Broke retirees takeover Australia's caravan parks - Eighthgate

John Purnell, 75, and his wife Patricia, 72, moved into a factory-built house in a converted caravan park west of Sydney this year, eschewing traditional retirement communities and other homes in the area.

“Retirement villages are quite expensive,” said Patricia, a former payroll clerk at a seniors facility, as she sat in the couple’s $254,000, 160-square-metre air-conditioned home featuring built-in wardrobes, a separate laundry cupboard and a carport. Houses near the Nepean River Holiday Village had minimum price tags of about $350,000 and needed a further $50,000 of work, she said.

Australia’s expanding ranks of retirees, faced with skyrocketing house prices and inadequate savings, are set to boost demand for cheaper manufactured homes by as much as 41 per cent, according to Colliers International UK. Investors are responding to the growth of the nascent market, with companies including Ingenia Communities and Alceon, headed by former JPMorgan Chase banker Trevor Loewensohn, acquiring existing housing parks and sites to convert, and finance companies including GE Capital planning to start lending to operators.

There is “tremendous opportunity in manufactured housing,” said Jason Kougellis, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at GE Capital. They “provide an affordable solution for an ageing population in a country that has some of the most expensive real estate in the world.”…

10th October 2015