Best Places To Retire In 2022: Sioux Falls And Other Hot Spots

Forbes compared more than 800 locales in America on everything from housing costs and taxes to healthcare, air quality, crime and climate change and natural hazard risk. These are the top 25 cities for retirees.

After 30 years in Orange County, Calif., Rex and Barbara Scott picked up last year and moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They’re now a three-hour plane ride from their two kids and six grandkids in California, but Rex, now 66, and Barbara, now 62, found the economics of the move compelling. By selling their two-story, 4-bedroom, 2-bath house just a few miles from the beach and Disneyland for nearly $1 million, they were able to buy a slightly larger split-level house in Sioux Falls mortgage free—at a fourth the price per square foot, Rex figures—with plenty of cash left over to help finance their retirement in a lower-cost, lower-tax locale.

Barbara, who worked in human resources for a health care system (particularly stressful during Covid-19), now happily puts in 25-to-30 hours a week as a grocery store clerk. As for Rex, after 20 years toiling away at Home Depot, he has returned to his first love—performing in a musical group. In fact, the couple met 45 years ago in Sioux Falls, while Rex was a drummer and vocalist for a short-lived hard rock band, ROX, that was inducted last year into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Not every sixty-something is looking to return to their rock ‘n roll roots. But many baby boomers are now, as the Scotts were, sitting on huge gains in home equity that could provide a cushion in retirement—if they’re ready to move to lower-cost areas.

That, and the current inflationary pressure on retirees’ budgets, makes Forbes’ 2022 list of the Best Places To Retire particularly timely. The latest report from the National Association of Realtors puts the country’s median home price at $375,300, up a sharp 15% from a year before. But Sioux Falls, one of our 25 picks for the second-straight year, has a median home price of just $296,000, about average for our list. In fact, only three of our picks have prices above the national median and two of our 2021 favorites—Asheville, N.C., and Wenatchee, Wash.—were knocked off this year mainly for their steep home prices. That’s because this list aims to highlight places that provide a high quality of retirement living at an affordable price.

The Scotts used the Forbes list, among others, to research potential spots. They ruled out nearby Arizona. “Too hot,” Rex says. Same with Florida, plus the threat of hurricanes worried them. Undeterred by cold winters, the Scotts considered the Lake region of western Minnesota, Rex’s home state, but balked at its high state income tax. South Dakota has no state income tax.

Another consideration in today’s hot real estate market: the Scotts had a Sioux Falls real estate agent they trusted—Rex’s cousin, John Maurer of Weichert Realtors—The Agents. After the Scotts were outbid on three homes, Maurer found them a house that was about to be listed and helped them fashion an above-asking-price all cash offer good for only 12 hours. It worked.

Fargo, N.D  remains the only city on the list for all 12 years we’ve put it together.

Not up for cold winters? The majority of our picks are in warmer climates, though we do include choices in 18 states across all four continental time zones. Far-north Fargo, N.D remains the only city on the list for all 12 years we’ve put it together.

Perhaps 11 of the places on our new list could be considered college towns, which offer convenient opportunities for lifelong learning and great cultural and dining options, particularly for their size. In the early days of the pandemic, some of these spots became near ghost towns, leading us to knock many of them off the 2020 list. But now life in these towns is back close to normal. For the third year in a row, we take climate change and natural hazard risks into account, along with such longer-standing metrics as living costs, taxes, air quality, crime and availability of doctors. You can read more about our methodology and sources below the list.

A-F

Downtown Athens, Georgia

Charolette, North Carolina

College-Station, Texas

Columbia, Missouri

Fargo, North Dakota

G-R

Greenville, South Carolina,

Iowa City, Iowa

Jacksonville, Florida

Knoxville, Tennessee

Lawrence, Kansas

Lexington, Kentucky

Lincoln, Nebraska

Madison, Wisconsin

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Roanoke, Virginia

Rochester, Minnesota

S-W

San Antonio, Texas

Savannah, Georgia

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Spokane, Washington

Sun City, Arizona

Tuscon, Arizona

The Villages, Florida

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

2022 Methodology

We compiled data on more than 800 places with populations above 10,000, in every state and, yes, the District of Columbia. The primary factors we take into account involve money, including median home prices and overall cost of living, both compared to national measures, and state taxes, including income tax exemptions for Social Security and other retirement income, and state estate/inheritance taxes. We also consider the strength of the local economy, since many retirees look for part-time work and eventually might want to sell their home and relocate again.

Quality of life is equally important to our list, so we look at a number of non-economic indicators, ruling out cities with too high rates of serious violent crime or too few primary care doctors per capita. We also take into consideration factors that promote an active retirement, including air quality and ratings for walkability (how easy it is to shop and get to places on foot) and bikeability (whether dedicated lanes and other measures make it easy to bike around town).

Since you don’t want to relocate then suddenly find yourself scrambling for higher or safer ground, we weigh each area’s vulnerability to climate change and natural disaster risk, using the FEMA National Risk Index for Natural Hazards, which calculates for every county a vulnerability measure embracing 18 natural hazards, including flooding, hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes and wind. We exclude places assigned a “very high” risk rating.

Our full write-up for each of our picks includes extra information that may be of interest, but didn’t influence our choice. This includes county-wide results in the 2020 presidential election and the percentage of a county’s population that is fully vaccinated for COVID-19 with at least one booster.

Sources for our data include the FBI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, individual state tax departments, zillow.com, trulia.com, bestplaces.net, neighborhoodscout.com, the National Association of Realtors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, countyhealthrankings.org, walkscore.com and the League of American Bicyclists. Our characterization of local economies comes from the Milken Institute’s just-released report, Best-Performing Cities 2022.