As a Retirement Village Manager, you will be thinking about your career prospects going forward.
The good news, despite the media and reactive governments, is that experienced and new village operators are committing really big funds to acquire and build new villages.
A couple of examples to demonstrate this really positive trend:
- Glen Brown, a 50-ish veteran village operator based in Brisbane who helped build RetireAustralia from scratch, has bet his future on his new village group called Reside. He has got the capital together to build 1,500 retirement village homes over the next six to eight years – that’s worth $600 million. (Glen and his team pictured).
- Paul Browne, a 60-ish veteran village operator who built and sold Freedom to Aveo, has created LDK Healthcare and is building 400 village homes in Canberra and just bought The Landings in Sydney (around 230 homes) for about $60 million.
- Phil Usher, a 55-ish veteran village operator who created Tall Trees Villages, is having another go, just announcing his Odyssey Village group. The first development will be $50 million.
- Steller Developments in Melbourne, a big residential developer, has just committed $430 million to build four villages in one go on the Mornington Peninsula, their first ever.
And there are quite a few other private people putting real money up.
At the same time not-for-profit village operators are expanding aggressively.
The message: retirement villages are growing, which means the demand for experienced, professional retirement village managers is growing too. Good news.
