Article Courtesy of The Sun Sentinel

By Rebekah Monson

Published May 18, 2011

With prices bottomed out and plenty of vacant units, senior communities throughout South Florida are facing dual challenges of serving their oldest residents and luring in younger retirees to stay afloat.

Many 55-and-older communities are looking to the future and casting a net for new residents with upgraded amenities and fewer restrictions on buyers.

"This year, all of a sudden, I'm getting so many listings from people who are just too old to stay in the communities," said Bob Melzer, a Realtor with Lang Realty who specializes in senior communities. "It's really affecting who is buying."

Harvey Marks, 62, planned to stay at his Century Village Boca Raton investment condo for a few months while he looked for a larger oceanfront property for retirement, but six years later, he says he wouldn't leave "the Village."

"It's very affordable, and it just has every amenity you could ever want," said the vice president of COBRUA, Century Village's umbrella association. "We got here and got involved, and we decided to stay."

But many retirees Marks' age and younger are reluctant to live in a community with most residents in their 80s and 90s, said David Levy, a gerontologist in Boca Raton who specializes in family caregiver education.

More than a third of Palm Beach County residents and more than a quarter of Broward County residents are older than 55, and by 2040, the number of retirees in the United States will double, according to U.S. census reports.

The number of retirement communities in Broward and Palm Beach counties also is on the rise, according to the Florida Commission on Human Relations, which registers 55-and-older communities.

Broward is home to 684 registered 55-and-older communities, up almost 26 percent since 2006, and Palm Beach County is home to 749, up almost 50 percent in the same five years.

"Most baby boomers just aren't as interested in that lifestyle, and they don't want to live in places where they're separated from the rest of the world," Levy said. "The side effect is that some of these communities may isolate the elderly in an unhealthy way, where everyone on a floor is 80, 85 or 90 years old. They need younger people in there to be a vibrant community."

Longer lifespans and a slow housing market are locking older residents into these communities, even when they may not be healthy enough to live on their own, Levy said.

"We never expected people to live this long, and we aren't equipped to care for them," he said. "Medical technology has helped our elders to outlive their retirement savings. They simply cannot afford long-term care, so they stay put."

In the past few years, Century Village Boca Raton has upgraded its clubhouse and fitness facilities and added new activities for younger residents, while expanding its cable lineup, bus services and ambulance contracts for older residents, said Marvin Manning, 85, past-president of COBRUA.

"We know that we have two generations living side-by-side in the Village — the parents and their children," Manning said. "The incoming group is a whole different ballgame, because they're looking for activities, while the older people are looking for ways to live out their lives at home."

Marks regularly takes older residents' children for tours of the facilities, showing them the shows, classes and clubs and introducing them to younger residents so that they will consider Century Village when planning their own retirement, he said.

"We just started a paddleball club, for example," he said. "It might not be for 80-year-olds but it's certainly for 50- and 60-year-olds. We have all kinds of activities for both generations here, and if you get enough people interested, you can start any club you want."

The housing slump has hit Century Village hard, but the upgrades and active residents are helping to stabilize turnover, he said.

"There are more units for sale than there are buyers in the Village, and a lot of that is because prices are so low that you can rent for less than the cost to buy," he said, "I still think we're far better off than other retirement communities who don't have the amenities that we have."

To encourage new investment in the Mainlands of Tamarac Section Three, the homeowners association has loosened its restrictions on owners and embraced foreign buyers, President Bill Villella said.

"We fly three flags here — the American flag, the state flag and the Canadian flag," he said. "We have really embraced the Canadian buyers, and they have a lot of interest in our community."

Mainlands Section Three allows investors to buy two properties and immediately rent them, whereas many other communities allow owners to purchase only a single unit or require owners to wait up to a year before renting, he said.

"We still don't want kids living here, but we are definitely trying to encourage new people to come and live here," Villella said.

Retirement communities once dominated Boca Teeca in Boca Raton, but now children ride bikes along its sidewalks and swim in its pools, and younger people look to the area to buy their first homes.

Boca Teeca Section Nine dropped its 55-and-older status more than a decade ago, but residents brought it back up for a vote in 2009, Carol Leitao, secretary of the condo association, said.

"They voted it down, because people like the mixture here," she said. "A lot of people were worried that if they sold their apartments that younger relatives and people couldn't move in."

The changes in Boca Teeca Section Nine could foretell the future for other retirement communities, Levy said.

"The very best communities for the elderly are the naturally occurring retirement communities that we see in cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia," he said. "In these places, the elderly remain active and tend to be happier, because young people move into their buildings and neighborhoods and check on them, take them to the doctor, help them to cope with their needs."