I was taken aback this week when told that the average age of entry to a ‘lifestyle’ land lease community is 71. Fact.
This flies in the face of conventional sector wisdom that LLCs are for the active 55 to 70-year-old, not the active but slower 70+! The retirement village market is being undermined.
Maybe 70 is the new 50 but some of the residents we met as we filmed our TV series, The Best 30 Years, are well and truly 70+.
What does this mean for retirement villages? Well, the residents we met told us. They had looked at retirement villages and liked LLCs better, especially financially. They felt they did not have a call button but they don’t have a DMF and they do have the capital gain - which they all say is being delivered by their LLC.
As LLCs grow, and their combined marketing (and word of mouth) expands, retirement villages will have to stake a claim on the market territory it can claim and defend it. And it has to be independent living with supported care.
Interestingly, Palm Lake Resort, the first LLC to open aged care facilities adjacent to their LLCs, has just closed an aged care facility down and is redeveloping the site for other uses.
With LLCs typically being BIG, they will have little trouble winning home care operators who would like to deliver care into their gated communities of older residents. Again, beware retirement villages.
