Australia Knows · The Retirement Town Report 2026AU$89Get the Report
Australia Knows
Choosing the wrong town can cost you $31,223 a year in Age Pension.
Not a metaphor. That is the full single pension, and the assets test can take all of it the day you downsize into a house that is too cheap. We ran the numbers on 24 Australian towns — real government data, published method — and wrote down what each one does to your money.
24 Australian towns ranked on cost, care, climate — and what each does to your Age Pension.
Australia Knows · Independent · No sponsors
118 pages · plus the full dataset as a spreadsheet
24Towns, every mainland state and Tasmania
100k+Views a month on our channel
4.9★Average rating from early readers
ZeroSponsors, affiliates or advertising
7dayFull refund, no questions
Not advice on your super. A map of what 24 towns actually cost you.
I.
The math nobody shows you
Here is the calculation that decides whether a downsize makes you better off or quietly destroys your retirement income. Same person, same sale price, same town. The only thing that changes is what they pay for the house.
Dennis is 72, single, and sells his Sydney home for $1,400,000. Selling and moving cost him $60,000. He has $80,000 in savings, a car and contents. Your home is exempt from the assets test. Cash in the bank is not. So every dollar he doesn't spend on the new house is a dollar Centrelink counts.
He buys a house at
Cash left, counted
Age Pension / year
Over 20 years
$670,000
$750,000
Nil
$0
$760,000
$660,000
$5,717
$114,348
$832,500
$587,500
$11,372
$227,448
$900,000
$520,000
$16,637
$332,748
$1,100,000
$320,000
$31,223
$624,468
Calculated on rates in force 1 July – 19 September 2026: assets free area $333,000 for a single homeowner, taper $78 a year per $1,000 above it, maximum pension $31,223.40. Illustrative example for a hypothetical person. Your entitlement is determined solely by Services Australia.
$624,468
The twenty-year gap between the cheapest purchase and the dearest one — in pension alone, before the Pensioner Concession Card, which carries state concessions on rates, energy, registration and public transport.
Read the table again, because it says the opposite of what everyone tells you. The cheaper house leaves Dennis with nothing. The dearer house leaves him with a full pension for life. He is not "spending more" — he is moving money from an asset Centrelink counts into one it doesn't, and keeping an indexed income stream worth over $600,000.
To be clear about what this is and isn't. This is not us telling you to buy an expensive house. It is us showing you that there is a number to check, that almost nobody checks it, and that getting it wrong is a six-figure mistake. Liquidity matters too — money in the bank has uses that a bigger kitchen does not. The report walks through eight of these scenarios so you can find where your own numbers land. Then take them to Services Australia's Financial Information Service on 132 300, which is free, and have them confirmed.
Written the way we make the videos — real numbers, real costs, and the parts that don't flatter the destination.
PART ONE
The methodology, in the open
All seven scored metrics and their exact weights
Which dataset each figure came from, and its date
What we deliberately did not score, and why
Change the weights yourself in the spreadsheet
PART TWO
The ranking
24 towns scored and sorted on one spread
The rates column that costs $3,489 a year between two towns
Why the most expensive town ranks last, and isn't bad
PART THREE
Town profiles
A full page each: twelve figures, all sourced and dated
The retirement town with a median age of 59 and no hospital
The town where rates cost $4,663 a year before you eat
The two towns with zero days above 35°C
PART FOUR
Pension and housing scenarios
Eight worked examples, full arithmetic shown
Why site fees in a land lease community count as rent
The $5,704 a year most homeowners never claim
Owning versus renting: a $16,500 a year gap
PART FIVE
The traps
The $267,000 retirement village threshold that flips your status
What the caravan really costs — $78 a year per $1,000
The two-year rule that catches returning Australians
What happens to your pension after 26 weeks abroad
PART SIX
Check it yourself
Every source, linked, with update instructions
Why most published pension tables are quietly wrong
The free phone number that settles the hardest question
INCLUDED WITH EVERY COPY
The complete dataset as a spreadsheet
Every number behind every ranking, in one file. Sort it your way, add your own towns, change the weightings, model your own situation. Readers tell us this is the part they use most — and it is the part no free report has ever handed over.
III.
Is your town in it?
All 24, listed before you buy. Every state and territory. If yours isn't here, the spreadsheet includes blank rows and the source links so you can score it yourself using the same method.
Ballarat VIC
Victor Harbor SA
Launceston TAS
Nowra / Shoalhaven NSW
Mount Gambier SA
Bundaberg QLD
Devonport TAS
Hervey Bay QLD
Murray Bridge SA
Warrnambool VIC
Albany WA
Bendigo VIC
Bathurst NSW
Orange NSW
Bunbury WA
Toowoomba QLD
Cairns QLD
Wodonga VIC
Rockhampton QLD
Tamworth NSW
Port Macquarie NSW
Dubbo NSW
Forster-Tuncurry NSW
Ballina NSW
Listed in rank order. Ballina is last on cost, not on quality — the report explains why.
IV.
Look inside
Nothing dressed up. Every figure carries its source and its date, because a median house price without a date is worthless.
The ranking · Part TwoTown profile · Part ThreePension scenario · Part Four
118 pages, set in large type and printable on A4. Below is one town page at full size.
Port Macquarie
New South Wales · Port Macquarie-Hastings · 390 km north of Sydney
21
of 24
Median house price, 3 bedroom$832,500756 sales, 12 months to Aug 2026
Average asking rent, 3 bedroom$657/weekWeek ending 4 Aug 2026
Council rates, average residential$1,3222023–24, excludes waste and water
Population aged 65 and over29.1%Against 17.1% nationally
Summer heat, days above 35°C1.9 per yearBOM station 060139, 1995–2022
Winter, mean July minimum6.4°CMean January maximum 27.9°C
Air linksDaily jet to SydneyAlso Brisbane and Lord Howe Island
The honest paragraph. Everything works here, and you pay for it. A 228-bed base hospital 4 km from the centre, daily flights to Sydney, almost no extreme heat, and 29.1% of the population aged 65 or over. On liveability alone it would rank in the top five. It sits at 21 because the median is $832,500 — the second-highest in this report. If you are downsizing from Sydney, run the Part Four arithmetic before you commit. If your budget is under $700,000, Nowra offers a comparable hospital at $670,000.
One of 24. Every town gets the same treatment — including the ones we tell you to skip.
V.
The free reports aren't free. You just pay differently.
Every "top 50 retirement towns" list in Australia is published by an organisation that wants to sell you a financial product, a house, or a unit in a village. That's not a conspiracy — it's who funds the research. It does shape the answer.
The free lists
Method summarised in a paragraph, weights never published
Sponsored by a bank, insurer or village operator
"Good access to healthcare" — no distance, no hours
Not one dollar of Age Pension modelling
No town is ever a bad choice
Underlying data kept in-house
This report
Full method, every weight published and adjustable
Paid for by readers. No sponsors, no affiliates, no ads
Distance to the nearest 24-hour emergency department, in km
Eight worked pension and housing scenarios
We name the towns we'd tell our own parents to skip
The entire dataset ships with the report
VI.
What readers did with it
Rated 4.9 out of 5 by the readers who saw it before launch. Three of them below — three different decisions, each one changed by a specific number in the report.
Replace before launch
★★★★★
Ask for a testimonial that names a specific figure and a specific action. The format that converts: "I was about to buy at $X in [town]. Part Four showed me that left $Y in the bank and cost me $Z a year. I bought at $A instead." Vague praise converts nothing.
?
First name and initial
City, state
Replace before launch
★★★★★
Second should cover a different objection — ideally the "I'm not good with spreadsheets, I'm not financially minded" reader who used it anyway. Have them mention the phone call to the Financial Information Service.
?
First name and initial
City, state
Replace before launch
★★★★★
Third should be a sceptic converted — "went in expecting another list, found the sources actually checked out." Have them name one town they crossed off and why. That proves they read it.
?
First name and initial
City, state
Once you have the real ones, they look like this:
★★★★★
[Reader's own words go here — one specific decision, one specific number, three or four sentences.]
DL
David L.
Example format only
★★★★★
[Reader's own words go here — a different objection, in their voice, with permission and their first name.]
MS
Margaret S.
Example format only
★★★★★
[Reader's own words go here — the sceptic, naming a town they ruled out and why.]
TG
Thomas G.
Example format only
How to get these honestly. Send the report free to 20–30 people from your channel comments who are actively looking, ask for a plain reply seven days later, and use their words with permission and their first name. In Australia, testimonials must be genuine and substantiable — invented ones breach the Australian Consumer Law and are exactly the sort of thing the ACCC sweeps for.
VII.
How this report was made
Most reports in this category tell you who they are and hope that settles it. We would rather show you the working — you can verify a method, you cannot verify a biography.
01
The data
Every figure comes from a public source: the ABS, the Department of Social Services, the Social Security Guide, the Bureau of Meteorology, state property registers and council rate returns.
Each one is named and dated in Part Six, with a link.
02
The method
Seven metrics, each with a published weight. Change our weightings if you disagree with them — the spreadsheet that ships with the report lets you.
Where a figure could not be verified, the report says so instead of filling the gap.
03
The funding
Readers, and nobody else. No sponsor, no affiliate link, no advertising, no council or village operator paying for a mention.
That is the whole reason a town can be called a bad choice on these pages.
What we are not. We are not licensed financial advisers and we do not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence. We give no advice on superannuation, investments or insurance, and we are not paid by anyone whose town or product appears in this report. Your Age Pension entitlement is determined solely by Services Australia.
What we do is narrower and, we think, more useful: we gather the public numbers nobody has bothered to put side by side, we show the arithmetic, and we tell you where we got it.
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1
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2
The email arrives
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3
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On any phone, tablet or computer. Print it if you'd rather read on paper. Yours to keep.
Nothing arrived? Check your junk folder, then write to us — we'll send it by hand the same day.
Not ready? Take three towns free.
We'll send you the full profiles for Ballarat, Nowra and Hervey Bay — the same twelve figures, the same sources, the same honest paragraph. Plus the one-page explainer on how the assets test treats your home. No payment, no catch.
One email a fortnight on where Australians are moving and what it costs. Unsubscribe in one click, any time.
IX.
Questions buyers ask before they click
Is this financial advice?
No, and deliberately so. This report contains general, factual information: published government data, and worked examples using hypothetical people. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not financial product advice, tax advice or legal advice.
We are not licensed under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), do not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence, and give no advice about superannuation, investments, insurance or any other financial product. Your actual Age Pension entitlement is determined solely by Services Australia. Before acting on anything here, consider whether it suits your circumstances and speak to a licensed Australian financial adviser.
I'm not good with numbers or spreadsheets. Will I be able to use it?
Yes. The report itself is written in plain English, set in large type, and every scenario shows the arithmetic line by line rather than assuming you'll follow a formula. The eight worked examples in Part Four are the whole point: you find the one closest to your situation and read across.
The spreadsheet is a bonus for people who like them. You can ignore it entirely and lose nothing.
I've already decided where I'm going.
Then read Part Four and Part Five and skip the rest. Those two sections are about how you buy, not where — the purchase price, the type of housing, the entry contribution, the timing. They apply no matter which town you've chosen, and they are where the six-figure mistakes live.
How current are the figures?
Age Pension and Rent Assistance rates are those in force from 20 March 2026. Assets and income test thresholds are the 1 July 2026 figures. These two sets index on different dates, which is why most published tables are quietly wrong — we date every line.
House prices are twelve months to August 2026. Rents are the week ending 4 August 2026. Council rates are the most recent published financial year and labelled as such. Climate figures are Bureau of Meteorology long-run averages with the station and record period named.
I'm not in Australia. Is this useful?
Partly, and we'd rather say so up front. If you're an Australian citizen living overseas and planning to come home, yes — Part Five covers the two-year residence rule and pension portability, which is where returning Australians lose the most money.
If you're a US or UK citizen with no Australian residency, be aware the Subclass 410 Retirement visa is closed to new applicants. The town data will still interest you, but this report cannot solve the visa problem, and we won't pretend otherwise.
Why should I trust your numbers?
Don't — check them. That's the point of Part Six. Every figure carries its source, its date and a link. We use the ABS, the Department of Social Services, the Social Security Guide, the Bureau of Meteorology, state government property data and council rate returns. Where a number couldn't be verified from a primary source, we say so in the report rather than fill the gap with an estimate. There is one question in Part Four we tell you outright we could not confirm, and give you the free phone number that settles it.
What format is it, and how do I get it?
Two files, emailed within 60 seconds of payment: a PDF designed to be read at full size on a screen and to print cleanly on A4, and a spreadsheet that opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. No app, no login, no subscription, no DRM. If the email hasn't arrived in five minutes, check your junk folder and then write to us — we'll send it by hand.
Can my partner read it too? Can I print it?
Yes to both. It's licensed for your household, not for one device — read it on as many of your own screens as you like, and print as many copies as you want for yourself. The type is set large deliberately, and the layout prints cleanly on A4.
What we ask is that you don't republish it or pass it around beyond your own household. It's paid for by readers, and that's the only thing keeping it free of sponsors.
How do refunds work?
Email within seven days and we refund the full amount. We don't ask why, and we don't need the files back. This is on top of your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, which we can't and don't exclude.
The move costs six figures. Checking it costs AU$89.
Most people spend more time comparing caravans than comparing the towns they'll spend the next twenty years in. Two hours with this report is the cheapest part of the whole decision — and the only part you can undo.
24 Australian towns ranked on cost, care, climate.
Australia Knows · No sponsors
Wait — one thing
Take three towns free.
Ballarat, Nowra and Hervey Bay in full — the same twelve figures, the same sources, the same honest paragraph. Plus the one-page explainer on how the assets test treats your home.
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