What it does
The Retirement Villages Act 1999 (NSW) creates a regulatory framework that governs retirement villages in New South Wales from the moment a prospective resident first enquires about a village through to the payment of exit entitlements when they leave. The Act balances operator rights (to manage the village and charge for services) with strong resident protections (disclosure, contractual certainty, resident input, and fair exit terms).
The objects stated in section 3 are: setting out rights and obligations of residents and operators; facilitating disclosure; requiring contracts to contain full details; facilitating resident input into management; establishing dispute resolution mechanisms; and encouraging best practice management standards.
The Act applies to retirement villages regardless of the tenure underlying each resident's occupation (freehold, leasehold, licence, strata, or community land). Where a part of the village is subject to a community land scheme or strata scheme, the by-laws of that scheme apply to that part, not the village rules under Division 1 of Part 6 (section 45).
Note on source text: the stored source contains 10 concatenated copies of the Act (approximately 422,000 characters total; single copy approximately 268,000 characters). This analysis is based on a complete single copy.