Veteran NZ retirement village operator Cliff Cook has begun construction on a 109 apartment plus 30 bed aged care facility opposite Battersea Park in London. His LifeCare group has 58% of the venture while American billionaire Sam Zell has 33%. The land and planning costs have already cost over $100 million before construction. They plan to sell the village units from $675K to $3.4M. Cook points out that the population within a 5 km radius of the site is the wealthiest in the UK and is equal in number to the whole of New Zealand.
The UK has only 150,000 retirement village units, the equivalent of 1% penetration. They have 10 million people age 60+. For housing in general, UK requires 250,000 new homes to be built each year; however last year less than 100,000 new homes were built, a fall of 11% from the previous year