When Karen Sicner and her husband John made the decision to relocate from metro Atlanta to build a new home on a two-acre homesite in rural Sylva, North Carolina, moving closer to their daughter and her family in Tennessee was a major factor. Since then though, they’ve discovered that there are other perks connected to trading city life for the county living that have nothing to do with getting geographically closer to family.
“I’ve been downtown (Atlanta) today and it’s going to take me an hour or more to get home and it’s only 20 miles away,” Sicner said. “I won’t miss the traffic and the congestion and who knows, it might be cheaper to live in the country, too.”
The Sicners are among those seniors who are increasingly swapping their homes in urban or even suburban areas for ones situated on anywhere from two to ten rural acres in the Carolinas, Maine, Missouri, Texas and elsewhere.
And while it seems that this is a tactic for elders to avoid high costs, high crime and over development, those who keep an eye on who moves where in America say it has been happening off and on for decades.
According to University of New Hampshire researcher and senior demographer Kenneth Johnson, the relocation of older adults from urban areas to rural locales began in the 1970s, waned in the 1980s, enjoyed an uptick in the 1990s and after slowing in during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, picket up again in 2010 and beyond.
“We don’t have good data on age specific migration patterns after 2020, but, all the data I have looked at suggests a significant increase in migration of older adults to rural recreation and retirement areas since 2020,” Johnson said in an interview.
Where they went had to do with places they had been before, he said. “In many cases, the older adults have prior experience in these areas either from vacationing there or having seasonal homes.”
That’s exactly what Andy Mooers has seen for the better part of 45 years spent matching retirees with real estate in northern Maine.
“People start with a vacation home here and then begin to ask how they can live here full time,” he told The Daily Yonder. “People come from Florida, Texas, Georgia or from Illinois in an effort to avoid the traffic and the high taxes -and some people are buying a farm and hope they will have a piece of land for their kids.”
According to Mooers, some of his clients make the move from the city to rural Maine just to escape the stuff of urban life. “This is Mayberry,” he said. “We don’t have the traffic and we don’t have the crime and we don’t have (high) cost of living, either.”
In fact, the prospect of stretching retirement funds indefinitely can tip the relocation scales for seniors who ponder making any move.
“Say your house in the urban area sold for $400,000 plus and you buy one for $100,000 in small town Maine or in the country somewhere, it’s the right move to the right location,” Mooers said.
Add to that lower costs of everything from car insurance to property taxes to some groceries, and the move to the country seems the obvious choice.
It’s exactly the choice that Mary Eaton Campbell and her husband Rich made when they relocated from Loomis near Sacramento, California, to a house in a 31-home development in Nixa, Missouri, then to a 10-acre homestead in West Plains, Missouri, in January 2021.
“The community mailbox was right next to my house,” Eaton Campbell recalled in an interview. “Basically, all we did was change our zipcode.”
So the couple searched for a homesite further into the country and found themselves purchasing a home built in 1977 on 10-acres of pastureland, featuring a workshop for Rich and a mining shed that Eaton Campbell turned into a She-Shed.
“Neither one of us ever had property like this before,” she said.
Eaton Campbell immediately subscribed to the local newspaper and her husband undertook the care of the property. In between, the pair began to connect with other members of the community.
They quickly met and became friends with the neighbors, and learned about the church and social groups from another woman who also became a friend. Meanwhile, Rich connected with members of a local Amish community who offered to bush hog the property for the hay that grew on it and who helped connect with others around.
“We have closer relationships to our neighbors than we ever did in our subdivision,” she said. “When you are in a metro area or a subdivision, there are so many people that you become invisible.”
What is not always close is certain quality medical care and those who choose a rural life must be prepared to travel to get it.
“For example, my dentist is about an hour away in Mountain Home, Arkansas,” Campbell explained. “But it’s a beautiful drive and when I go I make a day of it shopping, too.”
In fact, the availability and proximity of quality medical care is something Eaton Campbell researched early on and that Sicner also considered when she bought her North Carolina homesite.
But that’s just one of the things that gerontologist Nancy Schier-Anzelmo, principal in Alzheimer’s Care Associates, a California-based counseling practice specializing in senior care, recommends that retirees research before making their move.
“Make sure you research your options,” Schier-Anselmo advised in an interview with the Yonder. “As we get older it’s hard to make new friends and that’s why it’s important to find your tribe – those people who are at the same stage of life and have the same life experience as you do.”
Even so, seniors who move into smaller, rural communities are not the only ones who benefit from the move, researcher Johnson told The Daily Yonder. The communities at large experience an increased economic activity as newcomers purchase supplies and other products from local retailers, support local cultural, church and charitable organizations, purchase medical and other services and even boost housing and land prices.
“An additional benefit that many non-metro areas get from a stream of older migrants is the considerable expertise and experience with large corporate and government bureaucracies that many migrants have from a long career,” Johnson said. “Many local nonprofit organizations and even government units can benefit from this expertise given the shortage of staff and limited resources that many organizations in rural areas have.”
For Mary Eaton Campbell though, the benefits of her new rural home are more than economic.
“I have no regrets,” she said. “One of my greatest joys is waking up in the morning, having my coffee on the porch and looking out on our land – at this point in our lives, we better be living our best life.”
