Mandurah lifestyle move

Peet Ltd has started selling villas in the first of several planned new lifestyle retirement village projects as it moves to capitalise on the ageing baby boomer market.

Peet offered the first 31 units of the 194-unit Lattitude Lake-lands project near Mandurah about six weeks ago. It plans to develop a further two villages within 12 months.

Peet chief operating officer and soon-to-be chief executive, Brendan Gore, said the company could develop as many as 10 villages during the next five years.

The Lakelands village is being pitched as resort style living for the over 55s and includes a cafe and sports bar, cinema, library, computer room, gymnasium and even a practice bowling green.

The village also includes a dedicated parking area for boats or caravans.

Mr Gore said 60 per cent of the first stage had been sold, and while the village was a premium development, Peet was not positioning itself as an upmarket retirement village developer.

“This village sits in a premium high-quality area, but if we can put a village in a development with a different socio-economic background then we will look to do a development that suits that market,” Mr Gore said.

Peet operates its retirement villages through a strata model, with residents buying the land and their brick-and-tile villa, and then paying management fees to cover the village’s infrastructure.

Peet will also get a deferred management fee, or a percentage of the sale price of each villa that is on-sold.

Peet’s model differs to the one used by National Lifestyle Villages, which operate a lease system. Under the NLV model a resident buys the home but leases the land and gains rights to use the surrounding facilities and infrastructure for up to 60 years.

Outgoing managing director Warwick Hemsley said the developer first moved into the retirement village market about three years ago.

The group appointed former St Ives general manager Stephen Kenney to drive its new business division.