This made me smile, because we're here at HHI right now, loving the 3-BR 3-BA pet-friendly near-best-beach condo that we purchased for investment, which could easily become our retirement home, if we decide to move here. Everyone's heard of that alligator death because it was such a rare occurence; different things scare different ones of us, and I'd be more scared about earthquakes than alligators -- apparently average 40 death/annually in CA (CA earthquakes were a factor against, when I was deciding where to relocate over 40 years ago and nixed SF because of that!), plus "More Southern Californians have died in rain-related natural hazards, like landslides, flooding and debris flows, than in earthquakes..."
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-chance-dying-earthquake-20160518-snap-htmlstory.html
If you can choose a retirement location that has excellent rental potential, find something you'd enjoy living in, close enough to home that you can use it yourselves when there's a vacancy, and pay for all your fees and expenses out of rental income and create some extra income in the process with which to cover mortgage payments ... the finances are much less daunting. The property is lovely and well-kept-up, with pools & tennis, fees are in the high 400's, and because we accept pets, which is a market here with less supply than demand, we rarely have a vacancy except a few weeks during shoulder seasons.
Hurricanes are a bigger risk here than alligators. When we first purchased, HHI was among the least-likely-to-be hit-by-hurricane locations in the SE. Then a couple of years ago, Matthew came thru. Last fall, we were down here and had to evacuate 2x because of oncoming possible hurricanes, which didn't end up coming here. So there's that to consider; global warming weather trends are changing things in lots of locations.
