Stephen Gaitanos, the Co-Founder, Managing Director and Group CEO of Scape Australia, the country's leading residential-to-rent owner and operator, has told Mingtiandi’s Singapore Forum that the group will provide accommodation for seniors.
The Weekly SOURCE reported last month that Scape Australia was reportedly in exclusive talks to buy Brookfield's major retirement village operator Aveo.
Stephen was unable to comment on the purchase of Aveo while admitting Scape “certainly has the ambition to grow into that sector”.
He revealed that Scape had created a new brand Living Co to cater for its aspirations.
“As of almost last week, we’ve decided to transition to The Living Co. Scape is still our PBSA (purpose-built student accommodation) brand. Rent-to-Live is our Build to Rent brand. And as we accumulate new businesses across the living spectrum, whether it be senior housing, affordable and social housing, PBSA, or build-to-rent, the sky’s the limit within that living sector,” said Stephen.
“As we think about senior housing, that sector in itself is too fragmented and it needs a bit of leadership from someone to kind of disrupt,” he said. “There isn’t a customer-centric model that can provide the service that our seniors need. And frankly, we shouldn’t even be calling that because 75-year-olds are much younger, fitter, healthier than they’ve ever been.”
He said the business aims to grow its portfolio to at least 100,000 housing units by 2030 through diversification into seniors' housing, growth of its Build to Rent apartment business and expansion into the Japanese market. Scape currently has a portfolio of 26,000 housing units in Australia.
Stephen reportedly said the developer had a portfolio of about 50 buildings, including 24 self-developed towers, which achieve a net internal rate of return (IRR) of around 15% to 16% over the last 10 years, despite the interruption from COVID.
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