New village customers have changed, forever. In just six months they abandoned acceptance of what villages offer and now question everything.
In January we commissioned the villages.com.au National Residents Survey delivering 19,600 residents, plus a survey of 1,100 potential residents. We then extracted the residents who had purchased a village home in the past 24 months (new residents).
The chart above displays what was ‘extremely important’ to new residents (dark orange bar) and potential residents (light orange bar).
It shows on every major metric the new potential customer is far more interested in every aspect of the village offering (except village facilities).
Most notable is the ‘reputation of the village’ which has gone from 18% ‘extremely important’ to 55%.
This verifies the Stockland chart above where more people are looking at every village but less are buying.
This is the ‘new world’ and the new customer for village operators. 12 months after Fairfax/Four Corners there is still much work to be done. Or customers will find other solutions to their senior accommodation needs. The sector needs to decide which way it will go.
