By Miami Senior Advisor Care Team · August 29, 2026
What a CCRC actually is — and why South Florida is full of them
A continuing care retirement community (CCRC, and increasingly marketed as a "life plan community") is a campus that contracts to provide housing and care across more than one level — typically independent living apartments or villas, assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing — for the rest of a resident's life or for a term of more than one year. The defining feature is not the campus. It is the contract. You are pre-paying, in whole or in part, for care you may need years from now.
South Florida has an unusually dense concentration of these communities. Palm Beach County, Broward, and Miami-Dade drew decades of retirees with the assets to buy into an entrance-fee model, and the tri-county area now has campuses ranging from modest church-affiliated communities to high-rise waterfront developments with seven-figure buy-ins. If your parent lives in West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton, or coastal Fort Lauderdale, a CCRC has almost certainly mailed them a glossy brochure.
What the brochure will not do is explain the three contract structures behind it, which is where nearly all of the financial risk lives. Two families can move into the same building, into identical apartments, and be exposed to completely different costs over the following decade depending on which contract they signed. This guide walks through the structures, the Florida-specific consumer protections that apply, and the questions to ask before any money changes hands.
Who regulates CCRCs in Florida (it is not who you would guess)
Assisted living facilities and nursing homes in Florida are licensed by the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). CCRCs are different: because a continuing care contract is essentially an insurance-like promise about future care, Florida regulates the provider under Chapter 651 of the Florida Statutes through the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), while AHCA still licenses and inspects the health-care components on campus.
That split matters in practice, and it creates three separate places to do your homework:
- OIR issues a provider a Certificate of Authority before it may operate as a continuing care provider or issue continuing care contracts, reviews the provider's financial plan, requires ongoing financial reporting, and requires providers to maintain reserves. OIR also must approve each continuing care contract and each addendum before it is used in Florida.
- AHCA licenses the assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing pieces on the campus and publishes their inspection history — the same public record you would check for any standalone community. If you have not done this before, our guide to checking a Florida ALF license and inspection history walks through it.
- The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program advocates at no cost for residents living in the licensed assisted living and nursing components. See our overview of the Florida ombudsman program.
Complaints about a possible Chapter 651 violation — the financial and contractual side — go to the Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Consumer Services (1-877-693-5236 in state, or 850-413-3089), or to OIR's CCRC team at 850-413-3153. Complaints about hands-on care quality in the licensed ALF or nursing home go to AHCA through the state complaint process. Families routinely send a care complaint to the wrong agency and lose weeks.
Type A, Type B, and Type C contracts: what you are actually buying
Before anything else, know that "Type A," "Type B," and "Type C" are industry shorthand, not statutory categories. Florida law does not define them. A community's marketing director may use the labels loosely or not at all, so treat them as a framework for reading the document rather than as a guarantee of what the document says. What matters is the answer to one question: when my parent needs assisted living, memory care, or skilled nursing, what changes about the monthly bill?
Type A — extensive or "life care"
The resident pays a larger entrance fee and a monthly fee that stays substantially the same — subject to normal annual increases — even after moving from an independent apartment into assisted living or skilled nursing on campus. The community absorbs the higher cost of care. You are, in effect, buying long-term care insurance bundled with housing. Type A costs the most up front and delivers the most predictable exposure later; it is the best value for a resident who ends up needing years of high-level care, and the worst value for one who never needs more than independent living.
Type B — modified
A middle path. The contract includes a defined amount of higher-level care — a fixed number of days in the health center, or care at a discounted rate, or a period at the independent-living monthly rate — after which the resident converts to paying market or near-market rates. Type B contracts vary more than any other category, and the specific allowance is the single most important number in the document. Ask for it in writing, in days or dollars, not in adjectives.
Type C — fee-for-service
The entrance fee (if any) buys housing, campus amenities, and priority access to the health center. Care is billed at market rates when used. Monthly costs can therefore jump substantially at the moment of transition — often to a figure comparable to the going rate for assisted living in South Florida. Type C is the lowest-risk option if your parent is likely to stay independent, self-insures well, or holds a long-term care insurance policy, and the highest-risk option if a dementia diagnosis is already on the horizon.
Some communities also offer rental or month-to-month arrangements with no entrance fee at all. Those are the easiest to exit and the least protective, and they often sit outside the Chapter 651 framework entirely — which is precisely why you should ask, in writing, whether the community holds a Certificate of Authority for the contract you are being offered.
Entrance fees and refund provisions — the clause that decides your estate
Entrance fees at South Florida CCRCs span an enormous range, from modest five-figure buy-ins at older not-for-profit campuses to well over a million dollars for waterfront units at newer developments. There is no meaningful "average," and anyone quoting one is guessing. Get the community's actual current fee schedule and disclosure statement, in writing, for the specific unit you are considering.
The refund structure matters more than the headline number. Communities typically offer several options on the same apartment: a declining-balance refund that amortizes to zero over a set number of months, a partially refundable option (commonly quoted as 50% or 90% refundable), and sometimes a fully refundable option at the highest price point. Every step up in refundability costs more up front. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether the money is meant to fund care or to pass to heirs — a question worth answering out loud with the whole family before a deposit is written.
Then read the timing language, because a "90% refundable" entrance fee is not a bank account. Florida law addresses when a refund that comes due on a resident's death, or on a move to another level of care that terminates the contract, must actually be paid: the earlier of (1) thirty days after the provider receives the next entrance fee for a like or similar unit that has no prior claim on it, or (2) a maximum period the provider sets and states in the contract, measured from termination and vacancy of the unit.
Read that twice. In many contracts, the practical trigger is resale of the unit, and the backstop is whatever outer limit the provider wrote into its own document. In a strong Palm Beach or Miami-Dade market, resale may take months. In a soft one, it may take considerably longer, and your family may be waiting on the contractual maximum. So the questions to ask are concrete: What is the stated maximum in this contract, in months or years? How many units are currently waiting on refunds, and what has the actual average wait been over the last three years? Get the answer from the finance office, in writing, not from the sales tour.
Also confirm what "vacated" means. Refund clocks generally do not start until the unit is emptied of personal belongings and returned to the community, which can be weeks after a death if no one is available to clear the apartment — a common problem for the out-of-state adult children we work with. Our guide to long-distance caregiving for a South Florida parent covers building a local plan for exactly this kind of task.
The seven-day right to rescind — use it
Florida gives continuing care residents a meaningful cooling-off protection that most families never exercise: the right to rescind a continuing care contract and receive a full refund of funds paid, without penalty or forfeiture, within seven days after signing. A resident also may not be required to move into the facility before that seven-day period expires.
Treat that week as a deadline, not a formality. It is the window in which to have a Florida elder-law attorney read the agreement, to have an accountant or financial planner look at the entrance fee against the rest of the estate plan, and to ask the finance office for the documents in the next section. If a salesperson pressures you to move in immediately, or implies the seven days do not apply because of a promotion or a limited-time incentive, that is worth pausing over.
One related trap: a deposit to reserve a unit is not the same thing as executing a continuing care contract, and reservation deposits can carry their own separate refund terms. Read the deposit agreement on its own terms before you write the check.
Financial due diligence before you sign
Because you are pre-paying for future care, the provider's solvency is your risk. A CCRC that runs into financial trouble does not simply raise prices; it can affect staffing, campus maintenance, and refund timelines. Do this homework:
- Ask for the disclosure statement and the audited financial statements. Florida providers file financial information with OIR, and prospective residents should receive a disclosure statement. If a community is reluctant to hand over recent audited statements, that reluctance is the answer.
- Ask about reserves. Chapter 651 requires providers to maintain a minimum liquid reserve. Ask whether the community currently meets its requirement and whether it has ever needed a waiver or corrective action.
- Ask about occupancy trends. Independent living occupancy is the engine of a CCRC's cash flow, and it is also what drives the resale that triggers many refunds. Ask for the last three years by year, not a single flattering number.
- Ask about the last three years of monthly fee increases, in percentages. The contract will not cap them; history is the only guide you have.
- Ask what happens if a resident outlives their assets. Many not-for-profit communities maintain a benevolent or resident assistance fund; ask how it is funded, who decides, and whether assistance has ever been denied. Note that Florida's SMMC Long-Term Care Medicaid program works very differently inside a CCRC than in a standalone setting, and not every campus participates — our post on SMMC LTC eligibility explains the program itself.
- Ask who owns the community now, and whether ownership has changed in the last five years. Ownership changes are common in South Florida and can reset the culture of a campus quickly.
Finally, ask about the residents' council. Chapter 651 provides for a residents' organization and sets out residents' rights within continuing care communities, including participation in matters that affect them. Ask to speak with the council's leadership without a staff member present. Residents who have lived through two fee increases and one management change will tell you more in twenty minutes than any tour.
Is a CCRC the right answer for your family?
For the right household, a CCRC is an excellent product: it buys predictability, keeps a couple with different care needs on one campus, and spares adult children a scramble when a parent's health changes. It works best when the resident moves in while still genuinely independent, has assets comfortably beyond the entrance fee, and values certainty over liquidity.
It is often the wrong answer when a parent already needs daily hands-on help. Most CCRCs require entry at the independent living level and screen for health and financial qualification, so a family calling after a fall or a dementia diagnosis usually finds the door effectively closed — and paying a large entrance fee to enter directly at a higher level of care rarely pencils out. In that situation, standalone assisted living, memory care, an adult family-care home, or a strong in-home care plan will almost always cost less and move faster. If the need is short-term rehabilitation, that is a skilled nursing question instead.
It is also worth comparing a CCRC honestly against the alternative of keeping liquid assets invested and buying care as needed, especially if your parent already holds a long-term care policy — see our guide to filing a long-term care insurance claim in Florida. The right choice is arithmetic plus temperament, not a sales pitch.
If you are touring campuses across Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and West Palm Beach, bring the same discipline you would to a standalone community: our South Florida tour checklist and our guide to reading a Florida assisted living residency agreement both apply to the health-center side of a CCRC campus. More state-level programs and consumer resources are collected on our Florida resources page, and you can browse every area we cover on the cities page.
And if you would rather not evaluate a 60-page continuing care contract alone: our advisors work with South Florida families every week, know which campuses in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach are worth the entrance fee and which are not, and cost you nothing. Talk to an advisor — hablamos español. This article is general information, not legal or financial advice; for a commitment this size, have a Florida elder-law attorney review the contract inside your seven-day rescission window.