In highlighting the best two years the retirement living sector has ever had, the Aveo Group CEO told the Property Council of Australia’s annual congress in Adelaide, how it can increase its penetration above 6% of over 65s.
“Given the projected undersupply of housing in Australia, we need to alleviate the established real-estate market by providing better downsizing opportunities for older people who are living in three-, four- and five-bedroom homes,” he told the congress.
“We believe that new government policy is needed that incentivises senior Australians to downsize from their family home to affordable, professionally operated senior living communities and free up much needed housing stock for younger families. This can provide much needed relief for the broader housing affordability crisis.”
Based on the last retirement living census, the average price for a two-bedroom unit around the country is 55% of the median house price in the respective postcode.
“Rather than incentivising senior Australians to downsize, there are effectively disincentives for downsizing. What I mean by that is that if you have, for example, a $2 million home and you sell that and buy a $800,000 leasehold retirement unit, you're going to end up with a bunch of cash in the bank,” Tony said.
“If you're a pensioner, you will most likely lose your pension under this example. That's going to stop a lot of people from downsizing given that 70% of retirement living residents are pensioners. This is a significant disincentive.
“The other disincentive that exists relates to homecare packages. Post the Royal Commission, the government wanted to help older Australians stay in their homes. We now have 230,000 Home Care Packages in Australia compared to 200,000 aged care beds.
“When people come to retirement community, many residents are using similar services, yet there's no incentive right now for either the operator or customers to pool their funding to get more service for the same price.
“We're advocating as part of the work that we're doing with PCA for a concept of block funding. There’s an opportunity for the government to reward people who club together to access Home Care in a community setting, therefore reducing the travel time and inefficiency between appointments. Retirement communities provide for a much more efficient way to allocate taxpayer funded homecare packages. Currently, the industry receives no government assistance, despite the significant savings it generates for the ecosystem of care and the broader national economy.”
Tony said there needs to be a lot more supply given the shortage of Retirement Living Accommodation.
“For this we need planning reform to ensure that senior living operators are able to better compete for developable land against other developers who don’t offer the scale of communal amenities, livable housing design and service support like we do,” he said.
“To make it easier, we need to speed up the process and free up what, is in many cases are obvious opportunities, which are caught up in red tape.”
The SOURCE: It is good to see the Retirement Living Council actively looking for solutions
