Retirement Place Scorer: Compare US Counties (Census, NOAA)

Retirement Place Scorer — Compare US Counties on Housing, Climate, Hospitals & Broadband

Retirement Place Scorer ranks every US county for retirement using your own priorities, built only from official government data: U.S. Census Bureau (American Community Survey), NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (30-year county climate), and CMS Care Compare (hospital star ratings). Every row shows the raw numbers, a 0–100 score per factor, and where each number came from, so you can check it instead of trusting a black-box "best places" list.

Built for retirees and pre-retirees, financial planners and retirement coaches, relocation and real-estate professionals, 55+ community developers, journalists and researchers.

• 8 factors, your weights: home affordability, rent affordability, warm winters, mild summers, low rainfall, hospital quality (CMS stars), hospital access (per 100k people), broadband.
• Filters: states, min/max county population, max median home value.
• Transparent scoring: each factor is a national percentile (0–100, higher = better), so scores compare across states. Missing hospital data never helps a county: no hospital = 0, unrated hospitals = 40 (see Methodology for other missing data).
• Add-on (off by default): every hospital in the county with its CMS star rating and emergency services.

No login, no API key, no cookies, no proxies, no scraping of listing sites.

Why this one

	This Actor	Typical "best places" scraper or list
Data	Official Census ACS, NOAA NCEI, CMS	Copied magazine rankings or real-estate listings
Your priorities	8 adjustable weights	Fixed editorial ranking
Coverage	All ~3,200 US counties	Top 10–100 cities
Transparency	Raw values + per-factor scores + sources per row	Opaque
Healthcare	CMS hospital stars and access	Rarely
Fair-housing safe	No demographic, race, religion, family-status or age-mix factors	Often mixes in demographics

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price	When
Scored county	$0.005 ($5 per 1,000)	Each county returned
Hospital list add-on	+$0.002 per county	Only if addHospitalList is on
Actor start	$0.00005	Apify's standard start event

How that compares: general location/real-estate data Actors on the Store charge about $2–$10 per 1,000 rows and give you raw listings to analyse yourself. Each of our rows is already a finished, multi-source analysis, so a top-50 shortlist costs $0.25.

Billing examples: no incremental mode; you pay per county returned: 25 counties = $0.125; 25 counties with the hospital add-on = $0.175; a run where no county matches your filters = start event only. Re-weight and re-run as often as you like. Set Max charge per run to cap spend.

Input examples

Warm, affordable, good hospitals, Southeast:

{ "states": ["FL", "GA", "SC", "NC", "TN", "AL"], "minPopulation": 30000, "weight_warmWinters": 30, "weight_hospitalQuality": 30, "maxItems": 25 }

Mild summers, under $300k, nationwide:

{ "maxMedianHomeValue": 300000, "weight_mildSummers": 35, "weight_warmWinters": 5, "maxItems": 50 }

Output (one row)

rank, fips, county, state, score (0–100), dataCoverage (share of your weights with data), factorScores{}, population, medianHomeValue, medianGrossRent, medianHouseholdIncome, broadbandPct, janAvgLowF, julAvgHighF, annualPrecipIn, hospitalCount, avgHospitalStars, hospitalsWithEmergency, latitude, longitude, landSqMi, weightsUsed, sources, plus hospitals[] with the add-on.

Methodology (reference years, formulas, missing data)

Reference years (also returned per row in sources and in the run SUMMARY as acsYear / climateYears):

• Census ACS 5-year: the newest release found on census.gov at build time (tries last year, then the two before). Gazetteer: 2024.
• NOAA nClimDiv: the 30 most recent complete calendar years (e.g. 1996–2025 for runs in 2026). A county needs at least 10 years of data for a climate value.
• CMS hospitals: current Care Compare file at build time. The built table is cached up to 30 days.

Raw values:

Field	Definition
janAvgLowF	Mean of NOAA's county January minimum-temperature series (tmin) over the 30 years. Not the mean temperature.
julAvgHighF	Mean of NOAA's county July maximum-temperature series (tmax) over the 30 years. Not the mean temperature.
annualPrecipIn	Mean annual total precipitation (sum of 12 months; years with a missing month are skipped).
medianHomeValue / medianGrossRent / medianHouseholdIncome	ACS tables B25077, B25064, B19013 (estimates only; margins of error aren't used).
broadbandPct	ACS B28002: households with a broadband subscription ÷ all households.
hospitalAccess input	CMS hospitals located in the county per 100,000 residents. It's a count, not travel time or distance; a county next to a big hospital in another county can score low.
hospitalQuality input	Average CMS overall star rating of the county's rated hospitals.

Factor score = national percentile rank of the raw value across all counties with data (0–100; ties share the midpoint rank). Lower is better for home value, rent, July high and precipitation; higher is better for January low, hospital stars, hospital access and broadband.

County score = Σ(factor score × weight) ÷ Σ(weights of factors that have data). Default weights: home 25, rent 10, warm winters 15, mild summers 10, low rainfall 0, hospital quality 20, hospital access 10, broadband 10.

Missing data: a hospital factor with no data is scored (0 if the county has no hospital, 40 if hospitals are unrated). Any other missing factor (e.g. climate in Hawaii, a suppressed ACS value) is dropped and the remaining weights re-normalised, so the county is scored on what exists. dataCoverage = share of your weight that had data; filter out low-coverage rows if you want strict comparisons.

Not modelled: taxes, insurance, crime, natural-hazard risk, cost of living beyond housing, travel time to care, and personal preferences. Rankings change with your weights; try a few weightings before relying on one order.

Notes on the data

• Census values are ACS 5-year estimates (latest release) and carry margins of error, especially in small counties.
• Climate is the 30-year average of NOAA nClimDiv county data (January average minimum, July average maximum, annual precipitation). NOAA doesn't publish this series for Hawaii, so climate factors are skipped there and the score uses your other weights (dataCoverage shows this).
• Hospital ratings are CMS overall star ratings; many small hospitals aren't rated.
• The built county table is cached for up to 30 days, so most runs take a few seconds.
• Not yet included: state retirement-income taxes, crime and natural-hazard risk (we only add sources we can use under their terms; requests welcome on the Issues tab).

Data sources and legal notes

• U.S. Census Bureau: ACS 5-year summary files and Gazetteer files from www2.census.gov (public domain).
• NOAA NCEI: nClimDiv county climate files (public domain).
• CMS: Care Compare Hospital General Information via the documented Provider Data API (public).
• All sources are fetched politely with an identifying User-Agent. This Actor isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any agency.

Disclaimer: not financial, legal or medical advice

Scores are a mathematical summary of public statistics using the weights you choose. They aren't financial, tax, legal, real-estate or medical advice and don't describe any specific home, neighborhood or person. County averages hide big local differences. Visit, talk to local professionals, and check current prices, taxes, insurance and healthcare access before you move. This tool deliberately uses no protected-class characteristics and must not be used to steer housing decisions based on them.

Support

Found a problem or want a factor added? Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab. More Clearfeed Labs data feeds: clearfeedlabs.com.

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