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Q
The retirement properties are mostly in the high financial sector , why are there not ones for middle class ?
Affordability is a different discussion for different people , one thing is expensive for the other person and for the other it is not . It is therefore difficult to say what is affordable and what is not . Any senior living community that is built , the feeder area to that community is normally six to 8 km radius of that site . So , what you should do is to look at your catchment area which is six to eight km around where you ’ re building and your price point should be affordable to the people in that area . So , this means that someone cannot just move from an area where the average price of a property is a million rand into a retirement village that is surrounded by properties that average around R5 million , that is not a reasonable expectation . If you are in a R1 Million house and there is a retirement village in your area , for that retirement to be feasible it should be paid with around R1 Million , otherwise it will never work .
A
BARRY KAGANSON Auria Senior Living
Q
Are there developments that are considered affordable in the retirement sector ?
I
think one needs to look at what services are being provided , and to provide these services costs money . To be in frail care costs money , to run a good frail care operation costs money and that ’ s not even making profit out of it . Prices are high in this industry and it ’ s a big discussion globally .
In America , they call it ‘ the missing middle ’, it ’ s a massive concern in the US , and most of these senior living villages are targeted at the upper end , because it is a very expensive thing to build to maintain and a very expensive operation to run .
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4 APRIL 2021 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine