Life got so bad for 90-year-old Maurine Moore at her home in a retirement village in Melbourne that she contemplated suicide.

"I felt that bad," she says, choking up.

Earlier this year, the retired child psychologist and volunteer, who has mobility issues, packed up her antique furniture, boxed her hundreds of books and a prized collection of Royal Doulton figurines, and left the place she had called home for 15 years.

"I was really worn out," she says, clutching a tissue in her frail hands.

Maurine left in March this year after the retirement village in the leafy suburb of Balwyn, owned by Pinnacle Living, threatened to have her evicted in a letter sent three days before Christmas. 

Her offence? Repeatedly breaching a smoking ban introduced in 2019 — 10 years after she moved in — following a residents' vote that made the entire village smoke-free, including inside her home and courtyard.

"I was 16 when I started and unfortunately became addicted," she says.

"I did give up in 2018 with a great deal of help until the pressure started with the place I was living at … I just went back to it when the pressure got too much … and I'm ashamed of it," she says.

She says her treatment at the village in the past few years was "abominable".

ABC Investigations and 7.30 have uncovered some shocking stories of excessive fees and oppressive contracts signed by older Australians who have bought into the multi-billion-dollar retirement village sector: Complex and opaque contracts (some including algebraic formulas), fee gouging, bullying and misleading marketing promises.

Thousands of retirees move into retirement villages each year, lured by promises of safety, fun and low-maintenance living.

There are more than 250,000 residents living in more than 2,500 villages across the country. 

According to the industry peak body, the homes are on average 43 per cent cheaper than the median house price in the same postcode, and residents are 41 per cent happier — or so the industry says.

But instead of finding a utopia, Maurine compared it to hell.

Claims of 'putrid stench'

She claims her relationship with the village started to deteriorate in 2017 when she took Pinnacle to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) after it refused to fix her library room, which had flooded and ruined her books.

Pinnacle eventually agreed to fix the room, but she says things started to change.

"One manager always kept saying, 'You are confused' as if you had Alzheimer's," she says. 

On one occasion, she says a staff member blocked her car as she was trying to leave the village and smiled at her as he walked off for 15 minutes, which made her late for a GP appointment.

Then, in 2019, the village banned smoking.

After that came emails, visits to her unit, which are allowed under her contract, then legal letters, and demands for expensive work on her unit, which she couldn't afford, followed by breaches and contested accusations of a "putrid stench" coming from her home.

In one letter dated December 16, 2020, just before Christmas, Pinnacle listed a series of breaches of her contract that needed to be addressed by January 27 — a tough deadline given most places shut down for the holidays.

She was mortified by the accusations outlined in the letter, including "a general state of uncleanliness", which she vigorously denies.

Pinnacle complained about "the presence of smoke stains over all surfaces, both within and outside of the apartment". 

It said she effectively had to pull apart the air conditioning and "remove and clean all mechanical systems, including the air conditioning cassette unit, exhaust fans, range hoods, duct work, registers and controllers; remove and clean all power points and light switches".

All fixtures and fittings including furniture, soft furnishings, carpets and underlay needed to be cleaned "in an attempt to remove the putrid stench within and permeating from the apartment".

It also demanded that by January 27 Maurine had to "professionally repaint ceilings, doors and walls with undercoat including stain killer such as Zinsser B.I.N. and two coats of Dulux internal paint, matching the (pre) existing colours if surfaces are damaged from cleaning performed".

"The walls were not yellow, they were lying … there was nothing wrong with the place," Maurine says.

'Deliberate and reckless harassment'

Maurine, who has little money and suffers from mobility issues — she uses a stick to walk — has no immediate family she could turn to for help. 

She became distressed and sought assistance from the non-profit Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG).

As the Pinnacle letters rolled in, a worker from HAAG, Shane McGrath, told the village, "This persistent and baseless harassment of my client must stop".

"This can only be either deliberate or reckless harassment. Please stop. It is not helping you, and it is — as I have said — causing needless and severe distress to my client, a resident of the village you manage who is a frail, elderly woman."

He asked for cool heads.

"This is a moment where everyone can step back, take a breath, and figure out how to de-escalate and move forward together."

McGrath visited Maurine multiple times, and says her unit was clean and tidy and not in a poor state.

Over the course of 2021, Maurine, who at the time was 87, was admitted to hospital three times with health conditions.

As the dispute wore on, Pinnacle engaged lawyers to write some of the letters.

In one letter to Pinnacle's lawyers, in February 2022, McGrath explained Maurine had been trying to quit smoking for years.

"She has been unable to, which she finds deeply embarrassing and shameful. 

"She is also not mobile enough to leave the village every time she needs to smoke. 

"There is no practical way she can comply with the demand that she stop smoking on site altogether, and she would not have moved into the village had such a rule existed at the time."

Fiona York, the head of HAAG, says Maurine's case is one of the worst she has seen.

"It's [the village is] built on a hill so she can't walk out of the village to be able to smoke," she said. 

"And as a lifelong smoker, it's really difficult [for her] to be able to stop. 

"We tried to negotiate with the village to be able to find a reasonable way to resolve this. 

"We proposed that there be an area where she was able to smoke that wouldn't impact on other residents, and we tried to negotiate with the village management. 

"Unfortunately, they dug their heels in."

'You're made to feel isolated'

Pinnacle said any compromise would require Maurine to build a self-contained room in her courtyard area "which does not permit smoke to emanate from outside of that area." 

For Maurine, who was struggling financially, it was a cost she couldn't bear.

Later that month, on February 28, 2022, she was given a notice of breach and termination with a deadline to vacate her home on or before May 4.

HAAG applied to VCAT for an injunction, which was granted. But the stress was becoming unbearable.

"You're made to feel isolated, yes. And if you're the bad person, no one wants to associate with you, in case they start getting picked on," Maurine says. 

"So, I started keeping myself away from the residents, although I will say most of the residents were very supportive."

After living in fear of being thrown out, in October 2023 she signed a deed of settlement and release — a legal document in which she agreed not to smoke on the premises — that ended the VCAT case.

But three days before Christmas, she was caught smoking again and Pinnacle's lawyers fired off a letter that they "would seek orders for her to vacate the premises forthwith" and it would seek orders for the legal costs.

Then in January, while Maurine was still living there, residents received a four-page letter in their letter boxes, titled "Special Levy".

Without naming her, the letter outlined the history of the dispute with a resident over smoking and how it had cost Pinnacle $92,000 to fight the matter.

It said, "costs are not provided for in the routine village budget" and so each residential home would have to pay a levy of almost $2,200.

"I think that was to turn the residents against me," she says.

For Maurine, who was 90 by this stage and didn't have the money to continue fighting the dispute, the stress was too much.

"I was so nervous and so upset, I was forced to give in," she says.

'Sheer hell'

She moved out in late March and is renting in another retirement village in a leafy suburb in Melbourne where she pays on a month-by-month basis.

In May, Pinnacle offered to buy her home at the price she paid for it 15 years ago, $490,000, less fees including exit fees, which would leave her with $343,000 — denying her any of the capital gain, causing her to take a big financial hit.

Homes in the suburb skyrocketed more than 150 per cent over the same period, according to CoreLogic data.

In its letter, the company said her home was in an "extremely poor state" and would take a long time to repair, potentially costing more than $100,000, which it would waive if she took the deal.

The letter said because of this the company was not able to indicate how long it would take to fix the property, resell it, and settle with her.

The letter added that the property market was subdued, and it was "taking a long time to find new residents".

"Meanwhile, we continue to spend more in legal fees to assert our rights under the deed of settlement."

If she accepted the offer, the company said it would drop the legal action against her.

Maurine accepted the deal. 

"I'm sorry," she says, crying. "I shouldn't say this, but at one time, I contemplated suicide. I felt that bad."

Pinnacle declined to be interviewed but, in a statement, said more than 80 per cent of village residents had voted in October 2018 to change its rules to ban smoking throughout the village.

"There were many conversations and correspondence, directly, with third party representatives and with family members to advise smoking was in breach of the community rules and requests that residents stop smoking on the premises," the statement said.

"Despite the efforts of friends, neighbours, counsellors, legal representatives, the Residents Association and staff, the resident advised she would not stop smoking.

"By October 2022 we wrote to the resident formally advising her she was disrupting the quiet enjoyment of her neighbours and in breach of the community's rules regarding smoking.

"In early 2024 the resident moved out of the village by agreement."

Pinnacle put Maurine's house on the market for $1.1 million, spruiking it as "the epitome of refined living".

It was more than double the price it paid to Maurine in May.

"I would have been happy just to get back what I actually paid for it, but they didn't even pay that," she says.

HAAG's Fiona York says she isn't surprised.

"This is how they make their money," she says.

"They want the residents to get out and then they can resell the unit at a higher amount of money for the next person coming in."

Fee structure creates incentive to churn residents

Retirement villages earn most of their revenue when residents leave the village. That's when they get the exit fee.

In Maurine's case, the exit fees started at 2.5 per cent and hit a cap of 25 per cent after 10 years, which amounted to a fee of $122,500, based on the amount Pinnacle bought it back for.

York says exit fees create an incentive for retirement villages to try to get rid of residents when the exit fee reaches its maximum amount.

"For example, if a person was to live in a village for 10 years, and the exit fee was at its maximum after five years, the profit that the village is making isn't as much as if they could get two people there: five years and then five years."

At HAAG, York has seen a number of ways some retirement villages have churned residents.

"Examples include questioning whether the person is able to live independently, because under the law, the villages can have someone leave if they are deemed to be unable to live independently," she said.

York also cited bullying.

In a survey last year of NSW residents by the NSW Retirement Village Residents Association, 40 per cent of respondents across 120 villages reported abuse of some kind including harassment, intimidation and patronisation — mostly by other residents but also at the hands of management.

It said some residents found the bullying was so intolerable they had become depressed and considered suicide.

Some isolated themselves in their homes and their health declined.

The ABC has been inundated with accounts from residents and their families describing some harrowing stories about retirement villages.

Many have told the ABC they have ended up with so little that they can't afford to pay for a room in aged care and have to go on a waiting list for a government-subsidised spot.

'It's a money-making business'

John Van Putten is still living in a retirement village and says he feels financially trapped.

John bought it in 2021 after getting a divorce. On the cusp of retirement, he picked Tudor Village in Lilydale, in Melbourne's east, also owned by Pinnacle.

Within two years he started to have regrets as he watched the rise in the monthly maintenance fees of residents, which cover village management and costs related to communal facilities.

"If they're [rising by] 23 per cent this year, what can they do next year and the year after and the year after?" he says.

He says he didn't want "to get trapped in this snowball effect", so decided to move out.

He moved into a rental property while the house was put up for sale.

Pinnacle continued to charge maintenance fees. But he says after 10 months it still hadn't sold at the price he had hoped, and the bills were mounting.

"I can't afford to pay rent on one property and also pay maintenance fees here as well, so I moved back in."

He said all up, the costs to refurbish and stage the property to make it look more attractive to potential buyers, sales fees, rent and maintenance costs added up to $30,000.

"They're not actually there to look after older people. It's a money-making business," he said.

Pinnacle Living declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement: "To suggest we somehow provoke residents to leave at any point in time of their residence for money is offensive".

The lobby group for village operators, the Retirement Living Council (RLC), which is an arm of the Property Council, said the industry had been around for 60 years and provided "wonderful communities for a quarter-of-a-million older Australians living around the country right now".

The ABC asked RLC executive director Daniel Gannon if the exit fee structure commonly used across the industry created an incentive for operators to churn residents out of their villages.

"Certainly not [in] my experience," he said.

"Certainly not the feedback that I hear in the market.

"This sector, for a long time, was focused on real estate and property is transitioning to providing wellness, care and support services — that continuum of care from independence when people move in at the age of 75 right through into when people might need more home care, they might need more care and support services to help these older Australians age in place in a retirement village."

Mr Gannon said, "research now shows that compared to people not living in retirement villages, people can be 41 per cent happier, 15 per cent more physically active".

He said the industry wanted retirement villages to be places where people felt safe.

He said the price of a two-bedroom unit in a retirement village was on average 43 per cent cheaper than homes in the traditional housing market, compared to the median house price in the same postcode.

But for residents like John, retirement villages need more regulation and residents need more protections.

"You can't get out of it once you're in it," he said.

"There's no way out unless you're prepared to take a heavy financial loss."

Watch this story tonight on 7.30 on ABC TV and iview.