There are approximately 300 genuine land lease communities across Australia so most retirement village marketers have not had to face up to real competition yet.
Be warned: this will change over the next 24 months.
Why? Because after five years of quietly building the business model as affordable housing (which has traditionally been the retirement village positioning), the ‘big money’ is aggressively investing in LLCs.
Just today, out of the blue, Brookfield Property Group, made a $690M+ bid to buy Australia’s largest land lease community group, Gateway Lifestyle. You may know Brookfield, by its Australian brand Multiplex but Brookfield is an American/Canadian-based International property investor and developer.
Last week another American group, Hometown, also made a bid for Gateway.
Over in Perth National Lifestyle Communities has been bought out by Singaporean sovereign fund GIC.
Singaporean investment group Thakral is also committed to QLD’s Living Gems group.
And each of them is bringing optimism and significant expansion capital for rapid growth.
To deliver that growth and sales will require aggressive marketing.
And this is where village operators need to be prepared. Their offer of ‘own your own home’, low-cost and no DMF (backed by resort quality communal facilities) will be an attractive alternative offer.
They don’t offer security and home support with a care path.
This is the village marketers’ challenge and opportunity.
