Top 20 Cities Where Homeowners Stay the Longest

Homeowners are staying in their houses longer nationwide, but these cities take it to the furthest end of the spectrum with a large number of homeowners staying for over 30 years. There was not a clear-cut pattern to the kind of cities people live in the longest: Some have bustling economies while others have many residents struggling to pay monthly expenses. 55places.com ranked the top 20 locations with populations of 100,000 residents or more, and these are the top 20 cities where homeowners are in it for the long haul. See if your city made the list.

Last week in this space, we wrote about the American cities that renters are most eager to leave. So this week we decided to take a look at the cities where people stay put.

A recent study from 55places.com, a website focused on active adult communities in the United States, used census data to find the cities (only those with 100,000 residents or more) that had the largest share of tenured homeowners — that is, those who have not moved in at least 30 years.

The resulting ranked list was largely a mix of cities at either end of the economic spectrum: cold-weather cities with lower median incomes and home values that have suffered as factories and jobs have disappeared; and warm-weather areas with healthy economies, high median incomes and rising property values.

Read More