The demand for retirement villages in South Africa
Channel: Private Property
Date: 2017-10-12

Retirement estates offer a brilliant lifestyle for retirees and are an excellent investment in a growing market. Carol Reynolds of Pam Golding Properties, discusses the high demand for retirement property in South Africa and how to successfully invest in a retirement village.

Video transcript: 

Presenter: A warm welcome back to Win A Home on Afternoon Express, exclusively on SABC 3. Private Property has teamed up with Afternoon Express to provide you with advice on the different aspects of property on estates. Within southern Africa, South Africa has the highest proportions of all the population, with more than one in eight persons, around 5.6 million, aged between 50 and over and nearly 7%, 2.9 million, aged between 60 and above. So many of these older people are choosing to live in retirement villages, and developers are scrambling to keep up with the huge demand for this type of development. Joining us once again today is Carol Reynolds, North Durban area principal for Pam Golding Properties. Welcome back to our loft.

Carol Reynolds: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Presenter: So why is there such a demand for retirement villages?

Carol Reynolds: Well, I think it is largely to do with the aging population, but also retirement villages are bridging a gap between downscaling from your old family home and moving into a traditional old age home. What developers have done know is they have created these beautiful lifestyle security estates with extra benefits, which are the health care benefits. So people are moving into retirement villages when they're younger, and they're enjoying this beautiful, secure, amazing lifestyle, and then they've got the advantage of having the health care as and when they need it.

Presenter: Okay. Because I always had a fear. I want to retire at 50. I'm going to try and see if I can retire at 50 and put that stamp on my sort of life story. But I mean, what kind of other homes can you get? Because I always worried that retiring at 30 means I'm going to have to go live in a hospital bed.

Carol Reynolds: So they're young, trendy. They're contemporary. The architecture's beautiful. So they really are about creating lifestyle estates for the older population, and then with that you've got all the medical care and the facilities. And there're certain factors that are distinct, things like you need to have some [inaudible], so they're no stairs, and the paving and the landscaping is all crafted carefully so that people don't trip and fall easily. So all those factors are taken into account.

Presenter: Okay. So let's talk about health care because you mentioned it twice now. I think it's one of the most vital parts about this, especially because I know both of my sets of grandparents lived in retirement villages before they passed on, and one of the greatest assets that we had was the easy access to health care.

Carol Reynolds: 100%. When you buy into a retirement village, you need to research the health care facilities very carefully because some will offer frail care. Some will offer a step down facility. Some have assisted nursing. You need to decide what it is that you're looking for and then buy accordingly, and you even need to look at the detail of what the frail care comprises. Are there going to be nurses full time? Are they going to be doing chronic medication as and when needed? Doing their rounds, so as to speak, like doctors do in a hospital-- do the nurses do rounds every morning and evening? So those sort of details are very important.

Presenter: Okay. So how does it work when you're trying to buy into one of these retirement villages? Because one of my fears, obviously, is that-- I mean, are there criteria for an age gap? I don't want to have a young person living in there where I need it for my grandparents or my parents. How does that work?

Read the full transcript here: https://www.privateproperty.co.za/advice/property/articles/the-demand-for-retirement-villages-in-south-africa/5959

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