Simon Owen pitches all-age rental villages: for purpose and an attractive cash yield

The Managing Director and CEO of Eureka Group Holdings has a personal purpose. He is creating new rental homes, and faster than any Government or other business in Australia.

When Simon Owen took the CEO’s role 11 months ago at the Brisbane-based company, Eureka was a pure-play Over 50s rental village operator. No more.

From virtually nil, he is now scaling up to build 200 homes a year, and he has set his acquisition team the goal to acquire a new property every month to convert to all-age rental accommodation.

For purpose

Eureka is particularly targeting high-employment regional towns where there is a mix of demand, with essential service staff a cornerstone, along with the Over 50s renter. Simon highlights that many towns risk decline if they cannot secure accommodation for care workers, temporary infrastructure staff needed for road and renewable energy projects, and key workers in the mining and agricultural sectors.

He explains that Eureka takes a strategic pricing view to each customer segment to give an overall revenue mix that allows Eureka to cater to most price points, as well as build a vibrant community. He states that Eureka is the only pure play all-age rental housing developer and that this is an untapped market that few understand, including the capital providers. But demand is steadily increasing. Across Australia, home ownership is decreasing. Among 30-34-year-olds, home ownership has fallen from 64% in 1971 to 50% in 2021. Nearing retirement, home ownership also declined for 50–54-year-olds, from 80% in 1996 to 72% in 2021. Barriers to buying a home are increasing. Average house prices across major cities in 2006 – 19 years ago – were 4.5 times the average household income. Today, the median price of a house in Australia is now $905,076, according to Cotality. Simon is on track to build 200 all-age rental homes a year, with around 40% of clients being retirees. In contrast, the Australian Government's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, announced in June 2023, is yet to build a new home.

“I felt, not just in seniors but in all-ages, there was this huge opportunity in rental,” he told SATURDAY.

Eureka also has experience of managing rentals, including supporting an older, frailer resident.

“Here’s a massive part of the market that no-one’s looking at. Eureka can really focus on that part of the market where there’s almost unlimited demand, significant constraints to supply and no institutional capital looking at it. Here’s a large part of the market that we can own,” Simon said.

He created 10 all-age communities as Managing Director and CEO of Ingenia Communities, so he was aware of the yield that can be achieved. On 18 July this year, Eureka announced it had paid $7.5 million for Emerald Tourist Park in Queensland’s Central Highlands Region. It’s the fifth all-age purchase after Kin Kora residential home and caravan park for $4.5 million in February 2025; Tuggerah Shores Home Village for $8.25 million in March 2025; Burrum River Caravan Park for $5.3 million in May 2025; and Barrier Reef Tourist Park for $3.5 million last month. All purchases have been funded from the proceeds of Eureka’s successful $70 million capital raising, which leaves around $40 million to invest.

Compare to Build to Rent’s 4% yield

Simon believes Eureka is carving out a new investible accommodation segment that delivers top of the market yields. “The project in Emerald has an in-going yield on day one of 8.5% and a five-year return of 19%,” Simon said, adding it will be a $30 million asset within five years. “In the Over 50s communities yield is probably around 9%, but the return we get over a three-to-five-year period through growing the occupancy, pushing rents a little bit harder, ideally adding in a few more units, gets you to about 12.5% plus return. “The returns we’re getting at the moment in the all-age space are materially higher. You’re typically looking at an ongoing yield of 8.5 to 9% and a three to five return anywhere between 15 and 20%. And that 15 to 20% is a combination of building out the vacant land.

“Every park we’ve bought today except one at Tuggerawong in the NSW Central Coast, has got significant vacant land that might be used for either caravanning and camping or it just might be sitting there awaiting activation. By putting in prefab units, you can quickly build a rent roll based on that. A key focus is building a community. Many residents do not have regular interaction with friends or family. We want our community to be their home.”

Caravan parks & manufactured homes

Eureka is currently working on 20 purchases of caravan parks, motels, older land lease communities and family-owned retirement villages to add to its fledging all-age portfolio. Ideally, they have spare land so new homes can be added immediately. The goal is to buy a park for between $5 million and $10 million with the ability over three years to build a net operating income of at least $1 million and ideally significantly higher.

“We will buy everything we can in the Over-50s space that makes sense financially,” said Simon. “But there’s not a lot of products out there. We’ve probably got three or four that we’re working on at the moment, which are held by either private individuals or consortium. “In the all-ages, it’s a much bigger playing field and a lot more opportunities out there.”

Eureka purchased Kin Kora residential home and caravan park village in the town of Gladstone, 517km north-northwest of Brisbane, in February. The first homes, manufactured by Glendale Homes in Caboolture, were delivered to the site in June. It took them five weeks to build the house, a week to truck it to Gladstone and two weeks to install it.

“We’ve got 28 new one- and two-bedroom homes being installed at the moment at a rate of two or three a week,” said Simon. He said Eureka will create a sub-brand for its all-age portfolio, with an announcement likely before the end of the year. 

Seeking new investment

Eureka Group Holdings is a capital-hungry business and Simon Owen is looking for a partner.

Providing rental accommodation is more challenging as the property is not sold. 

“We’ll get a significant valuation uplift which we can borrow against and free up some capital, but it (rental) consumes a lot of capital. Eureka is a capital hungry business,” Simon said. 

“We are advanced with one global property investor who has billions of dollars invested in property in Asia and understands the rental sector. 

“They don’t like the returns that traditional build to rent offers. If you’re doing high density build to rent in Homebush in Sydney or Southbank in Melbourne or Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, the effective yields are going to be 4%, 5% or 6%, which in a higher interest rate environment, is hard to make that investable.  

“Our returns are very appealing. But our challenge is that it takes time to educate capital partners on what this model looks like.” 

But it is something he wants to do as he is very aware of the demand. His play is very much for purpose. 

“My office in Brisbane is outside our call centre team and the phones don't stop ringing with people literally desperate for rental accommodation. I think across probably 2,900 rental units at the moment we might have 40 or 50 vacancies and a lot of those vacancies are because we’re repainting them or getting them carpeted. They’re offline.  

“Of our  30 Over 50s villages, in Queensland, I think we’ve got one vacancy and 35 or 36 of  our villages are 100% occupied with a waitlist. Probably half a dozen villages have got more than 50% of the vacancies in the group. We will divest villages where we don’t think we can get them to at least 95% occupancy.”