A funny thing happened to Richard and Louis Teising on the way to their dream retirement home - they ended up in East Tennessee.

"We just knew we would be on one coast or the other," said Louise Teising, who spent much of her life in the Chicago area where she and her husband raised their family. The couple wanted to to be close to water and golf course in their golden years. But instead of strolls on the Atlantic beaches or playing 18 holes under the California sun, the Teisings are enjoying life on the shores of Tellico Lake in the shadows of the Smoky Mountains.

The Teisings first heard about Rarity Bay when they attended a retirement fair at a hotel near O'Hare International Airport. In the fall of 1998 they visited the gated community near Vonore, Tennessee. It was love at first sight, and they bought a home site on the spot. A year later they watched their dream home being built. "Its better than we thought it would be," Louise Teising said.

A growing number of retirees are looking to trade in harsh northern winters for East Tennessee's relatively mild year-round climate. Singles, young families and the well-heeled looking for a vacation home also are buying homes in the new developments.

Word of East Tennessee living is spreading to distant markets. Real estate broker Larry Henry, who helps find farms and waterfront acreage for developers , was in Miami recently visting his sister who works for Coldwell banker and heard talk about the "influx of people from all over the United States moving to Knoxville." That home buyers are attracted by East Tennessee's lakes and mountains is not suprising, "but to hear this in Miami was something of a suprise to me as a Knoxville broker, " said Henry, owner of River's Edge Realty.

Marketing East Tennessee residential developments doesn't happen by chance , however. Developers and real estate agents advertise in retirement magazines and other publications and when possible meet with potential homebuyers. Fred McArthur, Executive Vice President of Rarity Communities, Inc., one of the region's leading residential developers, directs a marketing team that travels throughout the Northeast and Midwest spinning the Rarity spiel for potential buyers.

In the last 18 months, the marketing team has made presentations to thousands of retirees and soon-to-retire baby boomers in the Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C., areas, as well as tony east coast suburban areas in Connecticut and New Jersey. Some 78 million baby boomers will retire in the next decade or so, and Rarity seems bent on pitching the virtues of East Tennessee living to all of them.

Like the Teisings, many of the prospects the Rarity team meets have not considered East Tennessee as a retirement destination. "The first thing we have to do is convince them we're not a cultural desert," McArthur said. Making a big deal about the University of Tennessee, the high-tech goings on in Oak Ridge, the amenities of metropolitain Knoxville - museums, ballet, symphony - and no state income tax are all part of the marketing pitch.

Ultimately, the developments sell themselves, said Rarity President Michael Ross. "We're selling a lifestyle," Ross said. "We provide the amenities and comfort level that people want."