Here's how we reached our decision:

1) Our first priority was to relocate to a university town to take advantage of free education for seniors and to be in a more dynamic and diverse environment than our gated FL community.
2) We wanted to relocate to a warm weather city in the southeast because they would be easiest to visit and would ultimately get us closer to more of our friends. It also had to be near a reasonable sized airport.
3) We wanted a place we could "lock and leave" with little or no maintenance to worry about and resonable security. This would allow us to travel for extended periods without the bother and expense of exterior maintenance. It would also have to have covered, secure parking. We came to realize that this eliminated most single family homes: they all had yards to take care of.
4) Cost of living had to be lower than where we are. Even though SC has a state income tax and FL doesn't, enough of our pension and all of our SS income is exempt; and the cost of living is significantly lower. (A good web site for this is: www.bestplaces.net.; also: www.retirementliving.com. One or both require a small, one-time membership fee--well worth it.)
5) We wanted to be close enough to the university to bike (or better yet, walk) there if we wanted, which basically limited us to about a 10 mile radius.
6) We wanted out of southwest FL. There is far too much development going on without regard to the infrastructure, schools, and water system to support it. We are tired of the "retiree" mentality and stereotype. We didn't want to think about hurricanes again--even though our house was unaffected by any of the storms of the past few years.

Last summer we visited Gainesville, FL (U of FL). We liked the school, but didn't like Gainesville. Next we visited Columbia because we had a friend who lived there. We were prepared not to like it, but the opposite turned out to be true. There is a lot going on (it's the capital in addition to being the home of USC--the University of South Carolina), there is very little traffic for a city of 116,000. We loved the university and all the people we met; and we loved the old neighborhoods near the U. At the time we looked at single family houses, but it was too early for us to get serious. (This is all chronicled on our journal page, if you're interested.)

Then Rick retired at the end of March (2006). When we got back from Australia, it became much more imperative to get our house sold, even though we didn't know where we were going. With all his new found free time, Rick was anxious to get involved with a university and there isn't one near us. We had our agent in Columbia send us listings for condos and townhomes, but there wasn't much available except in the "burbs" and we'd had enough of that. We decided to visit Knoxville (U of Tenn). Rick has a former colleague there who got us started. We liked Knoxville enough to determine we could live there and found several possibilities for housing within 10 miles of UT, but you wouldn't want to bike on the roads (too busy), let alone walk. We continued on to Columbia with the idea that if we couldn't find something we liked, we'd expand our search to AL and MS and look at FL State (Tallahassee) even though we didn't want to stay in FL.

The net result is that we found a house that met all our requirements and in addition is within WALKING distance of the university, at least 20 restaurants, and numerous retail shops and service establishments. About the only compromise we made was that we bought at the high end of our price range. The fact that our new place has only a one-car garage will hasten another of our objectives--to get down to one vehicle (and further reduce expenses)!!