Where have all the new retirement village units gone?

The retirement living sector has a supply problem. Not today’s supply. Tomorrow’s. 

Hidden within the latest PwC / Property Council Retirement Village Census is a statistic that should stop every board, developer and investor in their tracks. Compared with last year's outlook, the number of retirement village units forecast to be delivered in 2026 and 2027 has fallen by almost 30%. 

So, what happened to them? 

Projects don’t simply disappear overnight. Some will have been delayed. Others reprioritised. 

But the reason isn’t the story. The disappearing pipeline is. 

For years, the sector has pointed to a development pipeline that would eventually catch up with demand. 

The latest Census suggests the pipeline is receding, not growing. 

“We can see that in calendar year 2026 and calendar year 2027, we’re actually seeing a significant reduction in the forecast development pipeline. It’s almost 30% reduced,” PwC’s Meredith Chester said. 

That matters because Australia’s demographic clock isn’t slowing down. 

According to the Retirement Living Council, around 12% of Australians aged over 75 live in a retirement village. Over the next five years, almost half a million Australians will join that age group. 

Maintaining today’s penetration rate will require almost 58,000 net additional retirement village units by 2031. 

For those homes to exist within five years, they need to be well beyond the concept stage today. 

For more than two decades, the retirement living sector has understood Australia’s demographic trajectory. We’ve discussed planning reform, approvals, construction costs, workforce shortages and development feasibility countless times. 

None of this is new. 

What’s new is that the numbers no longer support the narrative. 

If Australia delivers only three-quarters of the homes required over the next five years, penetration falls from 12% to 11.5%. 

Deliver only half and it falls to 11%. 

They sound like rounding adjustments. 

They aren’t. 

They represent thousands of older Australians who would have chosen retirement living but simply won’t have the opportunity. 

Ironically, that scarcity will probably benefit existing operators. Villages become more valuable. Waiting lists grow. Occupancy remains high. 

But scarcity is not a growth strategy and there’s is one part of the sector growing almost weekly – land lease communities. 

The industry’s biggest challenge may no longer be demand. 

It may be whether the future supply we’ve been counting on ever really existed.