expensive ($725,000 for one bedroom). The building, called the Infinity, will have a doorman, a swimming pool, a fitness center, and a grocery store. "I can take Muni four stops, and I'm at the symphony and the opera," Entine says. He can pick up his grandkids, who live a few BART stops away, at school several days a month.
Entine has company. "A lot of older couples are getting a little bored in their houses in the suburbs, and they're finding they don't want to drive as much," says Janet Krahling, a longtime San Francisco real-estate agent.
Developers are readying the city for an influx of retiring baby boomers. In the past two years alone, eight new high-rise condos like the Infinity have started going up near downtown. One in five buyers in these buildings is 61 or over, according to Krysen Heathwood, chief operating officer of the Mark Co., which is marketing and selling the condos. "These are people who want an urban adventure," Heathwood says.
That's certainly what inspired Rick and Joan Grossman to move to San Francisco this year. The Grossmans, both 62, have spent the past 27 years in Orange County, fighting their way through Los Angeles traffic, but they grew up in walkable cities (Philadelphia and Hong Kong), and they'd always wanted to live that way again.
"There's no end of places I can walk to—concerts, museums, the Embarcadero," says Rick. "I can bike all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge without too much trouble." Urban life has its uncertainties, of course—the City by the Bay is known for its hills, which could prove daunting in his later years—but Rick is unconcerned. "It's a new experience for us," he says. "That's part of the excitement of it."
ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO
Population: 739,426
Median home price: $765,000
January average temperatures (high/low): 58/46
July temperatures: 68/54
Source: OnBoard LLC
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