The 61-to-79 age group is currently the largest home-buying demographic nationally. It’s the Baby Boom, which made Florida a major retirement destination. But with a warming climate, hurricanes, insurance costs and other factors, a growing number of retirees are looking for places closer to home – and with beaches to boot.
Some say that has turned coastal Delaware and the Maryland Eastern Shore into the new Florida. Take Ed Beres, a real estate agent in Chester. He says his book of business these days is about 90 percent retirees. And he’s noticed a growing trend.
“I'm seeing less people going to Florida,” Beres said. “It's due to not only the climate. I mean, it's hot down there, so that's part of it. But also just the insurance, because of the storms they've gotten hit with.”
Beres and other observers say that the migration to the mid-Atlantic region is only growing, particularly in Sussex County, Delaware, which has tax advantages similar to Florida's.
“That population is growing tremendously,” Beres said. “It's nonstop.” This has given rise to the notion that coastal Delaware and the Maryland Eastern Shore, tucked between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, are becoming a new Florida – but with four seasons.
“I would say that the new region or the region of the Eastern Shore in Delmarva is becoming the new Florida for senior real estate,” Beres said. “I really do think it's a growing population. The developers in the jurisdictions have realized that that is a good market.”
Local business and political leaders are seeing the same thing and planning accordingly, knowing that roads, sewer, and water infrastructure will have to keep up, as well as hospitals.
“This is very much a development. It's very much a real thing,” said Mike Dunn of the Greater Salisbury Committee. “Sussex County has and is still experiencing explosive growth in the residential market. And the former rural roads of Sussex County, Millsboro and Selbyville and Dagsboro and Frankford and places like that, they are dotted with communities now. Estimates are as many as 40,000 new residents have moved to Sussex County. And unquestionably, it is a retirement market.”
Once seen as a quiet rural enclave of quick vacation getaways from Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, the region is quickly taking on another character, along with new challenges.
“Everybody now knows about the Delmarva Peninsula,” Dunn said. “There has been enough local, regional, and national coverage. I've heard [it compared] from the New Hamptons to the new Florida. I don't think it will ever be either of them, but there's no question that the Delmarva Peninsula, which maybe at one point in time wasn't on everybody's map, is now on a whole lot more maps and radars than it has been in the past.”
Barbara Lawrence, a realtor in Sussex County, also has seen the growth, particularly in Delaware. “Whether it's a 55+ community or a brand new community over towards Millsboro and Selbyville, if you look at the demographics, most of them are 55 plus, whether they're a 55+ community or not,” she said.
Most of Lawrence's buyers are coming from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and points north. But a few are returning from Florida. A major selling point for the mid-Atlantic region, she said, is proximity to family.
“Most people that are moving into this area want to be within a three hour drive to their family, so if they had to do it in a day, they can,” she said. “I mean, that's what put me here.”
Along with the growth, of course, comes congestion – a new reality and a new challenge for a changing peninsula.
