"Living in a retirement village has the capacity to be a great lifestyle decision, sadly it also has the capacity to be your very worst financial decision." - RETVILLDOTNET.
An example for a village with the Deferred Management Fee calculated on the ingoing $$$.
"My father must have been one of the few people who lost money when he sold his home in a booming Melbourne property market. This huge loss on his home, in a popular suburb not far from the CBD, was despite it selling for more than he paid for it. The problem? He bought into a retirement village." - Diana Thorp. Sunday Herald Sun. 22/08/21
An example for a village with the Deferred Management Fee calculated on the outgoing $$$.

Tuesday 16 July 2024

Are Lifestyle Communities a Financial Prison

 

In a recent feature on the ABC 7.30 Report program claims were made that living in a Lifestyle Village was like a 'financial prison'.

Feature of the report -

'When retired policeman Geoff Gauci packed up his old life and moved to an over-50s gated community on Melbourne's northern fringe, he pictured his next chapter as peaceful.

After spending 36 years investigating shoplifters, drug trafficking, burglary, fraud and deception, it was time for the quiet life.

Seduced by promises of low maintenance and resort-style living at an affordable price, he bought into a Lifestyle Communities development at Wollert, impressed with its high-security cameras and boom gates that guarded a manufactured urban landscape of neat rows of uniform houses and perfectly manicured fake lawns.

It was a setting reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Truman Show.

"The way it was presented to me and my wife, I expected everything to be above board, knowing that I'm dealing with Lifestyle, a publicly listed company," he says.

"I did my homework, and I checked on them. And I would have assumed that everything was kosher."

But 18 months later, earlier this year, he and two other residents, Thom Meads and Steve Doudle, found themselves investigating the utopia they thought they'd bought into.

"To me, it's like I'm in a financial prison," Gauci says.

"I've got to bail myself out in order to get out, and it's just wrong." '

See the full story here - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-15/lifestyle-communities-faces-challenge-over-land-lease-exit-fees/104091890

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Function of Government

The role of government is to create an environment for commerce to function whilst at the same time protecting retirees and particularly vulnerable retirees from both financial and emotional harm emanating from that function.

The Victorian Retirement Villages Act 1986 provides the environment for commerce to function but fails to fully protect retirees from financial and emotional harm as a result of it.

The Victorian legislative definition of a retirement village in demanding the payment of an 'in-going' amount without the transfer of property ownership is a major contributor to that financial and emotional harm suffered by retirees.


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