The construction site (left) is where Abbott Residences is rising beside Nathan Residences (right). This is at The Foundation, a new Parnell retirement village where one penthouse is asking $6m. Photo / Alex Burton
It’s luxury at a level rarely seen in many other apartment villages and it’s in one of Auckland’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.
“Retirement residences without compromise” is how this marble-clad block is being marketed, alongside “later life luxury”.
While 87% of New Zealanders aged 75-plus live in their own or rented homes, some of the approximately 53,000 in retirement villages can afford the high life.
A licence-to-occupy price tag of $6 million has been put on the biggest, most well-appointed northeast facing apartment at the top of an under-construction Parnell block: a 190sq m three-bedroom place on Maunsell Rd, half a block from Auckland Domain.
Other apartments were going for $4m in the same village, The Foundation.
Owners forgo 30% on resale, which often occurs when someone is sick and moves to hospital care, or dies.
Developer Graham Wilkinson of Generus Living Group says buyers are coming from Remuera or surrounds and often have multimillion-dollar homes as well as other assets. In previous multimillion-dollar sales, four buyers were from St Stephens Ave and three from Remuera Rd, he said.
So they want to spend their days in the 75-year-plus bracket in style, remaining in that area due to familiarity, lifestyle, family and friends.
“There have been applications on six units in Abbott Residences,” he said of the new block. “Those are between $5m and $6m. There are another 10 units for $4m to $5m and the rest are between $1.5m and $4m.”
What do the residents get for that sort of money?
They get a concierge, in-residence assistance 24 hours a day 365 days a year, underground car parking with individual storage area, a café, restaurant and lounge bar, drawing room, and private dining and function areas.
They also have access to a private chef and catering, reading room, 42-seat cinema, billiards lounge, art studio, conservatory rooftop terrace, a cardio studio, wellness centre with hydrotherapy pool, spa, hair salon, ability to book an electric courtesy vehicle and chauffeured vehicle service.
Wilkinson says there’s nothing quite like what he’s developing on a big flat site of a cash-poor land-rich charity.
Ten neighbouring apartments at the top of that same Abbott Residences block by Kalmar Construction are for sale for $4m-plus.
Wilkinson is the son of a reverend and a former police officer who has for years invested in hotels and the retirement sector.
He has come up from Queenstown for meetings at his $500 million Foundation village on the Blind Low Vision site which Generus has leased for more than a century.
From a cane chair in the refurbished Pearson House which Generus spent $17 million refurbishing and restoring, he says the furniture alone in the Stewart Harris-designed decor cost $2m in that two-level heritage 1 building.
And he tells why it’s worth going so upmarket at this village.
“This is truly unique. This comes from my hotel background. A hotel used to be a hotel but now you don’t say you’re staying at a hotel. You say ‘I’m staying at Millbrook’, not the Copthorne. So people say ‘you’re lucky’. What I’m saying is the retirement village market like the hotel market has segmented into wealthy, mid-scale and budget.”
And he wants some of the wealthy segment of that market.
He’s not alone: NZX-listed Winton Land has a $750 million scheme for Auckland CBD’s first vertical retirement village and to redevelop part of Wynyard Quarter’s waterfront edge, refurbishing and rebuilding a 1.7ha site. Units include 604sq m penthouses with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, on sale from $13.75m.
That appears to be the top-priced residence but it is not built yet.
A 12-level 154-unit retirement village, 200-seat wedding venue, new 250-seat waterfront dining/bar building, outdoor pool in a resort-like zone for village residents, new marina piers, dredging the seabed to make it deeper, a new marina and refurbishing many other surrounding buildings are part of Winton’s plan for the site.
Oceania Healthcare’s new $150 million The Helier has been marketed as “a new era of luxury” in the retirement village sector. Chauffeur-driven hybrid Jaguars, an executive chef heading food operations, matching logo-embroidered dressing gowns, 24-hour-a-day room service and monogrammed stationery are offered there.
The 111-unit St Heliers vertical village at 38 Waimarie St has 79 apartments, of which the most expensive has pre-sold for $5 million plus.
Two-bedroom places were marketed from $1.7m to $3.5m.
Residents there can pay $3500/week to fully fund higher level or palliative care.
Wilkinson says listed retirement village operators selling sites where they abandoned development plans has been a gift to him recently because as they pulled back, he has pushed forward.
Operators bought increasingly further out of the centre of cities, he noted, leaving many central areas lacking in offerings for older wealthier people.
“The big corporations got too heavily weighted in the suburbs.”
He also dismisses more rurally-based regional areas where he noted other operators were buying: “Cambridge: everyone is trying to build a retirement village in Cambridge.”
From Wilkinson’s point of view, that is not where wealth and or population is.
“This is about getting between the market forces and the locations. In villages, location is everything.”
The Parnell block where Generus is developing The Foundation has four street frontages: Titoki St fronting the Domain, the busy Parnell Rd which is Broadway before then, the quieter George St and the quiet Maunsell Rd. Heritage red brick structures from the Blind Foundation days remain, while Wilkinson capitalises on the scale of the site which had been occupied by few buildings.
He’s got two of the four buildings away there already:
Generus is yet to announce prices for the tallest block within The Foundation. That is Pearson Residences, a new 12-level building planned at 4 Maunsell Rd and including 16 Titoki St.
A wellness centre, restaurant and bar, two levels of aged-care hospital and memory support care are planned.
The building will be 10 levels high “before stepping back for two further penthouse levels”. The fast-track application from Bentley & Co says all up, 65 units are planned in a building to be 48m tall. Work to begin on this new building mid-2026 once Abbott Residences is completed.
The Foundation is not due to be finished till 2028 when about 250 people will live there “with development costs approaching $500m”, Generus has said.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
New builds of smaller homes won't cater for changing demands of older people.