When Karl Byriel and his wife Deborah were initially considering what retirement would look like, they had a plan like many others. “We were thinking it would be a unit on the Sunshine Coast or something like that,” the 65-year-old Queenslander explains. However, coming across an ad for a land lease community changed all that.
“It’s a different concept, and it did take us a while to get our heads around it,” Byriel admits. After looking at a couple of different providers and locations, they realised GemLife’s new over-50s lifestyle resort located at Moreton Bay was exactly what they wanted, and this made perfect sense. Residents of Moreton Bay, such as Karl Byriel, have embraced the community’s land-lease model.
“We decided it was a really nice feeling here,” he says on a call from their home of two months. “If you had a body corporate [for a unit], that’s more expensive than what the site fees are at GemLife.” The Byriels are just one example of the estimated 135,000 Australians now living within land-lease communities, a number growing exponentially.
“They’re a viable choice from a commercial, financial and lifestyle perspective,” explains GemLife CEO Adrian Puljich. “The baby boomer market is now looking to reward itself.” Understanding the land-lease model In land-lease communities such as GemLife, residents own their homes, but rent the land.
“The costs of the purchase are lower because you’re not paying for the land,” Byriel expla.
