A few years ago, with the kids grown and gone, Laurin and Ron Jacobson looked around their huge, aging South Tampa house and decided it was time to sell.
“It was an old 1960s home that kept falling apart, and we were going through our money like crazy fixing it up,” Laurin Jacobson recalled. “We said, ‘You know what, we’re going back to renting like we did in our teens and early 20s.’ ”
Now in their 60s, they’re leasing a three-story townhouse with a rooftop terrace and a “great-looking handyman” who fixes anything that goes wrong.
“It’s heaven,” Jacobson said.
In another part of Tampa, 66-year-old Rose Peters relaxes on the balcony of her apartment as she sips red wine, watches a purple sunset and extols the benefits of renting. Foremost among them:
“If somebody said, ‘Hey, Rose, let’s go to Timbuktu,’ I don’t have to deal with a house.”
The United States is increasingly a nation of renters — the share of rental households is at a 20-year high, a recent Harvard study found. Many of today’s renters cannot afford a house and have no choice or are in the younger age groups that traditionally make up a major part of the rental population.
But Peters and the Jacobsons represent an increasingly common breed of renter — those in their later years who can afford to own but prefer to rent. People 55 and older now account for 42 percent of the growth in U.S. renter households. One of every three new renter households has enough income to afford a home yet has opted to rent.
Read more here about why more baby boomers are renting according to Tampa Bay Times!
