Finance

These popular retirement communities have years-long waiting lists — but here’s what they’re not telling you

MarketWatch · May 09, 2026 19:09 · 4 min read

These popular retirement communities have years-long waiting lists — but here’s what they’re not telling you

What to keep in mind before paying $400,000 to $1 million in entry fees to move into a continuing-care retirement community.

In the past few years, when people have considered where to relocate in retirement, one type of place has often risen to the top of their list: One of the nation’s 1,900 continuing-care retirement communities, or CCRCs, sometimes called life-care communities.

For an entry fee averaging around $400,000 — sometimes over $1 million — plus a monthly fee of $4,000 to $10,000, a CCRC offers not just a swanky place to live but amenities like pools, fine dining, recreation, clubs and, if necessary one day, the ability to have assisted-living or memory-care help onsite. The entry fee is typically mostly refundable when the resident dies or moves out.

“CCRCs offer assurance that you could live gracefully as you age and be taken care of and not be dependent on your children,” said Daniel Horowitz, a retired historian and author of the new book “On Retirement: How Aging Is Transforming American Lives.”

Many CCRCs, including the university retirement communities I recently wrote about, have years-long waiting lists. New York City will soon get its first one — the 11-story luxury River’s Edge building, which is more than 85% presold. (Entry fee: $717,000 to $3.3 million. Monthly fee: roughly $6,000 to $10,000.)

Finding the right place to live in retirement can be challenging. Although surveys show that most people want to age in place in their homes, that’s often difficult or not possible because the homes may not be made that way — with, for example, steps that can be increasingly problematic to climb or cabinets that become difficult to reach. Also, their home communities may lack public transportation that can be necessary once older adults stop driving.

But CCRCs offer an alternative, since you can move in when you’re still active and remain living there as you get older and come to need living assistance or develop problems with mobility or cognition.

Horowitz, 88, who retired from running Smith College’s American studies program at age 74 in 2012, offers his CCRC perspective based on his research for the book and his recent move from a California condo into a continuing-care retirement community in Charlottesville, Va., with his wife and fellow historian Helen. (Horowitz’s parents lived in a Connecticut CCRC in the 1980s. “They had a very good experience,” he said.)

CCRCs range in size, from ones with fewer than 100 units to some with well over 1,000. Many are nonprofits, often run by religious organizations, and many attract what Horowitz calls “the very affluent.”

CCRC occupants, Horowitz found, “live longer, healthier and happier, partly because they selectively admit upper-income, healthy and educated people with greater longevity prospects.” The CCRCs also work to overcome the isolation of older adults.

“I get two or three emails a day from my CCRC about things like museum tours and lunch,” Horowitz said. “There’s tremendous programming.”

Continuing-care retirement communities also make healthcare more readily available than typical 55-plus communities. At Horowitz’s CCRC, two doctors who are employees come in regularly to treat the 230 residents.

But continuing-care communities’ marketing hides some of the realities of life there, Horowitz noted, such as the actual health of residents. When he studied the brochures of eight CCRCs across the country, the infirmities and dependencies of old age seemed buried.

“In most CCRCs, when you go down to the dining hall, half the people have walkers or canes. In the promotional literature, you don’t see that at all,” Horowitz said.

Also, he noticed, the marketing he saw generally “paid only the visual equivalent of lip service to diversity,” with some exceptions. “Brochures often picture these places as being much more diverse than their clientele is,” he said.

“I’m not cynical about the experiences people have in continuing-care retirement communities, but I’m cynical about the marketing,” Horowitz added.

Before moving into a CCRC

Horowitz is a fan of CCRCs, but also advises caution before deciding to move into one.

First, talk to a financial adviser about whether you can afford the entry fee and monthly fees. The monthly cost may appear steep, but might be a bargain when you compare how much you’re currently paying for things like groceries, restaurants and fitness-club memberships.

Learn how financially stable the continuing-care retirement community is. Since the place may be where you’ll want to reside for the rest of your life, you’ll want to feel confident that it won’t declare bankruptcy and force you to relocate again. “Get a sense of how firm the finances are and what the pattern of increase for monthly fees has been in the last five years,” said Horowitz.

There were 13 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in 2025 from CCRCs, independent-living and assisted-living developments, and skilled nursing homes — including one in Houston that filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in four years.

A survey from the senior-housing research group NIC said “potential challenges in 2026 include headline exposure stemming from any additional high-profile CCRC bankruptcies.”

Try to determine how welcome you’d be living there. “That’s hard to do. But at many of these places, you can do a tryout and stay in a unit for a week,” said Horowitz. “And you can talk to people who are already there to see what their experiences have been like.”

Horowitz hopes CCRCs will do a better job making their communities more affordable for middle-income retirees: “Anything that could be done to minimize the replication of social, economic and racial inequities — some way to guarantee a certain number of spaces for people who couldn’t spend a million dollars,” he said.