Five methods for growing villages that last

Before Kurrawind spends money on land, my team scores the town rather than the parcel. We look at the travelling time to an emergency department and whether it is staffed overnight, whether local general practices are accepting new patients, pharmacy and allied-health access, community transport, how old the surrounding population is and the share of likely residents with family within two hours. We also count older homeowners whose house sale could fund an ingoing contribution, because most residents pay with the proceeds of a local home. A town that fails on health access does not reach the board, however cheap the land. The method has costs. It rules out coastal places where demand is strong today, and it directs us to inland cities where unit prices are lower and margins thinner. I would rather explain that now than explain slow resales in fifteen years.

A retirement village is valued on a stream of departure fees and resale gains that arrives over decades, discounted at a rate that valuers reconsider each year. When interest rates rose from 2022, our valuers increased discount rates by about half a percentage point, and our investment property fell by A$71 million in the 2023 financial year with no change in the villages themselves. I work with the chief financial officer to show the board how sensitive our values are to that rate, to house-price growth in surrounding towns and to how long residents stay. Refundable resident loans sit on the balance sheet as liabilities and are repaid when a unit resells, so a slow market affects cash as well as value. I never let a valuation uplift justify a strategy; resale times and occupancy are the evidence I trust.

A not-for-profit company with members rather than shareholders cannot issue equity, so our growth comes from retained surplus, bank debt, selling villages or bringing partners into specific projects. I lead those partner conversations. The questions that matter most are rarely about price. Who sets recurrent charges? Who decides when a unit is bought back from a departing resident's estate? How is hardship handled, what happens if the partner wants to sell, and can residents tell any difference between a joint-venture village and our others? I want those answers written into the agreement rather than left to goodwill. Our venture with Corwennan Pension Trust taught me that a side letter is a weak place for resident-facing policy. A partner should earn a fair return without acquiring quiet influence over what a resident in their eighties is asked to pay.

Approval risk is where my career began, and I still treat it as a strategic question rather than a project detail. A seniors-housing application in a regional town may be decided by the council or, above a value threshold, by a regional planning panel, and the timing affects every number in a feasibility study. My team keeps a record of durations, conditions and objections across our applications, so forecasts rest on our own evidence. We meet councils before lodging, explain how residents will move around the site and the town, and change designs when objections are well founded. The country's push for many more homes has made councils more receptive to housing generally. I do not assume that goodwill extends to every village design; a two-storey building beside detached houses still deserves a careful conversation with its neighbours.

More than a quarter of our homes were built before 1995 for residents who arrived in their sixties, drove everywhere and tolerated steps and gas heaters. People now move in later and stay longer, summers are hotter and families ask about energy bills. My team ranks retrofits by resale time, resident feedback, indoor temperatures and the contract position in each village. The work includes insulation, reverse-cycle heating and cooling, shading, step-free paths, accessible bathrooms when units change hands, and solar with batteries on community buildings. Contracts written in different decades divide maintenance and improvement costs differently, so our legal colleagues review each village before we commit. Where a contract was unclear, we chose to fund improvements ourselves rather than ask current residents to pay for upgrades that would mostly benefit later buyers.