Following on from our story last week that land lease operators have the potential to build into their marketing efforts that retirees can access the $25,000 government cash grant, we received a number of enquiries from retirement village operators questioning whether this could be correct.

We asked the Federal Government who indicated ‘yes, this is correct’ with the caveat that state regulations may challenge this correctness. It may impact State Revenues.

Last Wednesday, Ingenia CEO Simon Owen (pictured centre) and Lifestyle Communities CEO James Kelly both came out in a Financial Review article backing the opportunity; they were also supported by the Property Council.

“Something like this could be a great catalyst for people to downsize,” said Simon Owen.

“So far there has been limited additional inquiry based around the HomeBuilder payment,” he said. “I would expect this would become more pronounced in the coming weeks as eligibility criteria are finalised and awareness of how the payment works increases.”

James Kelly was more forthright: “It’s the biggest home buyer’s downsizer grant we’ve ever seen. No-one thinks this applies to them because it never has before. That’s why it’s so exciting. There are 25,000 good reasons.”

The Property Council is also bullish, calculating that an extra 1,000 land lease and potentially retirement village homes could sell in the allotted time period of July to December. Their calculation is it will add $350 million in construction.