By Vanessa Pratley
Investigative Journalist | Kaipūrongo Whakatewhatewha
It took more than two years for Barbara to get her money back from a retirement village.
She moved into a retirement village in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in October 2015. She paid $245,000 for her occupation right agreement (ORA).
According to Barbara, the contract left a lot to be desired.
“I'd been a schoolteacher for years, and then worked in adult education, so when I read the contract, I realised it needed a bit of an editing job.”
But despite that, Barbara liked a lot of the things about the new village. It was independently and locally owned, the manager was fantastic and there was a receptionist that was “pretty on to it”.
“It was really good moving in, because the village was well known in Avondale and had a good local reputation… there was never any vacancy for more than two months,” she said.
It was fair to say that, for a while, things were great.
“Things were going quite well for a year ... but the owners sold the village to another operator,” she said. A few years passed, and the village was sold for a second time. Then, Covid-19 wreaked havoc. It just wasn’t the same place Barbara had originally loved living in.
Having to leave the village
Barbara began experiencing health issues, including serious falls and a breast cancer diagnosis.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and then ended up with two surgeries. So I spent a lot of 2023 in hospital, with radiology and surgery.”
Eventually, Barabara was discharged from hospital to the rest home next door to the village. On the 31st of December 2023, Barbara gave notice to terminate her occupation right agreement at the retirement village.
The financial struggle
Initially, the operator wrote to Barbara every month to update her about the progress of the sale of her unit. The updates stopped coming regularly and after 6 months there was no valuation documentation given to Barbara, as a village must legally do.
Months passed, the village hadn’t found a new occupant, and Barbara still hadn’t received her equity back. There were no rules in place to ensure Barbara was repaid promptly.
“I had to manage treatment costs… the state of my back and my lack of balance… cerebral palsy, osteoporosis physios, not a happy state to be in. All those require regular payments,” Barbara said.
She also wanted to be closer to whānau. So, she called her family in her hometown, Ōtepoti Dunedin, and organised to leave the rest home. She moved in January 2025.
“I had to work hard to figure out how I could afford the costs of making it back home. After arriving back home … life has been pretty happy, except for constantly having to calculate whether I can afford to meet any spending needs, especially for therapeutic purposes, and travel to and from appointments.”
Nearly two years had passed since she had terminated her agreement, and she still didn't have her money back. In November 2025, she made a formal complaint.
But after back and forth, there was no movement. Left with piling bills and still none of her equity, she got in touch with Di Sinclair, National Vice President at the Retirement Villages Residents Association.
“Di put together a stern letter about how I was struggling to manage my ongoing costs, and their response was very quick.”
They offered to give Barbara her money back, less an extra fee to refurbish her apartment. Barbara gave Di permission to issue a formal request for dispute resolution, called a dispute notice.
New Zealand wants change – residents and their families deserve it
Finally, after more than two years, Barbara got her money back. But she never should have had to fight so hard to get what was hers returned to her.
For Barbara, medical bills and living costs continued to stack up. In other cases, families struggle to cover funerals. Meanwhile, villages keep hold of hundreds of thousands of dollars with no incentive to give it back.
There are no rules about how long a village can take to repay residents. The government has proposed a 12-month limit, but we say that’s too long.
The vast majority of people agree, with Consumer NZ research showing 83% of New Zealanders want payment within three months. Over a third of us say it should be immediate.
Even if the government introduces a 12-month limit, it’ll only apply to future residents, not current ones, meaning a whole generation of retirement village residents already living there miss out on new protections.
Our research shows 82% of New Zealanders want any new rule to apply to all residents, not just future residents.
That’s why we’ve launched our petition, seeking 65,000 signatures for fairer repayment for retirement village residents.
Consumer’s fight for fair
Consumer wants new laws requiring:
full repayment of residents’ money within 3 months of the occupation agreement ending
an interim repayment of 10% or $50,000 (whichever is higher) within 5 working days of an agreement ending
operators to pay interest on late repayments
operators to be upfront about repayment timeframes, so residents know what to expect before they move into a village.
The new rules should apply to all residents. Villages that face genuine financial constraints could apply for extensions. Villages that share at least half of any capital gains with residents would be exempt from the repayment rules.
