Australia’s second largest retirement village operator is targeting another 7,000 homes as it looks to capitalise on the challenges facing the residential building sector and growing demand for seniors’ housing – including the potential to expand into land lease communities.
With 75 retirement villages and over 13,000 homes across Australia, Keyton is jointly owned and operated under a trust structure by Aware Super (49.9%), APG Asset Management (25%) and Lendlease (25.1%).
As we reported in The Weekly SOURCE last week, the new name and brand – coming from its vision of ‘leading with heart’ – is a reflection of the group’s “100%” focus on retirement living, said Chief Executive Officer Nathan Cockerill (pictured right).
Keyton is now looking to build its development pipeline, which currently includes its Ardency Kennedy Place development in Melbourne and the second stage of its Bernborough Ascot village next to the Doomben Racecourse in Brisbane – as well as potential acquisitions.
The group wants to put at least 400 new units on the ground every year.
“We’d like to over the medium to longer term get to about 20,000 units,” Nathan said.
“We’re looking for new land parcels to add to our development pipeline to continue to develop new retirement villages. We’re open to anything comes on the market that meets our criteria and is complementary to our business.”
The group is also looking closely at the land lease sector, which is growing exponentially and delivers a more consistent revenue stream than traditional retirement villages which depend on resident turnover.
“We see the product is now very similar to retirement living,” said Nathan.
“We know a lot of our customers are comparing both retirement living and land lease before deciding which product to buy into.”
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