Seniors accommodation provider Ingenia is on the acquisition hunt with much of its energy focused on southeast Queensland.

Ingenia Communities Group chief executive Simon Owen, who this week was in Brisbane for the Property Council’s National Retirement Living Summit, said the ASX-listed company was keen to add to it $400 million plus capitalisation.

“With an ageing population…we see 30 years growth ahead of us. But our big challenge is how do we fund that growth?” he said.

“We’re working on 20 acquisitions across Australia. Eight of those are in Queensland and we’ve identified southeast Queensland as our key growth market.

“What we’re looking at here is a mixture of caravan parks with vacant land and greenfield sites.”

Ingenia emerged in 2012 when Dutch investment giant ING Group internalised the management of its listed retirement vehicle.

Since then Ingenia has focused on manufactured homes and now has 63 communities across Australia divided into 24 Lifestyle Parks (manufactured home and tourist parks); and eight Settlers Villages (traditional DMF assets).

Ingenia has eight communities in Queensland and this year bought Upstream Bethania, Bethania, Chambers Pines Lifestyle Resort, Chambers Flat and the BIG4 Noosa Bougainvillia Holiday Park, Tewantin, on the Sunshine Coast.

Mr Own said the business was focusing on the 2500 caravan and tourist parks across Australia.

“The growth in the business is really though acquiring existing caravan parks and either converting them into affordable seniors accommodation or in certain cases, like BIG4 Noosa, we will also add a tourism component,” he said.

Mr Owen said the sector has grown rapidly.
“When we first started buying these manufactured home parks or caravan parks I remember having to take a busload of fund managers on a trip and many weren’t actually aware that this was an asset class,” he said.

27th November 2015