If you or a member of your family are thinking about buying a retirement home, then this book is the essential guide you need to assist with your research and negotiate your purchase.

Around half of all retirement communities in Australia are now owned by large property companies, developers and investment banks.  They spend millions of dollars on lawyers and tax advisers to draft purchase contracts that are designed for one thing only – to increase their profit.

How can you compete with this?  Who can you trust to give you quality, independent advice – the village sales agent?

We are great supporters of retirement communities and think they are a great lifestyle option.

For some reason however, the industry has made the purchase of a retirement home complex and confusing, with many hidden fees and traps for the unwary buyer.  You should not try and navigate this process without independent advice.

It is likely that you will spend several hundred thousand dollars on your retirement home purchase, so if you make a wrong decision and have to move, for whatever reason, you will be slugged with fees such as exit fees and refurbishment costs, which can significantly deplete your retirement nest egg and may limit your choice of living options and the ability to continue funding your lifestyle. Many retirees no longer have the time or ability to replace this cash from work, business or investment interests.

It is therefore important that you make an INFORMED decision on your retirement home purchase and the RIGHT decision.

This is the book that retirement village sales agents DON’T want you to see!

So let me tell you what’s in the book…

There are six parts to the book.

In the first Part, I give you some of the background to the retirement village industry in Australia and answer the question of “what actually is a retirement village?”.

In Part 2, we look at the decision to downsize that most retirees face when their home becomes inappropriate for their needs. We talk about the reasons why you should or shouldn’t move, and if a retirement village is actually the right move for you. I also give you some advice on how to choose where to retire, and how to assess if you can afford to buy a home in a retirement village.

In Part 3, we start getting into the detail of how to research retirement homes. I explain the types of retirement village accommodation, the good, the bad and the ugly of retirement village operators, and also outline how you purchase or occupy a retirement village home.

I start Part 4 with an overview of the fees and charges you will encounter and how they actually work. I take you through how to work out if the purchase price of a retirement village unit is reasonable or not, and how to compare different contract structures. I also discuss the impact of capital growth on your purchase and finish by teaching you how to buy a retirement home ‘off the plan’.

In Part 5 of the book, I give you all of my negotiating tips and strategies, so that you can make sure you get the best deal you possibly can. Many purchase contracts contain clauses that are not in your best interests – I tell you what clauses these are and how to change them. Don’t rely on your solicitor to find these clauses, because very few lawyers are familiar with retirement village purchase contracts. In Part 5, I also talk about selling your home, because for many retirees, this is how they fund their retirement village purchase and it’s likely that you haven’t spoken to a real estate agent in quite a while.

Finally, in Part 6, I finish up by looking at the big move from your house to a retirement village and give you some tips for how you can quickly assimilate into the retirement village lifestyle. The end of Part 5 lists a whole stack of links and further resources to help you in your journey to a happy retirement.

At the back of the book, I have included a couple of tools to help you in your research. First up is a preference questionnaire, which helps you to articulate exactly what it is you are looking for in a retirement home. Next, there’s a retirement village questionnaire. This is a list of all of the questions you should be asking when you visit retirement villages to do your research. This is a great tool, because when you start your research, you’ll probably have no idea of what to ask or what to even look for. I reckon it’s worth getting the book for this tool alone!

The final tool is a worksheet where you summarise all of your research and it provides a kind of ready reckoner where you can easily compare the features of all of the villages that you’ve seen.

Now, I know that the worksheets included in the book are probably too small for you to easily use, or you might need more than one worksheet. The good news is that we have a free membership website for the readers of the book, where you can download and print out larger versions of these worksheets as many times as you like. The membership site is completely free but you do need to buy the book to find the secret password to get access into the site!

The membership website has stacks of other resources for you including a bonus chapter called “How to sell your home” that provides you with great information to help you with selecting and appointing a real estate agent, how to understand the different types of appointment, an explanation of agent commissions and fees, the methods of sale and how to present your home for buyer inspections.

There is also a members’ forum where you can ask questions, compare notes and share experiences with other retirees going through the same process.

The site also has a Contract Comparison Calculator, which is an online tool (kind of like a mortgage calculator) that you can use to compare different retirement village purchase arrangements.

We also run online seminars called webinars for members where you can listen to me talk about buying retirement homes and even ask me questions directly.

So that’s what the book is all about. If you think this is the kind of guide you need to help you in your retirement, then you can buy the book in any of your good local bookstores. Alternatively, you can buy a signed copy directly from me right here. Simply click on the “Buy Now” button at the bottom of this page and follow the transaction steps as directed.