Ingenia land lease sales enquiry dropped 77% February to April – the same for the retirement village sector?

In the same AFR article, Ingenia CEO Simon Owen gave an insight into Ingenia’s sales enquiry through COVID, as follows:

"Ingenia's sales leads, qualified inquiries that point to future purchases, hit 1126 in February, eased to 562 in March and collapsed to 257 in April, Mr. Owen said. They recovered to 335 in May and looked on track to top 400 this month."

The hit between February and April equals 77% down, with the climb back to 400 sales enquiries in May reducing the hit from the February peak to 64%.

This is a reality check for all retirement living operators as Ingenia is a well-oiled marketing machine extremely focused on generating quality enquiry to convert into sales, given it has 12 communities in development down the East Coast. Three weeks ago, they confirmed that they will achieve 300 sales and settlements this financial year to June 30.

They also confirmed settlement on two further acquisitions at an investment cost of $33 million, opening additional development pipelines.

As we reported last week, we are hearing of a strong line of new customers contacting villages, being the children of parents in different cities and states. 70% of our email requests on villages.com.au are from these family members.