New Zealand’s second largest retirement village operator Summerset Group sees Australia as a growth market where it intends to take a large footprint.
At the company’s virtual annual meeting, chairman Rob Campbell told shareholders the company expected consent for its first Australian retirement village, in Cranbourne North, in north-east in Melbourne, soon.
“We will immediately start earthworks on the site and will start pre-sales in the second half of this year. We expect to have our first residents move in at the start of 2022,” said Mr Campbell.
Summerset Group also has a proposed retirement village planned for Torquay and another village, situated at Chirnside Park.
Australia was a growth market where Summerset would be expanding its land bank in the next two to three years, Mr Campbell added.
Summerset Group has 33 villages completed or under development and a further 10 earmarked for development, including the three sites in Victoria.
It would offer the same continuum of care model in Australia, allowing people to live independently in retirement villages and then move into either an apartment with services or the village’s care centre.
That was a key point of difference for Australia, where there was a very limited number of operators who offered a full continuum of care, Summerset Group CEO Scott Scoullar (pictured above) said.
Summerset Group on 12 April provided a sales update to the stock market for the quarter ended 31 March 2021. The company reported 275 sales for the quarter including 148 new sales and 127 resales. Mr Scoullar also said the waitlist was up 24 per cent from 12 months ago, which was up 8% on the previous quarter.
