Ryman Healthcare’s once-flagship Melbourne development site – billed as its largest project in Australia – has hit the market, marking another sign of the company’s near-total pause on new projects.
The New Zealand-based operator, which runs nine villages across Victoria and has invested more than $2 billion into Australia since 2014, has been quietly offloading land earmarked for future developments, as first reported by The Weekly SOURCE on 6 October.
Now, Cushman & Wakefield has listed the 2.56-hectare Coburg North site Ryman bought in May 2023 for $48.2 million. The block – the former Federal Government’s Australian Defence Apparel site – was to be transformed into a $350 million integrated retirement village, touted as Ryman’s “biggest-ever project” in Victoria.
According to the agents, the site offers:
- a Mixed-Use zone allowing flexibility for residential, Build to Rent, aged care, retirement living, student housing, or hybrid development;
- proximity to the planned Coburg Health & Community Services precinct;
- advanced plans for a major retirement and aged care project; and
- direct connection to Batman Station, the University and Biomedical Precinct, and Melbourne’s CBD – plus sweeping viewlines to Coburg Lakes and the city skyline (STPA).
When the project was first unveiled, then-Ryman Australia CEO Cameron Holland said: “We build village communities where people want to live – and this is an area where people very much want to live.”
But Ryman’s ambitious “build it and they will come” strategy has since unravelled. As The Weekly SOURCE’s Chris Baynes wrote in 2024, the company had been driven by investors chasing high growth – targeting 15% more homes built every year and carrying $3 billion in debt.
Then came the trifecta: surging interest rates, squeezed home-buyer demand, and construction costs up as much as 50%.
New leadership is now trying to stabilise the business. Australians CEO Naomi James and CFO Matthew Prior have already launched a NZ$1 billion equity raise – Ryman’s second in two years, following a NZ$902 million recapitalisation in 2023 – to restore liquidity and reset the balance sheet.
On 9 October, Ryman reported an 18% year-on-year decline in total sales volumes for Q2 FY26. The company holds total assets of NZ$12.06 billion but a market capitalisation of just NZ$2.85 billion.
