Retirement village inquiries climb after Covid-19 pandemic

Wednesday, 25 November 2020

Retirement villages were seen as safe havens during the Covid-19 pandemic and experienced a hike in inquiries, says Retirement Villages Association executive director John Collyns.

“Village operators tell us that during and after lockdown, people who were already signed up wanted to bring forward their move-in date because they could see that village residents were being looked after, and they wanted to be part of that,” Collyns said. “There was also a significant increase in brand-new inquiries from family overseas or geographically separated from loved ones, who wanted to ensure their parent was in a safe place.”

The voluntary association represented the interests of about 96 per cent of registered retirement village owners, developers and managers throughout New Zealand.

Collyns, of Wellington, was in Nelson this week to speak at a Nelson Tasman Positive Ageing Forum gathering and outline village operators’ responses to the pandemic.

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He told Stuff that retirement villages had pandemic plans before the coronavirus arrived in the country.

“So they knew what to do and did it – and did it early,” Collyns said.

Operators took a “very early line” on closing villages to all but essential visitors, particularly those establishments with care facilities.

“Sometime later, the Government announced the [alert level 4] lockdown,” he said. “We only had three cases of Covid across 45,000 residents and two of those had just returned from one of those Australian cruises. The third case was a manager in a village who'd got it from her husband who had attended one of those super-spreader events.”

Pastoral care was a focus for residents with plenty of “virtual engagement” such as quizzes and a popular short story competition.

“There were a lot of activities,” Collyns said. “People living outside in the community looked over the fence and thought: ‘We want some of that.”

That increased interest gave the industry added confidence that demand for retirement villages would continue to grow. Its market share was now about 14 per cent nationally, up from about 9 per cent eight years ago, Collyns said.

“It's increased faster than the natural increase of 75-year-olds in the population.”

That penetration rate was even higher in the Nelson-Tasman region where about 1350 older people chose to live in a village, “which is 15.9 per cent of the total number of people aged 75+ in the two council [Nelson City and Tasman District] areas”.

There were 1111 retirement village units spread across 16 villages in the region. Data from industry valuers Jones Lang LaSalle revealed that 811 units (villas, apartments and serviced apartments) were at some stage of the design, consent or construction process.

That development included three new villages contributing 659 units – Waimea Plains, Summerset Richmond Ranges and Coastal Views Lifestyle Village – and five existing villages that were expanding.

“The 659 units in the new villages will add around 780 construction jobs with a direct investment value of $55.6 million and a downstream (indirect) value of $164m,' Collyns said. “Once they're all up and running, a further 420 people can be expected to be employed in the day-to-day running of the villages.”

A warm, sunny climate and “access to a high level of medical services” including Nelson Hospital were two reasons why the Nelson-Tasman region had long been a popular place to retire.

“Thirdly, it’s a nice, welcoming community and people feel comfortable here,” Collyns said.