Land lease developer Halcyon now designing ‘age-friendly’ homes

The LLC operator is targeting ageing baby boomers, offering new residents the chance to ‘future-proof’ their homes under the new Livable Housing Design (LHD) initiative. Aimed to make homes safer to age in, the scheme has three levels – Silver, Gold and Platinum – that new homes can achieve. Like a retirement village, a silver-designed home includes eight key age-friendly design features including:

• At least one step-free and level entry;
• A bathroom with a hobless shower recess;
• Reinforced walls around the bath, shower and toilet to install grabrails; and
• A continuous handrail on one side of any stairway where there is a rise of more than one metre.

Halcyon joint managing director Dr Bevan Geissmann said that Australia’s baby boomers are a growing market for age-friendly, livable housing. “The homes are designed to be easy to enter and to move around in, capable of cost-effective adaptation and to be responsive to the changing needs of their residents,” he said. LLC’s are increasingly tapping into the older buyer market – just last week, we reported here that the Palm Lake Group has been building aged care facilities to be co-located with its lifestyle communities.