Approach retirement villages with caution
A Queensland academic and author of books on retirement villages has urged caution for people when it comes to planning for a resort-style retirement because the choice needs to be related realistically to available funds.
Professor Bob Stimson, from the school of Geography, Planning, and Architecture at the University of Queensland, said that while the retirement village industry was talking about the prospects of younger and wealthier retirees attracted to the life, the residential pattern was remaining the same.
Traditionally most Australian retirees preferred to stay in their own home with only 4% over 64 living in a retirement village with an increase to 7% or 8% for people in their mid-70s.
Professor Stimson said that publicity about resort-style retirement was more about marketing than reality and he believed that the biggest change would come with the establishment of more villages which catered for the less-wealthy being able to rent their home.
“You tend to get poorer when you retire. The majority of retirees are just ordinary people with a very high dependency on the aged pension. People cash in their home and they have $50,000 to $80,000 or a little more left after they buy into a standard retirement village,” he said.
Mr Charles Adams, vice-president of the Residents of Retirement Villages Victoria, said that village life benefitted people who had lost a partner or no longer wanted to maintain a larger home. But he said that many elderly people were unaware of the implications of the complex legal arrangements involved in living in a retirement village and that exit fees could make it financially impractical to leave.
