Gene Tuey’s middle-school-age kids took a vote. They wanted Dad home more.

So the Orange County native quit his 65-hour-a-week job as a liquor distributor and put his Ladera Ranch house up for sale.

If Tuey, 58, gets his $1.2 million asking price, he can buy a house with a big yard in Nashville, Tenn., and still have enough left to launch a new career as a full-time real estate investor.

“Things just all lined up,” said Tuey’s wife, Valinda, 51. “For him being unhappy in his work, the kids being the right age (to move) and property values having gone up, all the ducks are in a row.”

Four years of rising home prices are creating new opportunities for a lot of baby boomers and others nearing retirement.

The median Orange County home price has risen $267,000 since February 2012, CoreLogic figures show. Some homeowners are taking advantage of that gain.

“They’re basically cashing out,” said Bram Klein, an agent with Keller Williams Realty in Laguna Niguel. “ … They’re putting money in their pocket, and they’re traveling.”

Some couples are downsizing. Others are getting more house for their money in cheaper markets in Idaho, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona and Texas.

Klein said he sees a client a week considering such a move.

Many didn’t save enough for retirement. Others are burdened with high monthly homeowner’s association fees or are being hit by special HOA assessments for roof or sidewalk repairs.

“They’re sitting on a nest egg,” Klein said. “They realize at this point there’s more to life than a five-bedroom house with a backyard and a pool they don’t use any more. … Now that prices are back up, people are taking advantage.”

Jenean Hill, a First Team Real Estate agent in Lake Forest, said she’s had at least five clients in the past few years “take their California money” and move to towns out of state with a slower pace, affordable housing, no drought and no earthquakes.

“People want to live in a place with a strong sense of community when they retire,” Hill said.

Hill and her husband plan to do just that. In 2014, they sold a 1,000-square-foot rental condo they owned in Lake Forest and bought a 3,900-square-foot house near Nashville, where they plan to retire. Both homes sold for roughly the same price.

“We bought with my California dollars and got a lot more for our money,” Hill said.

Becoming renters

There’s no data showing how many older Orange County homeowners are cashing out or downsizing.

But a Freddie Mac survey published last month indicates about a third of U.S. homeowners 55 or older plan to sell their homes in the next few years. The survey projected about 18 million older homeowners will buy another home and about 6 million will become renters.

U.S. Census figures also show the number of older renters is increasing faster than younger renters.

Renters 55 or older increased 42 percent from 2005 through 2014 in both Orange County and the nation. By comparison, the number of renters under 55 increased 11 percent in that period.

Jeff Kottmeier, a manager with Irvine-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting, discovered this trend at a recent conference of the National Multifamily Council.

“Landlord after landlord mentioned the surprising surge in older renters, many of whom sold their home and chose to rent a luxury apartment walkable to retail and entertainment,” he wrote in a March 11 report.

It’s a lifestyle choice, Kottmeier said in an phone interview.

“A lot of these boomers are moving for a mixed-use” environment, Kottmeier said. “They’re really looking for an environment where they can walk out of their front door, go to a restaurant, do their grocery shopping and do all their errands on foot.”

Taking the pressure off

Bob and Jennifer Hochstadter said their decision to downsize two years ago “took the pressure off” financially.

The couple sold their two-story, five-bedroom house in Laguna Niguel for just over $1 million and moved into a one-story rental house they owned that’s about half the size.

“Not only did we cash out, but we got to keep the cash,” said Bob Hochstadter, 65.

But after 35 years in the same home, moving wasn’t easy.

“You have all the memories and all the good times watching your kids grow up,” he said. Then there was the question of what to do with all the stuff they’d accumulated over the past three decades.

But half their house went unused. They hardly set foot in the living room, four of the bedrooms or the pool.

So they sold the house, donated much of their clothing and furniture to charity, gave two carloads of books to the public library and used part of the proceeds to remodel the rental house.

Now, they can travel, entertain and go out to dinner whenever they feel like it.

“We just got back from a cruise on the Danube River,” Bob said. “The time we get to spend together we never had before, so it’s really nice.”

Trading the condo for a house

In March, Patti Odlum, 55, and her husband, Don Yovanovich, traded their two-bedroom condo in Lake Forest for a three-bedroom house in Boise, Idaho, with an attached garage on a big lot.

They sold the condo for $405,000 and paid $185,000 for the house. Their new home is 10 minutes from downtown Boise, home to Boise State University, and 10 minutes from Meridian, a growing area that resembles Irvine, Odlum said.

“We have a beautiful home here,” Odlum said. “For $185,000, we wouldn’t have been able to have that in Orange County.”

In Ladera Ranch, Gene and Valinda Tuey started thinking about cashing out and moving out of state shortly after Gene quit his job. They had visited Nashville once on vacation and fell in love with the city. And they liked that it has good schools and no state income tax.

Life in Orange County started to wear on Valinda, an Indiana native who moved here while in middle school. The crowds, the traffic, the rushing around.

“Thirty-eight years in California is enough,” she said.

“I grew up in the Midwest, and I wanted my kids to experience that lifestyle. Less crowded, more outdoors, to be able to go fishing and boating. It’s a different way of life.”

Over spring break, the Tueys took their 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter to Nashville to see how they liked it.

People were super friendly. The trees were super green. And the music scene was super cool.

They took another vote, this time on whether to move there.

The decision was unanimous.

Contact the writer: 714-932-0373 or jcollins@ocregister.com