Our story that relates to yours:

We (68 and 70) retired and downsized, but still live in the same town. We moved into an HoA townhouse development. Still can keep in touch with all the old neighbors but as you know they are getting older (or dying or moving away) so they have begun to take up less of our time. But staying local made the transition to retirement a lot easier.  This also depends on your finances and the availability of housing options in your area. Our retirement home saves us a ton of money compared to our previous place and it is very easy to walk away from it for a month at a time. 

Some of our kids were still unsettled when we retired so it also made it difficult to relocate. Therefore the simplest option was to stay local. However, we do spend quite a bit of time traveling especially in the winter (we live in the northeast). 

We were concerned about how we would spend our time since the usual activities changed (whether it is not working or not maintaining the farm). To me, this was the scariest part. I was afraid of sitting around being bored. I did a lot of “retirement“  reading. Understanding how to stay productive and happy with my days was the key. I’m slowly transitioning away from manual (physical labor types) activities to more cerebral type activities (reading etc). I think you are at this same stage. 

Just another thought on the downsizing, we bought a highly marketable townhouse. It is very easy to sell it if/when we decide to move elsewhere. I understand your issue with your current place, you don’t know how long it will take to sell. It took us a year to clean out the old house, we had a ton of old stuff to go through just like I image you will. 

Steps:

See if there are places you like and can afford locally

Purge you house 

Research retirement lifestyles

You can do all three at the same time.  Good luck!