Why Some Retirees Save More Money by Staying in Their Homes Instead of Moving

Most retirement coverage focuses on moving: the low-tax state, the cheaper coast, the condo near the grandkids. A quieter group of families keeps the house, the doctors, and the neighbors they already have.

A recent profile of a couple in their 70s who spent heavily making their home easier to age in shows how far some owners will go to stay. For many long-time owners, staying put also beats moving on the numbers. Most of that edge comes from the tax code, and relocation cost comparisons show very little of it.

What Staying Put Costs a Couple Each Year

Take a 67-year-old couple with a mortgage-free, mid-priced suburban home. Their budget could look something like:

The Part B line uses the $202.90 standard monthly premium. Insurance is where stayers feel the squeeze, since average homeowners’ premiums rose 24% to $3,303 in 2024. People tend to underfund the maintenance line.

A house you plan to live in at 85 needs a roof, a furnace, and probably a first-floor bathroom at some point. Inflation for older families is running at 3.6% year over year on the research index weighted toward housing and medical care. That matches the 3.6% COLA for 2027, so benefits are keeping pace for now.

Turning the Budget Into a Portfolio Target

After the COLA, the average aged couple with both spouses collecting gets $3,355 a month, or $40,260 a year. That leaves a $34,910 gap, and at a 4% withdrawal rate, the portfolio target is $872,750. At a more conservative 3.5% withdrawal rate over a 30-year horizon, it rises to about $997,000. Delaying benefits changes the picture more than any other option. At 4%, each dollar of guaranteed income cuts the portfolio requirement by about 25 times that amount, and the maximum benefit at full retirement age reaches $4,188 a month in 2027.

Embedded Gain That Movers Pay and Stayers Keep

The Case-Shiller national index rose from 183.994 in 2016 to a record 337.306 this summer. Long-time owners sit on gains the tax code only partially shelters. Under 26 U.S.C. § 121(b), a joint return excludes at most $500,000 of gain. Consider a couple who paid $150,000 for a house now worth $900,000. They would owe tax on $250,000, about $37,500 at the 15% federal rate before any state tax or the 3.8% net investment income tax.

The gain also lands in Medicare, as it drives modified adjusted gross income to about $319,000, inside the $274,000 to $342,000 joint IRMAA tier. Two years later, each spouse pays $405.80 a month for Part B, an extra $4,870 for the year. Widowhood makes this worse, as a surviving spouse keeps the $500,000 exclusion only if the house sells within 2 years of death. After that window, the taxable gain on the same house doubles to $500,000.

Owners who stay until death get the reverse treatment. Under 26 U.S.C. § 1014(a), heirs take a basis equal to the property’s fair market value at the date of the decedent’s death, wiping out decades of embedded gain. In community property states, the full house steps up at the first death. Elsewhere, only the deceased spouse’s half does.

What It Takes to Come Out Ahead

A couple pulling this off needs a paid-off home, a realistic budget near $75,000 with maintenance and insurance fully funded, and a portfolio of about $875,000 to $1 million in broad index funds plus a treasury ladder. That supports withdrawals of 3.5% to 4%, provided returns stay a few points above inflation. Delaying Social Security lowers the target.

One item rarely appears in relocation math: a large unrealized gain on a long-held house is an asset you keep only by staying, and if a sale ever becomes necessary, the timing around a spouse’s death can change the tax bill by six figures.

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