Forbes ranked Austin #6 in the nation for their list of “America’s Recession-Proof Cities to Retire In.”
Forbes based their rankings on the country’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas and applied seven metrics.
Americans are living longer–the average life span has been increasing for a decade, rising from an average 76.5 years in 1997 to 77.9 in 2007, according a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released in August. As a result, retirees should be looking for reasonably priced homes that will appreciate in value. With this in mind, we looked at current median home price and five-year projected home price via data from Moody’s Economy.com. We also included two important cost measures: median monthly housing expense from the Census Bureau and a cost of living index–for expenses unrelated to housing–from the Council for Community and Economic Research.
According to Eduardo Martinez, senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com, Texans experienced only a mild recession:
In Texas, it was a relatively mild recession. All our projections are for quite a bit of growth. In terms of job creation, more people are moving out there, and families are getting bigger. The fundamentals for Texas are a lot stronger than those of other peer large states.
Texas cities Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio also made the list.
Read the full article here.