Manufactured Home Estates As affordable retirement housing in Australia: drivers, growth and spatial distribution

ABSTRACT

Manufactured Home Estates (MHEs) are an increasingly popular type of housing for older Australians. MHEs are similar to caravan parks where an operator owns the land, and the resident owns their (technically relocatable) dwelling and pays site rent. Residents are both owners and tenants, with many receiving the age pension, or other benefits, and are entitled to receive Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA). We examine three interrelated processes encouraging the growth of MHEs as specialised housing for older Australians. First, CRA payments are promoted by operators as a form of government support that improves the affordability of MHE living, while also contributing to their own financial returns. Second, the location of properties developed by operators is in response to demand from Australia’s ageing population. Third, and related, new supply in coastal locations drives amenity retirement migration, where older people relocate to locations of natural amenity. Using data on CRA payments to residents in MHEs and permanent residents in caravan parks reveals the geographic distribution of this form of housing for older Australians.

KEYWORDS:

• Rent assistance
• manufactured home estates
• amenity retirement migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In surveys of residents, the majority sell their existing home in order to fund the move to an MHE (DHPW 2014; Bunce and Reid 2021), therefore they are both homeowners and tenants. Dwellings in MHEs are advertised for sale on real estate and operator websites, details on site rents are usually only obtainable by directly contacting managers of individual MHEs.

2 The authors have deliberately not attempted nomenclature of MHEs and caravan parks due to the diversity within and between properties. ‘Lifestyle retirement’ is a term that is broadly applied across the industry, plus the industry is very dynamic and what constitutes a lifestyle MHE changes regularly.

3 CRA is a payment from government to tenant/resident, the amount of payment is known to these two parties. It is difficult for an MHE operator to determine how much they financially benefit from CRA as it would require them to obtain this information from each resident. The authors have not heard of any MHEs where operators request this information from residents.

4 The purchase of data from AIHW included conditions plus a confidentiality undertaking. This limited the degree of analysis which could be undertaken, particularly of locations with small numbers of recipients.

5 The AIHW data is for recipients aged 55 and older who were paying site rent and to be receiving CRA they would have to be receiving a Centrelink benefit. Theoretically, someone between 55 and 65 could seek employment, however if someone of that age is living in a MHE and is receiving benefits it is unlikely that they would be able to re-enter the workforce. Some MHEs have dwellings advertised in excess of $1 million, it is less likely that residents in these dwellings receive Centrelink benefits, the dataset does not include this group. Using AIHW data on CRA recipients overcomes the limitations of ABS census data where MHEs have been recorded as retirement villages or residential, plus AIHW data is consistent across time periods and geographies.

6 A listed property investor and residential developer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lois C. Towart

Dr Lois C Towart is a lecturer in the School of Built Environment at the University of Technology Sydney. She has 30 years’ valuation and research experience specialising in Retirement Housing and Residential Aged Care.

Kristian Ruming

Associate Professor Kristian Ruming is the Discipline Chair in Geography and Planning at Macquarie University. He is an urban and economic geographer and has published extensively on housing and urban planning issues.