Real Estate

Spotlight: real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran
By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

Finding that perfect spot to retire can be both challenging and expensive. That's where real estate expert Barbara Corcoran's new book, "Nextville," comes in handy.

At a glance Name: Barbara Corcoran Hometown: Edgewater, N.J. Education: Holy Rosary High School, Edgewater Career highlights:     Frequent real estate contributor to "The Today Show," "Good Morning America" and CNBC.   Author, "Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life" and a 2003 best-selling memoir, "If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails."   With a $1,000 loan from her boyfriend in 1973, the former waitress built The Corcoran Group into the premier New York real estate agency, with 45 offices, 2,150 sales associates and employees, and an almost unfathomable $5 billion in annual closings.   On Sept. 9, 2001, two days before 9/11, sold The Corcoran Group to NRT, an affiliate of Cendant Corp., for an estimated $66 million.   In 2005, resigned as chairwoman of The Corcoran Group to found her own television production and business consulting company, Barbara Corcoran Inc.

In "Nextville," Corcoran surveys the various types of retirements that baby boomers are searching for today, from action-packed to family-centered to socially conscious, with a fun self-test to help you discover your own retirement priorities. She then shares 100 of her favorite retirement destinations and what makes them so special.

One thing is for certain: From a luxury nudist colony in Florida to a tree house community in the Midwest to a dirt-cheap beachfront penthouse in Panama, these options are worlds away from Golden Pond.

Bankrate caught up with Corcoran by phone at her own country refuge on Fire Island, N.Y., for a chat about boomers facing the back nine.

You urge those approaching retirement to "think outside the hammock." What do you mean by that?

Years ago, people thought of retirement as leisure time: You left your 9-to-5 job and all the pressures of life. Their dream was to have nothing to do. Well, it just took a few people retiring with nothing to do to straighten that concept out. "Think outside the hammock" really means think past whether you're going to enjoy the prettiness of a place and focus more on what you're going to do when you get there, because retirement today is a lot more about doing than just being. That's a total shift in mind-set.