With the freedom-loving hippy generation now reaching retirement age and anti-materialist back-to-nature movements sweeping the developed world, increasing numbers of people are shedding their inhibitions and embracing the naturist lifestyle, especially in hotter climates.

Quite where to place your property particulars when house hunting on a naturist resort might fluster more recent converts but the prospect of buying into a stable real estate market and even pocketing a tidy profit means that “clothing optional” resorts and communities are a growing – albeit niche – market sector.

Nudists in general are an estate agent's dream. “They tend to be older people, probably a little more settled, who generally don't require mortgages and are prepared to pay a premium just to live here,” says Marc Seligman, who lives at The Oasis, a small naturist community in Pasco County, Florida. Commonly referred to as “the nudist capital of America”, Pasco boasts dozens of clothes-free and clothing-optional communities.

“It is a very big industry,” says Carolyn Hawkins, spokesperson for the American Association for Nude Recreation. “We've gone from a $400m to a $450m industry in the past five years, mostly based on real estate. There are now 268 naturist clubs and resort-communities throughout the US [up from 212 in 1998], with about 30 in Florida alone.”

Modern naturism originated in Germany in the 1920s. It took root in the Lake Como area of Pasco County in the 1940s, when Avery Weaver Brubaker, the son of a Mennonite minister, founded the Florida Athletic and Health Association with his wife. Weaver Brubaker bought 350 acres in Lutz and set aside a section for use as a nudist resort. Today, Paradise Lakes, Caliente and Lake Como are the big naked destinations in Pasco County, while smaller venues have developed as like-minded individuals flock to the region. The county's strong reputation in the “skyclad” community provides a national base of buyers for nudist real estate.

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The extent to which residents live disrobed varies from resort to resort. At The Oasis residents are inclined to spare the blushes of visiting deliverymen. “We consider it a hybrid community,” says Seligman, who also runs a website for naturists looking to buy and sell homes. “In the front yards we're a regular ‘textile' [i.e. clothes-wearing] community but in the back yards, where all of our homes are connected by a common fenced-in area, we tend to be nude at all times.”

Seligman's five-bedroom home is one of 28 upscale family properties at the complex. It has a swimming pool, an outdoor shower and is connected via the central communal area to a clubhouse with hot tubs, tennis courts and further swimming pools – all naturist. Seligman built his $750,000 home in 2004, when most of Florida was riding a property high. He reckons that although prices have dropped within the naturist community, the fall is not as steep as in the general market.

Seconding this view is Toby Caroline of nudist estate agency Sun ‘n' Fun Realty, which is based at Paradise Lakes, a “clothing optional” community of more than 700 homes. Properties range from 400 sq ft studios priced from about $65,000 to $1m family homes. About 60 per cent of those living at Paradise Lakes are full-time residents, the rest holiday home owners.

“Because we're a target market, we still have that market in both good and bad times, and more and more people are coming into this lifestyle,” Caroline says. “The downturn in the outside textile [ie clothed] market has certainly affected non-clothing communities through loss of jobs and mortgages, but we've only had two short-sales [bank foreclosures] at Paradise Lakes, which is low compared with the Tampa area.”