Chief Strategy Officer / Australia
What each decision cost and what it bought
- Retirement villages
- 27
- Regional New South Wales, June 2026
- Homes for older residents
- 3,680
- 3,420 independent-living units and 260 serviced apartments
- Company revenue
- A$214m
- Year to 30 June 2026; not-for-profit operator
Decisions & consequences
01Selling an approved coastal option I had once supported
In 2020, as general manager of development, I supported Kurrawind taking a two-year option over a 14-hectare site in a growing coastal town on the Mid North Coast. Our enquiry lists there were long. We spent A$3.9 million on studies, design and an application, and consent for 236 units arrived in September 2022. Exercising the option would cost A$21.5 million, against forecast sales of A$142 million and development margin of about A$26 million over six years.
By then I was chief strategy officer and had built our town assessment. The site failed it. The nearest emergency department was forty minutes away, two local practices had closed their books and there was no public transport beyond a school bus. Resale records I had gathered as a valuer showed villages in similar towns taking twice as long to resell after their first decade.
The development director and two directors wanted to proceed. Their argument was fair: residents choose the coast knowingly, approval had cost real money and our pipeline would be thinner without it. I recommended selling the option with its consent and moving the capital inland. The board agreed in November 2022 on a divided vote.
A residential developer paid A$2.6 million for the option, so we wrote off A$1.3 million. We committed A$58 million to 112 units at three inland villages in towns with staffed regional hospitals. Those units sold within fifteen months of release, though at prices about 20 per cent below the coastal forecast. Settlements in the 2024 financial year were 18 units short of the original plan, and the board heard about the gap repeatedly.
The town assessment now comes before any spending on land. What I would do differently is speak to the local health district and general practices before walking away. A clinic on the site, built with a health partner, might have made the coast workable, and I never tested that possibility.
Taking a partner for three villages rather than selling four
By mid-2023 rising interest rates had squeezed Kurrawind. Valuers had lifted discount rates, and our investment property had fallen A$71 million during the financial year. Bank debt stood at A$262 million, and covenant headroom was narrowing just as three approved villages, with 410 units and a combined cost of A$320 million, were ready to start. As a not-for-profit, we could not raise equity.
There were three paths. We could pause the villages and lose a waiting list built over four years. The chief financial officer preferred selling four mature villages to a for-profit operator, raising about A$160 million. I proposed a joint venture in which Corwennan Pension Trust would fund half of a development company for the three new villages, while Kurrawind managed them and held every resident contract.
Two directors opposed a partner on purpose grounds: residents might feel they were living in an investor's asset. The chief financial officer worried about complexity and fees. I argued that selling would transfer about 480 existing residents to an owner whose policies we could not influence, a larger risk to our purpose than sharing new villages. The board approved the joint venture in December 2023.
Corwennan receives half the development margin and half the future departure fees from those villages, plus a preferred return before profits are shared. Our share of 2026 development margin was A$8.7 million rather than about A$17 million on our own. In return, bank debt fell to A$238 million by June 2026, the first village opened in August 2025 and 88 of its 124 units had been sold.
In 2025 the partner sought a larger increase in recurrent charges at the new village than we applied elsewhere. Our policy prevailed, but only because a side letter gave us the decision. I would now put fee setting, hardship arrangements and buy-back timing in the agreement itself, where neither party can treat them as a courtesy.
Deferring a new stage to retrofit nine older villages
Nine of our villages, with 1,040 homes, were built between 1979 and 1994. In 2023 their units took an average of 11.2 months to resell, against 6.1 months across the group. Resident committees reported summer indoor temperatures above 32°C in some units, gas heaters were near the end of their lives and many paths had steps. Every empty month delays repaying a resident’s loan to their estate, so slow resales hurt residents as well as revenue.
I proposed a three-year retrofit budgeted at A$46 million: insulation, reverse-cycle heating and cooling, shading, step-free paths, accessible bathrooms when units changed hands, and solar with batteries on community buildings. To fund it within our debt limits, I recommended deferring a 120-unit stage at an existing village by two years.
The sales director disagreed strongly. New units sell at higher prices and carry development margin, and deferral meant forgoing about A$7 million of 2026 margin. Some residents objected too. Two committees wanted works kept out of summer, and one asked who would pay. The contracts in those villages divided costs differently depending on when they were written. Rather than test each clause, we funded the improvements ourselves and confirmed that in writing to every committee.
By June 2026 six villages were finished and A$31 million had been spent. Average resale time in those six fell to 6.9 months. Resale prices there rose 8 per cent over the period, against 3 per cent in comparable villages not yet treated, although local markets explain part of that difference. Grid electricity used by common buildings fell 34 per cent. Valuers recognised A$19 million of added value, less than the cost, which the board accepted as the price of keeping older homes saleable.
We now install temperature loggers before works begin. In the first two villages they went in after construction started, so we cannot show residents a clean comparison. I would also involve resident committees in scheduling six months earlier.