HousingCare.org is EAC’s public-facing website.

Its main contents are:

• Searchable national, regional and local directories of:
  • Retirement housing (25,000 entries)
  • Care homes for older people (11,000 entries)
  • Key home services for older people (5,000 entries)
• Guidance for housing, care home and service providers about helping us maintain these directories;
• A collection of factsheets, guides and other reading materials about housing, support and care for older people.

HousingCare is popular, attracting around 14k visits most weekdays and 9k on weekend days, and by far its most popular content are the pages of its retirement housing directory which receive c.5 million unique page views a year. These figures are something we have worked hard to achieve, and frankly we’re delighted. The purpose of our housing directory is to provide information in the same format for every retirement housing scheme or development so that our site users can compare them easily, and figure out which, if any, they would be eligible for, would suit them, and they could afford. 

We don’t charge housing providers to present their housing schemes on our site. Nor do we charge for the extra pages of information we show about some schemes – this is a reward for fully completing our extended questionnaire, and gaining the EAC Quality of Information Mark (QI Mark).

Callin Court in Chester is an example of a scheme with the EAC QI Mark.

Another accolade highlighted on directory pages is for past winners in the annual EAC National Housing for Older People Awards. Winners are selected solely on the basis of how many residents nominated their scheme, so this is an important indicator of customer satisfaction. 

Some housing providers and estate agents do, however, choose to subscribe to a service that provides them with specific benefits that we feel comfortable with. They get:

• additional branding for their company;
• the ability to add extra photos, brochures and videos;
• the ability to post short ads for currently available properties;
• links from our site to theirs;

Our current subscribers are: A2 Dominion, Abbeyfield, Anchor, Churchill Sales & Lettings, ExtraCare Charitable Trust, FirstPort, Girlings Retirement Rentals, Housing 21, McCarthy Stone, McCarthy Stone Resales, My Future Living, Oak Retirement, One Housing Care & Support, Retirement Homesearch, Retirement Security Ltd, Richmond Villages, and Your Housing Group