“I want Aveo to grow to 50,000 units”: Stephen Gaitanos
- Ambition: The Living Company wants to grow from 11,000 to 50,000 retirement units
- Acquisitions ahead: Sector consolidation remains firmly on the agenda
- Metro focus: Targeting prime freehold sites within 20km of major east coast CBDs
- Scale matters: Owners see larger portfolios as key to long-term returns
Less than a year after acquiring Aveo for $3.85 billion, The Living Company has outlined plans to grow the retirement village operator from 11,000 units to 50,000.
Stephen Gaitanos, Founder & Joint CEO at The Living Company, shared his ambitions for Aveo during a panel session at the Retirement Living Council’s National Summit in Brisbane last week, alongside Cushman & Wakefield Australia and New Zealand CEO Noral Wild and Chair of Charter Hall Direct and Keyton director Adrian Harrington.
“We needed to buy a platform that was scalable. We needed to buy a platform that had a wonderful management team that had been together for a long time under Tony Randello’s stewardship, and had a great development pipeline,” Stephen said.
“When we think about total return, it’s all about having an at scale portfolio, because you need a mature portfolio that turns over with a healthy track record of that turnover.
“We want to own all our assets in prime metro locations. That’s why we’re not in land lease as well, as we only want to own basically freehold land. When I say prime metro – 20km from the CBD of each of our capital cities on the east coast only. That’s where we want to be. And I think if we have enough scale and today we have 11,000 ILUs, I want to grow that to 50,000.”
Reaching 50,000 units would likely require substantial acquisition activity in a sector where scale is concentrated among a handful of operators.
These include the EQT-owned Levande, the Aware Super, APG Asset Management and Lendlease owned Keyton, which sold its Western Australian retirement village portfolio in November last year, and RetireAustralia, acquired by Invesco Real Estate for $845 million in August last year.
In April, Stephen and Joint CEO Craig Carracher AM told Forbes Australia:
“We’re also actively looking in the market now to double our seniors’ capacity and disability living,” Craig said.
“Our business has set itself a $100 billion target, and we’ve agreed to commit.”
Stephen told delegates that the sector was “very competitive”.
“We're very happy owners.”
