About Villagewise
A plain, independent guide to what retirement villages and care homes in New Zealand really cost.
Who we are
Villagewise is a small independent project based in Auckland. We built it because the number that matters most when choosing a village, the exit fee, is missing from every listing we read.
Independence
No village, operator or care home pays us. Nobody can pay to be listed, ranked higher or left out. Where a village does not publish its fees, we say so, and we never guess a number.
Where the data comes from
- Villages, care homes, care levels, vacancies and units for sale: Eldernet listings, read on 15 October 2026. 491 villages, 697 care homes and 544 units for sale.
- Care home certification and audits: the Ministry of Health's list of certified rest homes, read on 15 October 2026. 675 of the 697 care homes matched to a certificate.
- The cap on a standard care home room: the Ministry of Health's maximum contribution notice for each district, from 1 July 2026.
- Home care services: 141 home help and support services listed on Eldernet, read on 15 October 2026.
- Registration: the Retirement Villages Register, kept by the Companies Office, read on 15 October 2026. 435 of the 491 villages matched to an entry, each with its registration number and statutory supervisor.
- Operators' own sites: units for sale and premium room charges from the six largest operators' village pages, read on 15 October 2026, for 170 villages. A home already listed on Eldernet is counted once.
- Care home extras: premium room charges and care suite terms from operators' own care home pages, read on 15 October 2026, for 248 care homes.
- Fee terms: each operator's own fee pages, frequently asked questions, annual reports and, where published, disclosure statements, read on 15 October 2026. Every fee on this site links to the page it came from.
- Confidence: each fee carries a confidence note. "High" means we read the figure in the operator's own words. "Low" means little or nothing was published.
Entry prices are only the units for sale on the day we looked.
Photos
There are no photos copied from listing sites or operators' websites here. Those photos belong to the operators and photographers who took them, and we do not use them without permission, so until an operator sends its own, the only pictures on a page are street maps drawn from OpenStreetMap. Operators can add theirs: every village and care home page has an "Add photos" link, or claim your listing and add photos here. The operator confirms it owns or licenses each photo, a person checks every one before it goes live, and the page shows it as supplied by the operator, with the date it was added.
How to correct a listing
If you run a village or care home, update your listing here: it is free. If you have spotted a mistake, email us with the page address and what should change. If you can, attach or link the disclosure statement, and we will update the page.
Email: hello@example.nz
Phone: 0800 000 000
Last updated
Data last read on 15 October 2026. Fee checks for the remaining operators and independent villages are under way.