Long Term Resident shares her experience
After more than 10 years living in Althorp Village in Tauranga, Helen Edgecombe says she feels confident to share advice with others considering making the move to a retirement village.
“In fact, I have a part-time weekend job here. Every third weekend, I work on the reception desk. If people come in to find out about the village, I answer their questions and I show them around.
“I talk about the facilities and activities and what it is like to live here but I also take the opportunity to tell them how important it is to get their family involved and to go through all the documents terms and conditions with them, as well as with their lawyer.
“I can share my own experience - that I feel secure, relaxed and happy here. If anything goes wrong in my villa, then I ring the office and they get someone to sort it out. Your gardening is done by gardeners, your lawns are mowed, there are too many activities to list them all and I have made village friends and enjoy having a coffee or wine with them.”
Helen undertook thorough research before making the decision to move to a retirement village and careful due diligence before signing her occupation rights agreement (ORA) for her two-bedroom villa at Althorp in Pyes Pa.
“I had lived in Tauranga for many years with my husband and children,” she says. “After my husband passed away, I managed at home for a year but I was finding the maintenance of the house and garden too much on my own. I either had to pay someone to do work or wait until family could.
“So I started looking at different retirement villages around Tauranga. I was not quite 65 years then and a lot of villages had 70 as the minimum age. But I called into Althorp one day while doing my research and found their age limit was 55 years. I talked to them and kept talking and making more visits and meeting people asking why they moved to the village and are they happy.”
“It was hard to leave my home after many years but I felt I would be much happier living at Althorp.”
Helen read the ORA thoroughly and made notes about anything she had questions about - then she went through it with her adult children and with her lawyer.
“I had previously worked at a law firm so I am very clear on how important it is to understand what you are signing up for,” she says. “People can read things differently so that requirement to go through the ORA with your lawyer is critical and so is getting your family’s opinion.
“All the rules and requirements are set out in black and white in the ORA. There is no reason not to know exactly what you are signing up for - so there is no point in complaining afterwards. I have no regrets at all.
“I was confident that I had understood everything in the agreement. I knew the village weekly fees would go up sometimes - but that is the case annually with any property, council rates or water rates or insurance costs increase. Usually, the fees here go up a little every year. Some years they have stayed the same and one year they went down.
“My children also read the ORA thoroughly and were happy with the terms and conditions. They recognise that financially they will get less when I finally leave the village because they will receive 70 per cent of what I put in for my ORA.
“But the most important thing to them is that I feel secure and relaxed and my retirement years are about me, my wellbeing and my happiness.”
Helen says that while she is aware of the criticisms about some retirement villages, they don’t reflect her experience.
“The large majority of people I speak to in our village are very happy and recognise they are receiving the service they signed up for. The support here is particularly good and we know that if we have any worries about anything we can raise that with the management or directors. The manager’s door is always open and the four directors are always popping into the village to check how things are, chat to villagers and to welcome new residents.
“In terms of the criticisms that have been raised about retirement villages in general, there is the issue of some villages still charging weekly fees after a resident is no longer living in a property and until a new ORA has been signed - but the Retirement Villages Association is addressing that - and that’s a good thing.
“I’m aware of concerns about units in some villages remaining empty for a long time but I haven’t seen that happen at all here. When a villa or apartment becomes vacant here because the person goes into the next level of care or passes away, then the family is responsible for removing the personal belongings and then it is refurbished.
“Even while the refurbishment is underway, there will be people looking at the property and putting a deposit down, so they don’t stay empty for long - they can’t process them fast enough.”
Helen says she finds village life remarkably similar to living in a peaceful suburb - but without the worries of maintaining a property.
“It does not feel institutional here. There is a variety of apartments, houses, and villas. The houses and villas are set at angles, not in rows, like any suburban subdivision. Ninety per cent of them face north so we get a lot of sun.
“I have a lovely patio and I like to potter in my flower garden, I have about twenty roses. If there is anything I can’t do ,then I ask the gardener to help - but he’d do 100 per cent of the gardening if I wanted.
“You can be as independent as you want to be. I do a lot with family and friends outside of the village but I have village friends too. We go walking or shopping together or just for coffee. You can have meals in the lodge here. There is a fantastic shopping mall close by, with a supermarket, doctors and a pharmacy too. Many of the stores in the mall will deliver into our village for free. I just walk through our security gates and go shopping.
“We are also very close to bus services that will take you anywhere in Tauranga. That’s important for people who don’t drive. The village also has two 12-seater buses and they do shopping trips three times a week, so you can put your name down for that. The buses are also used for excursions - they take the walking group out once a week - to go to different places for a walk and then coffee, the garden group go visiting gardens etc.
“You have your privacy but I also know that if my curtains are not open in the morning, then one of my neighbours will notice and let the office know and they will check on me.
“The one other piece of advice I would give is for couples to make the move to a village together if you can. That way, if one of you passes away or needs to go into hospital care, you are already settled.”