The retirement village sector turns over $14B a year. It is in good hands.
We spent three days on the road last week, and one thing struck us in particular – the youth and passionate commitment of executives in the village sector.
In Canberra on Wednesday night for Jim Hazel’s Australian Property Hall of Fame dinner, Daniel Gannon, the Executive Director of the Retirement Living Council, had a prominent role.
The next day James Wiltshire, Ian Horswill and I were at Hope Island on the Gold Coast. The Founder of Reside Communities, Glen Brown, hosted a tour of his 250 apartment Esperance development. He has appointed Michael Foster (pictured centre right, above) as Esperance General Manager for this $200M business.
That afternoon we attended the opening of the 10 unit RetireAustralia Care Hub at The Verge Village, with the executive team in attendance (pictured above). They told us they intend to lead innovation in care within the village sector.
On Friday we met up with Andrew Hudson, National Operations Manager at Eureka, who is leading the ASX listed business while they appoint a new CEO after Cameron Taylor’s need to recuperate from an accident. Andrew predicts 10% growth a year, or 300 additional homes, for Eureka.
After that we met with Cameron Goffage, GM Operations at Oak Tree Retirement Villages, now owned by Aware Super. They have the IP and now the resources to grow.
The afternoon was taken up with Our Conversations at the Wharf lunch discussion, this time discussing the challenge of the increasing demand for high levels of care in retirement villages as aged care beds and hospital beds are full.
James Wiltshire, Executive Director of the DCM Institute, Jason Eldering, CEO of Southern Cross Care QLD, Sean Graham, CEO of Aura, Daniel Aitchison, CEO of Palm Lake Care, and Kaizaad Mehta and Adam Crombie from Westpac, were all of the view that the bed challenges is real and retirement villages are heading to be the new Low Care.
This is a responsibility that land lease communities don’t wish to take on.
(Meredith Hall, Chief Customer Officer for SCC QLD, was joining us but got caught up).
With 23,000 existing village homes turning over each year at an average of $500K each ($11.5B) and another 3,000 new homes being built at say $700K ($2.1B), the sector is $14B a year. More importantly, it has responsibility for 220,000 older Australians.
These three days again impress us with the energy and commitment these younger executives bring to the retirement village sector.
Browse villages.com.au for the latest on Seniors Living including availability.
