Auckland Retirement Villages by the Numbers

1. The Auckland market — villages, suburbs, operators

Our published extract of Disclosure Statement terms — drawn from the documents every registered village must file at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register — covers 46 Auckland-region villages across 38 suburbs, from Pukekohe in the south to Warkworth in the north. Of the 34 Auckland villages whose extracted documents disclose unit counts, the combined total is 5,393 units.

Source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026. The extract grows as the corpus sweep continues; the full Auckland directory is at /region/auckland.

One structural point worth noticing before any pricing: the six listed or national operator groups account for 37 of the 46 villages, and the remaining 9 are run by standalone operators. Operator-level contract templates differ — the same group tends to use the same DMF schedule and capital-gain clause across its Auckland villages — so the operator name on the gate already tells you a lot about the contract terms inside.

2. Advertised entry prices — the full table

23 of the 46 extracted Auckland villages have operators that publish unit pricing on their own websites; the other 23 publish no pricing, so the only way to learn the figure is to ask the village. Across the 23 that advertise, entry price points run from $389,000 (a serviced apartment at Metlifecare Coastal Villas, Orewa) to $2,025,000 (a three-bedroom townhouse at Ryman's Grace Joel Village, St Heliers). The median of the villages' lowest advertised prices is $525,000 (source: operator websites, retrieved June 2026).

Source: prices advertised on operator websites, retrieved June 2026. Where one figure appears in both columns, the operator advertised a single price point at retrieval. Advertised prices change with availability; confirm with the village.

Two honest caveats. First, the table describes the half of the Auckland market that chooses to advertise — which may not be representative of the half that does not. Second, every one of these prices is for an Occupation Right Agreement, not freehold title; Arvida's own price disclaimers state that the price "is for an Occupation Right Agreement, secured by a first ranking mortgage in favour of the Statutory Supervisor on behalf of the residents". What that legal structure means for your capital is covered in the evaluation guide and in the sections below.

3. Deferred management fee caps and accrual speed

The deferred management fee (DMF) is the percentage of your entry payment the operator deducts when the Occupation Right Agreement ends. All 46 extracted Auckland villages state a cap: 37 cap at 30%, 5 at 25%, 2 at 24%, 1 at 27% and 1 at 20%. The Auckland median is 30% — identical to the national median across the 233 NZ villages in our corpus (source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026).

The 9 Auckland villages with a stated cap below 30% are Bupa Papakura (20%), Summerset Te Awa in Onehunga and Belmont Lifestyle Village (24%), Bupa Fergusson in Glen Innes, Metlifecare Milldale, Summerset at Karaka, Summerset at Monterey Park in Hobsonville and Summerset Falls in Warkworth (25%), and Rosehill Gardens in Avondale (27%). The national comparison is at our DMF comparison page.

The cap is only half the term — the other half is how fast the fee accrues. Among the 46 Auckland villages, the most common schedule reaches the cap in 3 years (22 villages), followed by 4 years (14 villages); 5 villages reach it in 2 years, 1 in a single year, and 4 take 5 or 6 years. A fast-accruing schedule makes a short tenure expensive: leave a 3-year-to-cap village after 3 years and the full DMF has already crystallised. Each village's year-by-year schedule is in its Disclosure Statement and in our extracted findings at /ora-reports/.

4. Capital gain and capital loss on resale

Under an Occupation Right Agreement you do not own the unit, so any change in its resale value belongs to whoever the contract says it belongs to. In 44 of the 46 extracted Auckland villages, the operator retains all of any capital gain. The two exceptions are both Hopper Living villages — Country Club Huapai and Maygrove Village in Orewa — whose extracted terms share the gain equally between resident and operator (source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026).

Capital loss is a separate clause, and in Auckland it splits differently: in 32 of the 46 villages the operator bears any fall in resale value, while in 14 the resident bears it. A contract where the operator keeps the upside and the resident carries the downside is a materially different deal from one where the operator carries both — the data shows both patterns exist in Auckland, so check both clauses for any village you compare.

Auckland's housing market makes this clause worth more attention than the headline DMF percentage gets. Over a long tenure, forgone capital gain on a high-value Auckland unit can exceed the DMF itself. The per-village treatment is in each report at /ora-reports/.

5. Weekly fees and how they escalate

Only 6 of the 46 extracted Auckland Disclosure Statements state an exact dollar figure for the weekly fee; the disclosed figures run from $109 to $1,464.26 per week, a range that reflects very different unit and service types (the top figure is a care-inclusive rate, not a standard villa fee). Most documents instead express the fee as a range, a formula, or a figure set annually. Nationally, the median where an exact figure is disclosed is $179 per week, across 27 of 233 villages (source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026).

More useful than the dollar figure — because it is stated in nearly every contract — is the escalation mechanism. Among the 46 Auckland villages: 27 review the fee annually at the operator's discretion, 17 cap increases at CPI, and 2 fix the fee for life. A fixed-for-life or CPI-capped fee is a structurally different promise from a discretionary annual review, and the difference compounds over a long tenure.

When reading any Auckland Disclosure Statement, check three weekly-fee terms: the review mechanism, what happens to the fee after you vacate but before the unit resells, and what is excluded (personal utilities and care services usually are).

6. What happens to the DMF on transfer to care

Many residents eventually move from an independent unit to a serviced apartment or care room — often within the same village. The contracts treat the DMF in two distinct ways at that point: in 34 of the 46 extracted Auckland villages, the DMF crystallises at transfer (it stops accruing and is calculated on the first unit); in the other 12, it continues accruing through the second occupancy. The difference can be a five-figure sum on a typical Auckland entry payment, and it is stated — sometimes obliquely — in the Disclosure Statement (source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026).

This is one of the least-compared terms in the market, and one where Auckland villages genuinely differ. The per-village treatment is extracted in each report at /ora-reports/.

7. Buyback and repurchase guarantees

When you leave, your capital is usually repaid only after the unit relicenses to a new resident — unless the contract commits the operator to pay out within a fixed window regardless. In Auckland, 17 of the 46 extracted villages state such a guarantee; the windows run from 3 to 12 months, with a median of 9 months. The shortest stated windows — 3 months — appear at Ryman's Bruce McLaren Village in Howick, Summerset at Monterey Park in Hobsonville, and Summerset Falls in Warkworth (source: Disclosure Statements filed at the Companies Office Retirement Villages Register, extracted June 2026).

The other 29 Auckland villages make no fixed-window commitment in the extracted documents, which means a departing resident or an estate can wait an open-ended time for repayment. Related exit terms to check: whether weekly fees continue after you vacate, who pays for refurbishment, and who controls the resale price.

8. Check the actual village

Counts and medians describe the Auckland market; your contract is a single document. Two tools on this site let you check the actual terms:

And for the process — what documents to request, which clauses to read in what order, and what to ask on a visit — see the companion guide: How to evaluate an Auckland retirement village.

9. Frequently asked questions