11 Wallet-Friendly Small Towns To Retire On The Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast beach towns most people picture are expensive. In Orange Beach, Alabama, a house sold for a median of about $707,000 in July, nearly twice the national median of about $390,000. In each of the 11 small towns below, the median home price is less than half the Orange Beach figure, and in Palacios, Texas, it was about $210,000 in July. The water is still cheap to enjoy. In Aransas Pass, Texas, anglers fish Redfish Bay from pull-offs along the causeway, and near New Port Richey, Florida, a county park on Green Key has a free Gulf beach. Taxes help as well. Texas and Florida have no state income tax, Mississippi doesn't tax Social Security or qualified retirement income, and Alabama exempts Social Security and defined-benefit pensions. Healthcare takes more weighing, because some of these towns have a 24-hour emergency room in town and others depend on one in the next town over.
Aransas Pass, Texas
Rockport, the resort town of the Texas Coastal Bend, had a median sale price of about $398,000 in August. Its neighbor Aransas Pass was closer to $249,000 in June, and the difference buys a town where fishing takes a Texas license and a place to park. Along the Redfish Bay Causeway, pull-offs let drivers leave the road and fish from the shoreline, and at Conn Brown Harbor, Harbor Point Park has a seawall and a pier on the bay. Mickey's Bar and Grill, a two-story seafood house on the harbor, serves seafood caught in the bay and the Gulf.
The Shrimporee came to the festival grounds on East Johnson Avenue in mid-October this year, and seniors 62 and older got in for $8 a day. The Aransas Pass Senior Citizens Center on South 13th Street is a weekday senior meal site, and the civic center has pickleball courts. The town has had no hospital of its own since 2017, and the closest 24-hour emergency rooms are in Portland and Rockport. A few miles out on Highway 361, the Lighthouse Lakes Paddling Trail, the first paddling trail in Texas, loops through mangrove estuaries and seagrass flats.
Port Lavaca, Texas
On Lavaca Bay, the Formosa Wetlands Walkway at the Port Lavaca Bird Sanctuary crosses the salt marsh to the Alcoa Birding Tower, and brown pelicans are the most dependable company out there. The sanctuary is open for day use, and the bayfront walk continues to Lighthouse Beach Park, which has a beach with a playground and a splash pad and the newest of the town's fishing piers, a D-head pier with a shade structure. Port Lavaca homes went for a median of about $256,000 in the three months through August, and Memorial Medical Center, a critical access hospital, is on North Virginia Street. Golfers drive about six miles south on Highway 35 to Hatch Bend Country Club, an 18-hole semi-private course.
Palacios, Texas
A walk along the Palacios seawall covers a mile and a half of paved path beside the bay, and in this Matagorda County town of about 4,400 people it is the evening walk. Lighted piers and jetties along the way keep anglers out after dark, and the bay beach and its pavilion sit just off the path for anyone who wants to stop and sit. For dinner, Danny's Seafood House and Tran's Restaurant both serve Gulf Coast seafood. In July, Palacios homes changed hands for a median near $210,000, and the emergency room at Palacios Community Medical Center, on Green Avenue, is open around the clock.
Morgan City, Louisiana
Across the Louisiana line in Morgan City, on the Atchafalaya River, a day on Lake Palourde starts at Lake End Park, where the boat ramp costs day visitors $5 and costs campers nothing. Anyone without a boat can fish from the park's wharf or from fishing piers along the shore, and the park's campsites and cabins are handy when family comes to visit. In August, the median sale price in Morgan City's ZIP code was about $150,000, and Ochsner St. Mary, on Marguerite Street, keeps its emergency department open 24 hours a day. Louisiana taxes income at a flat 3%, Social Security that is taxed federally is exempt, and residents 65 and older could exclude up to $12,000 of retirement income for 2025, an amount now adjusted each year for inflation.
In town, the International Petroleum Museum on First Street leads tours of Mr. Charlie, a former offshore drilling rig, twice a day Monday through Saturday, with a discount for seniors. Out by Lake Palourde, Brownell Memorial Park is free, and its 106-foot carillon tower holds 61 bronze bells that play a tune every 15 minutes over a small stand of cypress.
Long Beach, Mississippi
Anyone 60 or older in Long Beach, on the Mississippi coast just west of Gulfport, can use the city's Senior Activity Center on Daughtery Road, which opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays. Pickleball runs every weekday morning until noon, tai chi meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, and an acrylic painting class runs on Wednesday mornings. The center has a walking track indoors and another outside.
In the afternoon, the pier at Long Beach Harbor is a quiet place to fish for croaker and speckled trout and to watch the boats go in and out, and Steve's Marina Restaurant serves fresh crab claws with homemade sauces. Long Beach homes sold for a median of about $286,000 in the three months through September. The nearest 24-hour emergency rooms are in Gulfport, Memorial Hospital among them. Sundays close out the week on Harper McCaughan Town Green, where the Long Beach Art and Artisans Market sets up between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., weather permitting.
Gautier, Mississippi
Walking the trails of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge costs nothing in Gautier, between Ocean Springs and Pascagoula, and the trails are open sunrise to sunset every day. The visitor center on Crane Lane has guides for the three-quarter-mile C.L. Dees Trail and the mile-long Fontainebleau Trail, and it opens between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.
Shepard State Park, also in Gautier, charges a small day-use fee per vehicle that covers its marsh walk, fishing pier and about eight miles of trails, and it has an 18-hole disc golf course called Alligator Alley. Shell Landing Golf Club, designed by Davis Love III, has fairways lined with pines. At about $227,000, the median Gautier home over the three months through September cost less than one in Long Beach, and Singing River runs 24-hour emergency rooms in neighboring Ocean Springs and Pascagoula. Gautier Parks and Recreation hosts potlucks at the Senior Center in City Park.
Pascagoula, Mississippi
After dark at Beach Park in Pascagoula, solar lights come on along the deck of the fishing pier, and green fish lights shine under the water. The pier reopened in May with those lights, a fish-cleaning station and ADA-compliant handrails, and by day the park around it has a beach, walking trails, a playground and picnic tables with grills.
A Pascagoula house sold for a median of about $140,000 in the three months through September, and the emergency room at Singing River's Pascagoula Hospital, on Denny Avenue, is open 24 hours. Members of the Pascagoula Senior Center on Live Oak Avenue have two indoor pickleball courts. For supper, Bozo's, a seafood market with two casual diners, is the place in town for a shrimp po'boy.
Foley, Alabama
On the first and third Saturday nights of every month, the Foley Senior Center on East Rose Avenue holds a dance between 6:30 and 9 p.m., at $5 for members and $7 for guests. Membership is open to anyone 50 or older for $15 a year, and members pay $2 a class during the week, with tai chi and line dancing on Wednesdays. Foley is about 10 miles from the beaches at Gulf Shores, and in June its homes sold for a median of about $330,000, less than half the July median in Orange Beach.
The city's 12 lighted pickleball courts, behind the Coastal Alabama Farmers' and Fishermen's Market off Miflin Road, stay open every day until 10 p.m., and Vista Dunes at GlenLakes Golf Club is an 18-hole semi-private course. Baldwin Health's 112-bed hospital is on North McKenzie Street.
For water closer than the beach, Graham Creek Nature Preserve has a canoe and kayak launch on 484 acres of wetlands and tidal marsh, with trails and bird watching. Wolf Creek Park, at 20 acres, has its own kayak launch and a fishing pier beside a small pavilion.
Carrabelle, Florida
Carrabelle Beach, just west of town on U.S. 98, has public restrooms, picnic areas and an uncrowded stretch of sand on Florida's Forgotten Coast, and across the highway the Camp Gordon Johnston WWII Museum is free, open Tuesday through Saturday between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. A paved path links the beach with the Crooked River Lighthouse, where a climb to the top costs $6 for adults, Wednesday through Sunday during daytime hours. Back in town, the 12th Street Fishing Pier is by the Highway 98 bridge, and the chamber office on St. James Avenue keeps a phone booth known as the World's Smallest Police Station, which is exactly what it sounds like. The Carrabelle Riverfront Festival, held this April, was free. Half the houses sold in Carrabelle over the three months through August went for less than about $260,000, and the Franklin County Senior Center is on Northwest Avenue F. Weems Memorial Hospital, in Apalachicola, has 24/7 emergency services, and Weems runs a clinic in Carrabelle on Northeast Fifth Street.
Hudson, Florida
Farther down the Florida coast in Pasco County, north of Tampa Bay, Hudson's median sale price was $282,500 in June. The town's beach is Robert J. Strickland Memorial Park, known as Hudson Beach, where a sand beach about 200 feet long has a marked swimming area. A seawall and boardwalk along the front give easy access to the Gulf of Mexico, shore fishing is allowed, and the paved boat ramp has plenty of trailer parking. HCA Florida Bayonet Point Hospital, on Fivay Road in Hudson, has an emergency room open 24/7, and Pasco County's Meals on Wheels serves residents over 60. On weekends, Sam's Beach Bar at the park has live music.
New Port Richey, Florida
Just south, in New Port Richey, half the homes sold in July went for less than about $235,000. A short drive west of downtown, Robert K. Rees Memorial Park on Green Key is a free county park, open daily between dawn and dusk. A 650-foot boardwalk leads out to its beach, where swimming in the Gulf is allowed and dolphins can be spotted offshore, and more than 240 species of birds have been recorded in the park.
Downtown, Sims Park sits on the Cotee River with boat and kayak launches, a splash pad and an amphitheater. The city's Recreation and Aquatic Center on Van Buren Street runs programs for seniors and has open pickleball on weekday mornings, and the emergency center at Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, on Madison Street, is open around the clock. Florida has no state income tax, and the homestead exemption takes $25,000 off a home's assessed value for all property taxes, plus up to $25,000 more for non-school taxes.
The lowest prices in this group are in Pascagoula and Morgan City, where medians ran near $140,000 and $150,000 and the emergency room is in town. Foley costs the most, at about $330,000, and its residents get a senior center with Saturday dances and lighted pickleball courts open until 10 at night, with the beach a 10-mile drive away. In Aransas Pass, Long Beach, Gautier and Carrabelle, an emergency means a trip to a hospital in the next town, which is worth timing before signing anything. In Hudson and New Port Richey, the Gulf is a county beach with a boardwalk, and in Palacios it is a mile and a half of seawall. The picture to keep is Pascagoula's pier after dark, with the solar lights on along the deck and the green fish lights shining under the water.
