Retirement Villages & Senior Living Contract Management

Overview

Retirement village and senior living operators manage contract portfolios where the operational stakes, the resident experience and the regulatory framework all have to hold together, every time, across every assignment.

An incoming resident is not a transaction. They are an elderly person, often making the last major housing decision of their life, often with family members closely involved.

An outgoing assignment may be shaped by a move into higher care, declining capacity, a family navigating a difficult period, or the passing of a resident.

The work has to be handled with empathy, care and patience, while holding the line on compliance, accuracy and reporting at the other.

This is a category of work where conventional legal delivery becomes inefficient: recurring portfolios of ingoing and outgoing contracts, compressed settlement timelines, complex and varied tenure models, jurisdiction-specific Retirement Villages Act requirements, and an operator's need for error-free compliance.

Operators need real-time portfolio visibility and consistent reporting across every village. Volume alone is not the challenge. The challenge is running that volume with care, accuracy and governance, resident by resident, village by village.

Faculti Lawyers delivers portfolio-based retirement village and senior living contract management and related advisory services, with the discipline to execute volume efficiently and the diligence required to handle residents, families and assignments sensitively.

What we do

Our Retirement Villages & Senior Living Contract Management team acts for operators of retirement villages, senior living communities and aged care providers across Australia. We manage the full contract lifecycle - ingoing contracts, outgoing contracts, surrenders, refund payments, strata and purple title transfers, and the ancillary documentation that runs alongside them - across leasehold, licence, company, strata and purple title tenure models. We provide ancillary advisory support to operators, sales staff and managers to understand the regulatory requirements and respond to resident queries or issues.

We provide services in every Australian jurisdiction where our clients operate.

The team currently manages the drafting, issuing, exchange and settlement of hundreds of rollovers per year. The practice is managed by specialist lawyers and paralegals with direct experience of the jurisdiction, the tenure model and the operator's protocols.

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Every ingoing contract combines a commercial transaction with a human reality of an elderly person moving into their last home, often with family closely involved. We are aware of the significance of the decision, the pressure individuals feel and the uncertainty of moving from their historic family home.

With that understanding in mind, we prepare, issue, correspond with residents and their advisers, advise upon and settle ingoing village contracts for operators across Australia, including off-the-plan developments and established villages. Standard turnaround is an agreed number of business days from complete instructions, with a standard range of queries from the resident or their solicitor included in the fixed fee.

Outgoing contracts are rarely routine. They are shaped by age, health, bereavement or a move into higher care, and families are often acting under pressure. We manage outgoing village contracts, associated advice, surrender documentation and lease discharge across all jurisdictions and tenure models, with the sensitivity the circumstances require and the procedural discipline the operator's portfolio depends on. Communication with residents, families and their advisers is patient, clear and timely.

Strata and purple title villages operate on contemporaneous transfers from outgoing to incoming residents, with registration, charge documents and mortgagee consent sitting alongside the village contract suite. We manage strata title conveyancing and purple title transfers across the full transaction: contracts, charge registration, settlement, distribution and post-settlement administration. The team works to fixed fees that apply consistently across jurisdictions, so operators running multi-state portfolios see one rate and one process.

Refund calculations carry real financial consequence for outgoing residents and their families, and real reputational consequence for the operator if they are not done correctly. We review the outgoing resident's contract terms, confirm departure fees and refund amounts against the governing provisions, prepare refund settlement letters for operator approval, and communicate with the resident's solicitor through the process. Interim refund estimate letters are available where operators want them issued early.

When a resident dies, the contract assignment passes to an estate that may be in the early days of grief and administrative confusion. We handle deceased estate and transmission assignments with the patience and clarity those circumstances require, including preparation of necessary transmission application forms for registered leases, surrender documentation, and settlement through the estate's legal representatives.

Retirement village operations generate documentation beyond the primary village contract: early entry agreements for residents moving in before settlement, furniture storage licences for belongings in advance of occupation, and car park licences for additional spaces. We prepare and issue these from operator-approved templates at fixed fees, with the same process discipline applied to the primary contract portfolio. This way, ancillary documentation keeps pace with the main work rather than lagging behind it.

Institutional operators typically run villages across multiple states and across more than one tenure model within a single portfolio. Conventional delivery struggles with that complexity. We run multi-jurisdiction and multi-tenure portfolios through a single team, a single technology platform and a single fee structure, with jurisdiction-specific Retirement Villages Act compliance built into the workflow. Operators see one process across the portfolio, not separate processes bolted together.

Village contracts sit inside a regulatory framework that governs resident rights, operator obligations, disclosure, disputes, terminations and contract compliance under each state's Retirement Villages Act. We provide ongoing regulatory and operational advisory support on RV Act compliance, resident and resident-committee interactions, village rule enforcement, NCAT and tribunal applications, policy and precedent updates, and governance matters across the portfolio. The advisory work is led by senior practitioners with deep retirement villages and senior living expertise.

How we deliver

Retirement village contract management requires two things held in balance at the same time: care, patience and clarity for residents and their families, and accuracy, compliance and real-time visibility for the operator. Neither side of the practice is a trade-off for the other.

Residents and families experience us as patient, clear and responsive. Our lawyers and paralegals communicate carefully with elderly residents, with family members often involved in decisions, and with estate executors in difficult periods. Standard turnaround for contract documentation is two business days from complete instructions. Queries are answered without jargon.

Operators experience us as accurate, compliant, fast and visible. Our technology sits behind every engagement, giving operators real-time visibility across every village, every contract and every resident: current status, contract documents, refund calculations, settlement dates, resident history, management reporting and village-level information. The portal is village-contract agnostic, supports multiple payment models and runs across multi-jurisdictional portfolios.

Fees are fixed based on the agreed scope. Protocols are agreed up front, including whether contracts are issued on standing instructions or on case-by-case approval. Precedent maintenance for legislative changes runs at no additional charge. KPI reporting, quality assurance and regular performance review run across the portfolio as a matter of course.

The result is delivery confidence across the full portfolio. Accurate, compliant and timely for the operator. Patient, clear and sensitive for the resident and the family. Every step accounted for.

Track record

Built on more than three decades of national retirement villages and senior living practice. Engineered for institutional scale.

Faculti Lawyers grew out of Thomsons, one of Australia's emerging top-tier corporate firms, and brings that institutional pedigree into a delivery model purpose-built for high-volume retirement village and senior living contract portfolios. The practice has been recognised by Best Lawyers in Australia as Law Firm of the Year for Retirement Villages and Senior Living Law in 2019, 2021 and 2024, and is one of the few firms in Australia with a dedicated national aged care and retirement villages practice.

Our team currently manages the drafting, issuing, exchange and settlement for 30+ operators across over 55+ villages nationally, across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

Clients include major national operators, charitable and not-for-profit providers, and boutique senior living developers.

Our close working relationship with Thomsons gives the team direct access to specialist expertise when an assignment calls for it. Whether the point at issue is tax, property, regulatory, employment, public law or a point of commercial or corporate law beyond the contract management practice, the specialist depth of a top-tier corporate firm sits directly alongside the team.

Overview

What we do

Ingoing resident contracts

Outgoing resident contracts and surrenders

Strata title and purple title transfers

Refund calculations and departure fee advice

Deceased estate and transmission assignments

Ancillary licences and agreements

Multi-jurisdiction and multi-tenure portfolios

Regulatory and operational advisory

How we deliver

Track record