They have billions of dollars worth of assets and cater for nearly 50,000 New Zealanders - very possibly including your parents, other family or friends. They might also be forced to change the way they operate, if an investigation finds practices need reform.
Welcome to the vast, ever-growing retirement village sector, and our insight into what’s going on and who’s who.
If you’re thinking of buying into a village, or just an interested observer, this is for you. If you’re in KiwiSaver, this is also for you because you’re likely to be an investor, even if you didn’t know it.
Look around your neighbourhood. There’s bound to be an RV (not short for recreational vehicle) already established, under construction, planned, being contemplated or in the long-term dreams of one of the retirement-living businesses named here.
Look more closely at some of the bigger villages such as Ryman in Orewa and the abbreviation “RV” might take on a different meaning: dedicated campervan parking areas show how mobile and active some of the residents are.
Many retirement village residents work and lead extremely active lifestyles. They exercise, travel, socialise, are in clubs, churches and other organisations, and run meetings within their villages.
Others are in hospitals or care centres on some sites, often nearing the end of their lives.
We’re all getting older, and at some stage we might not be able to cope on our own, making a move into a retirement village an option that we or our family might consider.
So who is behind all these villages? How did they come about when we never used to have them, are they good for us, where are they, and who is moving in?
The big six in the retirement-village business are Ryman Healthcare, Metlifecare, Summerset Group, Bupa, Oceania Healthcare and Arvida Group. Among them, they own about 47 per cent of villages and 63 per cent of village units.
The sector has grown to become a major part of the New Zealand sharemarket, and KiwiSaver providers have invested in what has been seen as a great long-term option with excellent demographic support, thanks to our ageing population.
But in December, a long-awaited review of the much-complained-about Retirement Villages Act was announced, potentially improving the lives of residents, overhauling their operators’ financial model, demanding that they meet healthy homes standards and requiring owner-operators to change some of of the things they do.
Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said the investigation followed widespread calls for change from Consumer NZ, the Retirement Commissioner, the Retirement Village Residents Association and many residents.
Those groups have long called for reform, saying the current law was passed more than 20 years ago and is now outdated and unfair.
One area under the spotlight will be owner-operators’ practice of keeping 20 to 30 per cent of retirees’ capital via deferred management fees. Also in focus will be contentious issues such as who repairs, replaces and maintains operator-owned chattels like stoves and heat pumps. Retirement-living buildings might also have to meet healthy home standards, just like rental properties.
But while many residents acknowledge that buying into a retirement village isn’t a good financial decision, most say money was never the reason. The overriding issues were lifestyle, health and their time of life.
And while we hear a lot about the big retirement village operators and see their advertising, it’s important to remember that 86 per cent of Kiwis aged 75-plus don’t live in such villages. Instead, most of us age in our own homes or with family, outside the RV sector - and with no campervan.
Today, only 14 per cent of New Zealanders aged 75-plus are housed in corporate-managed villages.
The graphic below was compiled by Paula Bishop, managing director of Village Guide, an online information hub for people considering their retirement-living options.
So exactly how many of us live in these so-called “villages”? The most recent JLL NZ retirement villages and aged care report, out last July, found that 48,746 New Zealanders live in retirement villages, up by more than 1000 on 2021, when 47,200 residents were counted. The study said those 48,746 people occupied 37,489 units in 425 villages, based on an assumption of 1.3 people for each unit.
In 2021, 345,960 New Zealanders were 75 or older, but that is forecast to increase by 486,850 to 832,810 people by 2048.
This year’s JLL study could tell us that New Zealand’s retirement-village population has passed 50,000 for the first time, though we won’t know until the report is released.
Many retirement villages have geriatric hospitals or some form of care, even if that care is delivered into independent living villas as Ryman has begun to do more in Australia. And the need for care is growing: the University of Auckland’s dementia economic impact report 2020 estimated that 69,713 people or 1.4 per cent of the population had dementia - a figure projected to reach 167,483 or 2.7 per cent by 2050.
The offer of care helps draws people to move from their own homes to villages in the first place, sometimes when they’re still relatively able and fit. They hope that if they get sick or need help, they will get into the on-site hospitals. But eligibility for such a move has been the responsibility of district health boards, not village management. That’s one of the many little-known facts, and great misconceptions, about retirement-village living.
So don’t buy into a village thinking you’ll automatically get into the hospital when you think the time has come. Not so.
In fact, the Herald published a guide for people thinking of buying into a village.
But retirement village owner-operators certainly do promote themselves as the best place to age for both physical and mental health, and their numerous advertisements depict a lifestyle that would be the envy of many elderly people.
And village living obviously has an appeal, contributing to the rapid growth in the number of villages and residents. Since JLL’s RV white paper series started in 2012, numbers have grown 24 per cent from 343 villages to 425.
Unsurprisingly, Auckland has more retirement villages than any other city: 96 as of last July, accounting for 23 per cent of national village numbers. Auckland also has the largest villages, with an average of 127 units per village, compared with the national average of 86 units per village, JLL found.
And no, Tauranga - New Zealand’s reputed retirement capital - is not second. The Canterbury region had the second-largest number of villages: 71 of them, accounting for 17 per cent of the national total. Their villages are much smaller, with only 68 units per village on average.
Here are New Zealand’s biggest retirement village owner-operators:
Listed on the NZX.
Chief executive: Richard Umbers.
Value of assets: $12b.
Market capitalisation: $3.4b.
Number of villages: 45 in operation, 15 sites under construction, 12,966 units and aged-care beds.
Number of residents: More than 12,000.
Ryman has been New Zealand’s biggest name in the retirement-village business for years, expanding into Australia before others from this country. Its name is a combination of founders Kevin Hickman and John Ryder, who pioneered the model we have today, with a 20 per cent deferred management fee, weekly fees, occupational rights agreements, etc. Under this model, residents don’t actually buy a property. Instead, they purchase a licence to occupy it.
Ryman keeps 20 per cent of the capital when you leave, charges weekly fees and gives no capital gain from any rise in a unit’s value.
Umbers is a relatively recent appointment, starting in October 2021. He carries British and Australian passports and is a retail expert, having held senior global positions in that field.
Before Ryman, he was divisional director of buying at German supermarket chain Kaufland, and managing director of Australian retailer Myer. He’s been in senior roles at Woolworths in Australia and was managing director of Progressive Enterprises here.
Earlier in his career he held senior leadership roles with Australia Post and Aldi in Europe. He has also been in the British Army and took the reins at Ryman from Gordon MacLeod.
Listed on the NZX.
Chief executive: Scott Scoullar.
Value of assets: $5.8b.
Market capitalisation: $2b.
Number of villages: 39 completed and/or under development.
Number of residents: 7400-plus.
Number of units: 5518, with a land bank that offers the potential to develop a further 5985 in New Zealand and Australia.
Summerset has the number two place in New Zealand, but its relatively low debt levels compared with Ryman mean it is popular with professional investors in a time of rising interest rates.
Scoullar, a Kiwi, was profiled by the Herald in 2021. The finance expert did accounting at Victoria University and much of his career has been in banking and tax.
He joined what was then the National Bank of New Zealand in 1994. That eventually became ANZ, where he was a senior manager of performance management.
In 2006 he joined Inland Revenue, where he was a financial controller. In 2008 he was appointed chief financial officer.
In 2012 he went to work for Housing New Zealand, where he was chief financial officer.
In 2014 he joined Summerset and became chief financial officer, being appointed boss in March 2021. So like many of the others profiled here, he is relatively recently appointed to run this fast-expanding business.
Listed on the NZX.
Chief executive: Brent Pattison.
Value of assets: $2.45b.
Market capitalisation: $530m.
Number of villages: 47.
Number of residents: around 4100.
Oceania has a focus on selling more up-market or premium care suites; these are like super-sized, flash hospital rooms, privately occupied by one elderly person, often near the end of their life.
For residents, this level of comfort comes at a price: $2000 or more per week - a far cry from nursing homes and the old-age homes of some decades ago.
Pattison was another of the “new wave” of retirement village CEOs who took over in 2021, starting in March of that year and replacing Earl Gasparich, who went to Metlifecare.
Pattison is from humble beginnings, having grown up in Porirua east. His mother was a prison officer, his father an NZ Rail shunter. Winning a Golden Kiwi draw enabled his parents to send him to board at Nelson College, and he credits that with his success.
He went on to study accounting, “because my accounting teacher in my seventh form year told me I wouldn’t be any good at accounting. The defiant part of me said, ‘well I am actually quite good at accounting’”.
Pattison worked in real estate investment businesses and at Jarden, where he was investment banking director from 2015 until he joined Oceania.
Not listed on NZX. Name stood for British United Provident Association.
Interim managing director: Julie Sellar, appointed last August.
Number of locations: 37 villages and 44 hospitals or geriatric care homes.
Average number of units per location: 106.
Number of residents: more than 5600.
Bupa is the outlier here - the five other companies have been or are listed, so we know a lot more about them.
And it’s a woman in charge.
Sellar was appointed last August, having joined the business in 2013 and becoming finance director in 2016. She has a commerce and administration degree from Victoria University. Before Bupa, she held senior financial roles with the NZ Defence Force, Inland Revenue and Sainsbury’s in the UK, says her profile on the company’s website.
She is the only woman to run a top-six retirement village business in New Zealand.
De-listed from the NZX, now owned by Swedish investment firm EQT.
Chief executive: Earl Gasparich.
Value of assets: $5.3b.
Number of villages: 36.
Number of residents: around 7000.
Gasparich is ex-Oceania, which he ran for nearly seven years. He took up his current role only in June 2021, having taken Oceania from being a private company to the NZX via its initial public offering.
He was chief financial officer at Qualcare and former chief operating officer of EnviroWaste Services. Excell Corporation, PwC and Arthur Andersen in Auckland and London are also on his CV. He has law and commerce degrees and grew up in Te Atatū.
Listed on the NZX.
Chief executive: Jeremy Nicoll.
Value of assets: $3.6b.
Market capitalisation: $750m.
Number of villages: 35.
Numbers: 6750 residents in 3962 units and 1544 hospital beds. The company plans a further 2100 units.
Like most of the other chief executives, Nicoll only came to the role in 2021. Yet he’s been with Arvida since its inception and was its chief financial officer, working with ex-CEO Bill McDonald. Nicoll is a finance, commerce and accounting graduate of the University of Auckland and son of former university registrar Warwick Nicoll.
Before Arvida, he was at ING/OnePath/ANZ Wealth New Zealand and has worked in London in corporate finance, fund management, broker dealing and insurance.
He recalls Arvida’s genesis: “We started up in 2014, there was Bill the CEO and myself, working out of a studio bedroom in Parnell. We managed to pull together 18 villages worth about $300m to start our business.”
Not listed, privately owned by Graham Wilkinson.
Number of villages: Six - Auckland villages The Foundation in Parnell/Newmarket (under development), Ranfurly Village, Mt Maunganui’s Pacific Lakes Village and Pacific Coast Village and Christchurch’s Holly Lea and The Russley.
Value of assets: Undeclared;
Number of units: 824 villas and apartments, 189 hospital or rest home beds;
Number of residents: 1429
Queenstown-based Wilkinson is prominent in the sector: he is president of owner-operator lobby group the Retirement Villages Association. The group has strongly promoted higher voluntary standards in the sector to make it fairer for residents.
The ex-policeman and son of an Anglican minister left the force after being inspired into business by his father-in-law. He did commerce at Otago University and qualified as an accountant. He is now a multi-millionaire with tourism assets as well, although he sold his huge Queenstown and Wellington hotels lately.
Northbrook is wholly owned by residential developer Winton Land, which listed on the NZX in December 2021.
Chief executive: Chris Meehan.
Value of assets: projected to have $2.4b of assets on completion of villages now planned or under construction.
Winton’s market capitalisation: $593m.
Number of villages: construction work underway at five sites, none yet completed.
Number of units: 900 apartments planned or under construction in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, Hobsonville Point’s Launch Bay, Christchurch’s Avon Loop, in Wanaka and Arrowtown.
Staff: 15
Meehan is working with ex-Summerset chief executive Julian Cook, who is now Winton’s executive director, to build and then run the new villages.
Meehan is a keen competitive sailor, married to a three-time Olympian, friends with Danish royalty, and spent nearly $20 million on a house in Australia. Southland-born, he named his New Zealand company after the Southland town of Winton, the place where he was adopted.
His early years were spent in Queenstown before moving to Sydney in his early teens and going to North Sydney Boys High School. He studied property valuation in Sydney.
Today he lives “half and half” between Herne Bay and outside Arrowtown. He and Michaela have three boys.
Listed on the NZX.
Chief executive: Andrew Peskett.
Value of assets: $350m as of September 2022, with $70m of investment properties.
Market capitalisation: $74m.
Number of villages: 24 sites operating - 13 of them owned and 11 leased.
Numbers: 1889 care or hospital beds, 1900 residents, 1925 staff.
This business is more hospital or rest home-focused than a retirement village, but it has both sides to its operations. It has a relatively small retirement village footprint of only about 150 units.
Radius was established in 2003, and in early 2010, chief executive Brien Cree led a management buyout which brought control from overseas owners and means New Zealanders are now in charge.
Peskett was at Metlifecare previously. He was the acting chief executive of that company in 2021 and general manager of corporate services there. He became Radius CEO last February and brought with him extensive experience in the retirement-village and aged-care industries.
A lawyer by profession, Peskett had been Metlifecare’s general counsel and company secretary. He is an Otago University graduate and has worked at Beca here as well as for London law firms.
Founded by the Hopper family, headed by developer Leigh Hopper of Orewa, known for waterway developments in the Coromandel and Northland
Chief executive: Tim Brooks.
Ownership: privately held by family.
Value of assets: not declared.
Number of residents: around 450.
Villages: three. Development ongoing at two of those.
Owns and operates Orewa’s Maygrove Village which is 20 years old, with 290 units and a 50-bed hospital; Marsden Cove’s Anchorage, which opened five years ago, under development with plans for around 220 units; Country Club Huapai opened in 2019, under development with about 220 units planned.
No biography was supplied of Brooks.
Part of NZX-listed Fletcher Building,
Chief executive: Steve Evans.
Value of assets: in its infancy, developing new villages in Auckland.
Number of villages: One.
Australian Steve Evans heads all of Fletcher’s residential development and also runs this new business. In December he said that four Auckland terraced homes were up at its first village, but all 48 new places at Red Beach are due to be finished early this year, selling from $725,000 to $1.2m.
Residents aged 70-plus get a better deal than offered by most of the “big six”: instead of keeping up to 30 per cent of residents’ payments, Vivid is only keeping 15 per cent, though it is not offering hospitals and has only limited facilities compared to others.
Like Fletcher CEO Ross Taylor, Evans was formerly with Lendlease. He worked at that giant in Australia, Asia and the UK for a lengthy stretch, from 1987 until 2006. He was with Heron International in London until 2014, then said he was “headhunted” by Fletcher to jump the ditch in 2014. He has been based in Auckland ever since.
'Developers are a good target for a council under financial pressure.' - Steve Evans