Linda Burgess believes that age is only a number. When she set off last 12 months to purchase a house within the Los Angeles area, her goal was to search out not only the best home, but the best community to support her lively social life.
She hoped it could be within the South Bay. Ms. Burgess, 73, had been a longtime resident of this coastal pocket of southern Los Angeles County, which incorporates the cities of El Segundo, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach. She never married and has no children; over the many years, a tight-knit group of friends had turn out to be her family.
When her role as an underwriter for the health care company Kaiser Permanente took her to Oregon in 2007, it wasn’t just the shortage of sunshine that made her homesick. “I actually missed my people in Southern California,” she said. “I moved there after I was in my 50s, and it was so hard to construct a social circle. So I made a decision to return home.”
In 2017, she bought a two-bedroom house within the waterfront neighborhood of San Pedro that she could share together with her foster dogs, who sometimes number as many as nine. But Ms. Burgess, a self-professed serial homebuyer, soon felt itchy feet. “I get restless every five years or so,” she said. “I don’t stay put for long.”
Kathleen Callahan, a broker with eXp Realty, whom Ms. Burgess met through a friend in her book club, signed on to assist her find the subsequent spot. “Linda’s in maintenance mode at this point in her life,” she said. “She just desired to money out and maintain her lifestyle.”
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They checked out several homes within the South Bay, but with a budget of around $450,000 in a frenzied pandemic market, Ms. Burgess knew she would have to choose: pay more and rent out a part of the home to defray costs or leave her friends behind and head inland, where prices were lower. “Nothing near the beach cities was inexpensive,” she said.
She felt her options expand barely, nonetheless, when she visited a friend in Arizona who had recently moved into an active-adult community, where owners should be not less than 55 years old. Ms. Burgess had never considered 55-plus housing, and she or he was intrigued by the swimming pools, walking trails and busy calendar of activities.
“Every thing about it was awesome — except I don’t wish to live in Arizona,” she said.
But she began to think that, with the best fit, she may be willing to depart the South Bay. Reasonably priced homes in desirable 55-plus communities were much farther inland — in Beaumont, for instance, a fast-growing bedroom community 90 miles east of San Pedro. But some developments were subject to Mello-Roos, a special tax paid by residents at many planned communities in California. So she kept an eye fixed on conventional homes within the South Bay as she hunted.
Amongst her options:
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