Retirees spark trailer park home boom in Australia

John Purnell, 75, and his wife Patricia, 72, moved into a factory-built house in a converted trailer park west of Sydney this year, eschewing traditional retirement communities and other homes in the area.

"Retirement villages are quite expensive," Patricia, a former payroll clerk at a seniors facility, said in an interview in their A$254,000 (HK$1.74 million), 1,722 square foot air-conditioned home, which features built-in wardrobes, a separate utility area and a parking space. Nearby houses had minimum price tags of about A$350,000 and needed a further A$50,000 of work, she said.

Australia's expanding ranks of retirees, faced with rising housing costs and inadequate savings, are set to boost demand for cheaper manufactured homes by as much as 41 per cent, according to Colliers International UK.

Investors are responding to the growth of the nascent market, with companies including Ingenia Communities Group and Alceon Group - headed by former JP Morgan Chase banker Trevor Loewensohn - acquiring existing housing parks and sites to convert, and finance companies including GE Capital planning to start lending to operators.

There was "tremendous opportunity in manufactured housing", said Jason Kougellis, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at GE Capital. They "provide an affordable solution for an ageing population in a country that has some of the most expensive real estate in the world".

GE Capital, which had lent US$5 billion to manufactured housing operators in the US and Canada, planned to do the same in Australia, Kougellis said.