If you fancy moving to a top-notch location to retire, this article is a must-read. In its recent report, Bizjournals.com identified the top cities across the U.S. favored by the senior residents. The website analyzed the cities that had the fastest growing senior populations and came up with the most popular retirement havens.

Bizjournals took into account cities that had experienced a rapid growth in the population of senior residents in the last 5 years. The study compared 938 markets in eight statistical categories to make the list of the top retirement communities of America which included beaches, mountains, small towns and big cities.

The top 10 hottest places to retire in according to Bizjournals are:

1. Gardnerville Ranchos, Nevada
2. Punta Gorda, Florida
3. Pahrump, Nevada
4. Crossville, Tennessee
5. Homosassa Springs, Florida
6. Sebring, Florida
7. Del Rio, Texas
8. Brevard, North Carolina
9. Georgetown, South Carolina
10. Ocean Pines, Maryland

The top city to retire in, Gardnerville Ranchos, Nevada, is surprisingly a small community located a few miles southeast of the beautiful Lake Tahoe. The community is famed for its natural beauty and is within 4-hour drive from San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento areas. Gardnerville Ranchos saw an amazing population growth of 45 % in five years, between 2000 and 2005, among senior residents. This growth rate is nine times that of the country's population growth rate of 5 % for senior citizens. The city has 19 % of residents who are in the age group of 65 and above, which is much higher than 900 of the 937 other markets that were reviewed in the country.

These top 10 cities to retire indicate that senior citizens prefer the Sunbelt; with all these areas located in the South and Southwest. Another interesting fact is that the retirement cities in the top 10 list range from small to medium sized with the largest being Punta Gorda, Florida having a population of 1,57,500 and the smallest, Brevard, North Carolina with just 29,600 residents.

Although the Sunbelt attracts the seniors from the Eastern and Midwestern with its warm weather and quality of life, other locations such as the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Great Lakes region are also gaining in popularity among the retirees.