Moving to Waverly Heights in Gladwyne: The Seller’s Guide to the 100% Refund Option

As a two-by-two grid, like White Horse Village but at Main Line price points. First, the care contract: Traditional Lifecare, where routine nursing and personal care in the health center come without an increase in the monthly fee, or Fee-for-Service, where care is billed per diem (independent 2022 figures put those per diems around $390 for personal care and $465 for memory care and skilled nursing). Second, the refund option: 100% or 50% of the entrance fee. The interesting wrinkle: entrance fees are identical across all four combinations; what changes is the monthly fee, which runs meaningfully lower under Fee-for-Service and under the 50% refund option. A nonrefundable contract fee of $20,000 per person applies at entry on top of the entrance fee. Numbers date to 2022 and change annually; the disclosure statement carries current schedules.

Main Line numbers, befitting the address. Independent 2022 figures from Penn’s emeriti guide put entrance fees from $277,000 to $1,288,000 for a single person (add $37,000 for a second), identical across contract and refund choices, plus the $20,000 per-person contract fee. Monthly fees ranged from $5,068 to $10,940 under Traditional Lifecare with the 100% refund, $4,163 to $8,973 with the 50% refund, and lower still under Fee-for-Service ($4,012 to $8,649 and $2,964 to $6,381 respectively), with $2,010 for a second person. The 100% refundable structure is the standout: it is the closest thing in the region to capital preservation inside a lifecare contract, and it is priced accordingly in the monthly fee rather than the entrance fee.

Sixty-three acres of a former Main Line estate in Gladwyne, Lower Merion Township, opened as a community in 1986. There are 210 apartment and villa units, with apartments in two- and three-story buildings connected to a commons by enclosed walkways and villas clustered around the property’s perimeter with one- and two-car garages. The care continuum on campus comprises 33 personal care suites, 16 memory support rooms, and 49 skilled nursing rooms. The Manor House holds a library, dining rooms, and bed-and-breakfast guest rooms; the estate texture (greenhouse, putting green, pool and spa, theater, pub) is the point. Minimum entry age is 60, lower than the 62 and 65 thresholds common elsewhere, and the refundable waitlist deposit is $2,000.

It converts most of the entrance fee into a receivable your estate eventually collects: the full entrance fee (less any amounts owed) returns when residency ends, which at a $500,000 or $900,000 Main Line entrance fee is a very different inheritance than a declining-balance plan leaving nothing after four years. Three cautions. The $20,000 per-person contract fee is never refundable. The monthly fee under the 100% option runs roughly $900 to $2,000 higher than the 50% option for the same residence, so a long residency partially pays back the refund through carrying cost, arithmetic your adviser should run against your life expectancy and estate goals. And under the 50% plan, the refund amortizes 2% per month for 25 months, so departures within roughly two years return more than half. Refund timing conventions and conditions live in the residence agreement; read them before wiring anything.

The entrance fee plus contract fee are due at move-in, and at these price points the house is almost always the source, frequently a Gladwyne, Villanova, Bryn Mawr, or Haverford house whose sale is itself a seven-figure transaction. The sequence is the standard one: valuation, contract and refund choices with the adviser, reserve, list on a coordinated calendar with the closing at or just before move-in. Two Main Line notes: Lower Merion Township has its own resale requirements and lead times (our Lower Merion guide covers them), and houses at this tier sell on preparation and positioning more than urgency, so the clear-out and staging conversation should start months before the reservation, not after it. The $250,000/$500,000 capital gain exclusion frequently runs out on long-held Main Line houses; the gain math belongs on an accountant’s desk in the same tax year as the lifecare deduction.