If getting rid of noise is a big thing, unfortunately those other sought amenities seem to be unavailable or disappear. The nations’ transportation model + the more than occasional idiot setting off M80s, along with other background din, seems the biggest hurdle to me.
The year I met my future wife it was 1969. Visiting her home outside a town of maybe 25,000 was a different scene than today, the country had about 200 million population, where today there are around 330 million. A tad more wouldn’t we think?
Anyway we could see beautiful American Elm trees sweeping across the sky, and they would be all gone in about 5 or so years with dutch elm disease. Nowadays the white ash trees are disappearing due to the emerald ash borer. At her home if a car came down that county trunk road during the day, it was like an event, even though very close to the town, there was so little traffic, and quiet, real quiet. Now that same road has been widened and is designated an ALT-I-Road route when a miles away I-road gets clogged with problems. Either way, that road is very busy/noisy most of the day. BTW, IMO no shortage of idiots back then and certainly not today, maybe previously fewer due to population densities.
In 1976-77 we moved from a 9-10k population town in Northern Wi., living there approx. 3 years, to a southern Wi. city of about 150k. The first thing I noticed was suddenly every hour +/- hours, we were treated to sirens, always various sirens, police, ambulance, fire trucks, you name it, so there was always a constant din in the background compared to the 10k town up north, could be trucks air braking several miles away, any time day or night, distant train horns among other delightful rackets. Over the decades the idiots have turned firecracker season into a summer long event ramping up on weekends plus the big summer month of mega-noise 7-4-nn. But besides that we have most ALL of the other amenities you mention for a retired couple that you seek, and neighborhoods DO make a difference. I swear, depending on anyone’s tolerance for day to day stupidity (.gov?-even outrage culture, etc.) can be a decider on landing in a retirement homestead. I get it, I doeth complain to much. :-)
Wait a sec., did I complain about the current serious housing bubble of any kind anywhere yet? A gift we all contribute to the whole real estate industry anything.
You may want to check some towns in Pennsylvania of all places. But even there I’ll bet the prices are inflated today depending on how many amenities are within a certain distance of any kind of abode. Try to hold out until after the next crash in housing, if possible, or not, because in time every abode in the USA could be bought up by some Gawd awful mega real-estate investor corporation, IMO. Then stuff more-so gets real nasty!
I hope you enjoyed my cheery rant about finding most of your future living checklist search. I know it’s a cliche and I’ve been to Florida several times, I guess it’s yet another ‘love it or leave it’ state, but my advice and my opinion, get the hell out of that state. That’s overdone but I could say that about many states and places I’ve visited. :-)
