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Bethany Fields
Typical House in the villageRETIREMENT VILLAGES in WA.Of interest to Silver Surfers / us oldies .
An option for retirees in Australia is to retire to a retirement village. Superficially idyllic, but if you are contemplating retiring to one, BEWARE of the possible sting in the tail!
The positives: They are excellent mini-communities where you can easily make new friends and have many facilities to hand. Bethany Fields, Bunbury is the one we are staying at.
The whole site consists of around 150 self contained bungalows (called Units here) that are located around a communal clubhouse. Each bungalows typically include a through kitchen/diner/lounge, two bedrooms, spare room, bath/shower room with loo, separate lo, and a double garage. There is negligible land outside for easy maintenance. Adjacent is a care home that you can move in to if you no longer can cope alone.
The club house is the centre of the community and has a swimming pool, exercise room, meeting rooms, bar/lounge/function/eating area and “library”. Activities such as knitting, mah-jong, etc are organised by the residents. Great for meeting new people and chin wagging. An emergency warden is on call.
If things go well, they are a great place to live. HOWEVER:-
Problems can and do occur and it is then you wish you had have read and understood the small print of the village contract. if you need to sell up and move for any reason, your contract with the retirement village will probably leave your bank balance severely dented, down at least 25% of the sales price. The village may set the minimum level you can sell your house at, and if you cannot sell it above their designated price and move out, you will have to continue to pay maintenance charges on an empty property. If you have problems with the build quality of the house and management choose not to repair it to a level that you are happy with, you may have a long drawn out fight on your hands. ( My in-laws tried for over two years to negotiate getting the village management put their property right to their satisfaction, to eliminate health threatening fungal growth, without success, causing them to move out when they are in their late eighties. So beware, any prospective retirement village buyers, check and fully
understand the implications of the small print in your contract. Enough of the gripes, and back to the blog.
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