It is usually the first fear, and the quietest one. You are trying to work out how to get Mum the care she needs, and somewhere underneath all of it sits the house. The one she raised you in. The one that was always going to stay in the family. Nobody says it out loud, and everybody is thinking it.
You are not being mercenary for wondering.
Here is the honest answer up front, including the part that is less comfortable. In most cases you do not have to sell the family home to pay for aged care, and for care delivered at home it is not counted at all. But "you do not have to" is not the same as "it never gets touched". If your parent moves permanently into a residential aged care home and nobody protected is still living in the house, part of its value does go into the assessment, and that can raise what they contribute. Some families do choose to sell. It is a choice, not a requirement, and the two things get muddled constantly.
The good news is that almost every number in this is published, and the one that matters most is a cap. Let's go through it plainly, with the actual figures.
If care is happening at home, the house is not counted
If your mum or dad is staying put and receiving support at home, the family home does not enter into it at all.
My Aged Care puts it in one line: your principal home is exempt from the asset test in the Support at Home program. Not capped, not partially counted. Exempt.
Support at Home contributions are worked out on income and on your other assets, which is why the house you live in is treated as your home rather than as a pot of money to be spent down. This is the setting most families are actually asking about, someone who wants to stay put with a bit of help coming in. If that is you, you can stop worrying about this now.
In residential care, it depends entirely on who is still in the house
When someone moves permanently into a residential aged care home, the sums change, and the home can count as an asset.
But whether it counts at all comes down to one question: is a protected person still living there?
If there is, the home is left out of the assessment completely. A protected person is:
- Your partner or dependent child. No qualifying period. If your dad moves into care and your mum stays in the house, the house is out.
- A carer who is eligible for an Australian Government income support payment and has lived in the home with your parent for at least 2 years.
- A close relative who is eligible for an Australian Government income support payment and has lived in the home with your parent for at least 5 years.
Those qualifying periods are worth reading twice, because the two-year and five-year marks are where families get caught. A daughter who moved in eight months ago to care for her father does not meet the carer test yet. The same daughter at two years and one day does.
This is the first thing to establish, before you worry about anything else on this page. If someone protected is in the house, everything below stops applying to you.
Only $219,858.40 of it counts, however much the house is worth
If nobody protected is living there, the home is counted. But it is never counted at its full market value.
What goes into the assessment is a capped amount of $219,858.40, as at 20 September 2026, or the net market value of the house if that is lower. That figure is indexed on 20 March and 20 September each year, so check the date on any number you are given, including this one.
Sit with what that means for a moment. A house in Sydney worth $1.6 million and a house in a regional town worth $400,000 go into the assessment at exactly the same amount. The $1.2 million difference is invisible to the calculation. If the house is worth less than the cap, the lower figure is used.
For couples there is a further halving. Each partner is treated as owning half the home, so half the net market value or half the cap goes in, whichever is lower, and the cap is applied to each half.
This is the single most important fact in the whole conversation, and it is the one most people have never heard. The family home is not on the table at its market value. A capped slice of it is.
You can pay for a room without selling anything
Here is the part your parent's accommodation actually turns on, and it is the piece that most explanations skip.
Residential aged care accommodation can be paid three ways, and the choice is your parent's:
- A refundable lump sum. A large one-off deposit, refunded to the estate when they leave. This is the option that makes people think they have to sell.
- Non-refundable daily payments. An ongoing daily amount instead of the lump sum. No sale required.
- A combination of the two. A smaller lump sum plus a reduced daily payment.
These are formally called the refundable accommodation deposit (RAD) and the daily accommodation payment (DAP), and you will see both acronyms on every provider's price list.
Because the daily payment exists, the sentence "we will have to sell the house to get Dad a place" is not true as a rule. Families often do sell, because a refunded lump sum can work out cheaper over a long stay and because the house may be sitting empty. Those are reasonable financial decisions. They are not a condition of getting a bed.
And if your parent's means are low, the government may pay the accommodation entirely. Where income is below $36,454.60 and assets below $66,500.00, the Australian Government pays the full accommodation cost. Those thresholds are indexed too.
What actually leaves the bank account
The exact contribution comes from your parent's own means assessment, and Services Australia sends a fee advice letter setting it out once they enter care. Nobody can tell you the number before that. What you can know in advance is the ceiling, because every component is capped and published.
If your parent enters care under the 1 November 2025 fee arrangements:
- Basic daily fee: $68.93 a day, or $25,159.45 a year. Everyone pays this. It is set at 85% of the single age pension and covers meals, cleaning, laundry and utilities.
- Hotelling contribution: up to $22.15 a day. Means tested. If your parent is asked for part of it, the government pays the rest. Below the thresholds, the government pays all of it.
- Non-clinical care contribution: up to $109.45 a day. This covers bathing, mobility assistance and lifestyle activities, and only applies if they are paying the full hotelling contribution.
- Accommodation: lump sum, daily payment, combination, or government paid, as above.
Two limits matter enormously here and almost nobody mentions them. The non-clinical care contribution stops once your parent has paid $140,652.80 in total contributions, or after 4 years of cumulative contributions, whichever comes first. Anything they paid under Support at Home counts towards that same lifetime cap. And under these arrangements the government fully funds all clinical care. Nursing is not something the house is being weighed against.
If your parent entered under the older 1 July 2014 fee arrangements, the means tested care fee applies instead, between $0 and $380.46 a day, capped at $37,055.98 a year and $88,934.57 over their lifetime. That daily figure changes on 1 April and 1 October, which is a different cycle from the rest of these numbers.
One thing to be clear on. Being assessed as having assets is not a bill for the house. It changes the contribution, and the contribution can be met from income, from a daily payment arrangement, or from a lump sum if that is what the family chooses. The home being counted and the home being sold are two entirely different events.
And if your parent was receiving a Home Care Package, or was approved and waiting for one, on or before 12 September 2024, the "no worse off" principle applies when they move into residential care. They pay no more than they would have under the old rules.
What to do next
- Answer the protected person question first. Partner or dependent child with no qualifying period, a carer on income support at two years, a close relative on income support at five. If the answer is yes, the house is out and you can stop.
- Get the means assessment done. Until it is, every figure you are working with is a worst case guess. Ring My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 to start it.
- Ask the provider for the daily payment figure, not just the lump sum. Providers publish both. Ask in those words: "What is the daily accommodation payment for this room, as well as the lump sum?" A provider quoting only a lump sum has not given you the full picture.
- Check the date on every figure you are given, including the ones on this page. Most of these amounts move on 20 March and 20 September.
- Get financial advice before selling anything. Selling changes the pension position as well as the aged care one, and it is the one decision here that cannot be undone.
You don't have to work this out alone
It is a lot to carry. You are making a decision about your parent's care, and a decision about the house you grew up in, and you are making both of them at the same time while worrying about a dozen other things. Finding that hard is not a failure of nerve. It is a genuinely tangled set of rules, and the word "assets" gets thrown around as though the house is obviously on the table when very often it is not.
Having a chat with our team is free to you. It is one-on-one, a real conversation rather than a script, and there is no pressure to decide anything on the spot. We can help you work out where the home actually stands in your parent's situation, and if you are not ready to think about providers yet, that is completely fine. When you are, we match you with vetted providers that fit your situation and your area, based on what your parent actually needs, and never a ranking of who is "best".
Here is what it usually comes down to. For most families, the home stays in the family. The care gets sorted, the sums get done, and the house your mum planned to leave you is still there to leave. That is not a consolation prize. It is just how it generally works.
Whenever you are ready, today, next week or three months from now, we are here.
