By Carol Fena

Right now retirement communities are "hot."

When there is a lot of interest in a subject, trying to predict the trends becomes important also. No one knows exactly what will happen in the future, however. It is fun to make predictions. Predictions should be more than wild guesses or pure intuition. Real estate trends can be based on demographics and money flow or something as simple as watching the traffic flow on my website about retirement communities for over age 55.

My website has categories for the areas of the United States. How much traffic flows to those states tells me something. The traffic can, in turn, be affected by something like the weather or a news story, so it changes minutely and temporarily. But over time, certain trends are strong. For instance, the state that consistently gets the most traffic is Florida. This tells me that a lot of people are interested in retiring to Florida and that is a consistent trend that has not changed over many years. It appears right now that this will continue to be so, although it could change at any time.

Recently, I have noticed a large increase of traffic to Southern California. Does this mean some people are opting out of Florida and considering California. Possibly, but I need to watch this trend over time because it may just be a temporary thing. The Midwest has been coming on strong more recently. What does this mean. It may mean more people are reaching retirement age in the midwest or it may mean more retirement communities are being built there, increasing the interest. It needs further exploration.

One category that is very strong is manufactured homes. What state are people searching in for these communities. It is interesting to note that people are searching for this type of housing in Florida more than any other state. Remember, all of this is on my website and I do not know if it would be the same on others, although I think it would.

You would be surprised to know that while people search for housing considered affordable, it seems a contradiction that they search for the highest quality ones (I can tell this by what communities they look at). This tells me that most people who consider mobile homes, which are more affordable, generally, than site-built homes, still want the better quality ones, and are looking really for good value. Of course, there are other factors that I won't go into here, that bring me to some of these conclusions.

My luxury retirement community category is searched more than my affordable retirement communities category which I find interesting. What does that mean. Are people searching for something unique. Despite what you read about the popularity of university towns, not too many people go to the category about communities near universities. This is probably because it is a small niche.

So those are some trends that I see. I see the active adult communities being more popular now and in the next few years, with their attractive offerings that appeal to a baby-boomer such as fitness rooms, golf courses, pools, and clubhouses. I see assisted living or apartments becoming more popular in another ten years as the population ages, and I see Florida as the leading destination. These could change any time and new trends may evolve. Of course, there are many more general observations that I do not have room for here. I will continue to watch the trends, and you can, too, on my website.

Carol Fena, Realtor and Webmaster for http://www.bestguide-retirementcommunities.com.