Here’s the city Baby Boomers retire to most these days – and why
The city Baby Boomers retire to most – Las Vegas – says a lot about what they want.
It may surprise that they’ve suddenly made Sin City their No. 1 retirement city, according to Travel + Leisure magazine, based on a domestic migration report by Bank of America. Why Las Vegas?
Noting a 2023 study by Empower, T+L says Las Vegas has become the city Baby Boomers retire to most for “its affordability, tax friendliness to retirees, ease of access to health care, and of course, its year-round sunshine.”
Yeah, but those qualities – along with low or nonexistent income and inheritance taxes – make Phoenix, Orlando and Tampa a city Baby Boomers retire to in droves, next to Las Vegas. Maybe Las Vegas has the edge because it combines its famous (and infamous) entertainment with burgeoning senior living options.
The only drawback to Las Vegas’ retirement popularity is the resulting shortage of affordable housing. “We need more product. What’s kept the values up in the Las Vegas market is that lack of product, so it’s a supply and demand issue,” the president of Las Vegas Realtors said last year in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which noted the city was already short 85,000 affordable homes.
Nice problem to have, though – especially when Americans are leaving several large cities in droves, and some smaller burgs actually offer incentives to move there. And are Baby Boomers ever on the move: According to Bank of America, “for the first time since 2014, baby boomers overtook millennials as the generation with the biggest share of homebuyers.”
Regardless, as T+L observes, the Las Vegas land rush tells you “Boomers are more interested in retiring to fun-filled destinations than quietly spending their golden years in the suburbs.”
As a boomer, I can also attest to an odd nostalgic feeling for Las Vegas in the days of the Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop – even though I was too young at the time to notice that particular heyday.
But with everything the city has going for it these days, you can see why Las Vegas is the city Baby Boomers retire to most.
