Gaw Capital Launches $533M Aussie Land Lease JV With GreenFort 

Gaw Capital Partners has set up a joint venture with GreenFort Capital to acquire and develop an A$800 million ($533 million) pipeline of Australian land lease community projects aimed at pensioners.

Hong Kong-based Gaw will help Brisbane’s GreenFort scale its new Liven Communities business to an initial platform of 1,200 land lease dwellings across the east coast of Australia, the partners said Friday in a release.

Land lease is an arrangement in which the resident owns the home but leases the land where the home sits from the community operator, akin to a trailer park. The JV is the second for the two partners after they joined forces in 2018 on the Reside Communities retirement living platform, which has grown to more than 1,000 homes with a gross value of A$1 billion.

“We are excited to partner again with GreenFort to launch our land lease community platform in Australia,” said Kenneth Gaw, president and managing principal of closely held Gaw Capital. “Our shared vision of providing high-quality housing solutions aligns perfectly with the growing demand and changing demographics in Australia.”

Seizing Opportunity

GreenFort executives Adam Vaggelas, Nick Singleton and Daniel Cheilyk founded Liven Communities last year. They have acquired a land parcel measuring 57,000 square metres (613,543 square feet) on Beach Road at Hervey Bay in Queensland, with approval to develop 132 homes and resort-style community facilities.

The group also recently purchased Willow Village, an existing 26-home community on a 25,000 square metre site in Queensland’s Southside area, together with an adjacent 75,000 square metre parcel for a further 150 homes and recreational and community facilities.

Vaggelas said GreenFort saw a chance to address Australia’s rapidly ageing population, lack of housing supply and deteriorating housing affordability.

“The domestic population base is ageing rapidly, and the provision of affordable housing supply has never been so constrained,” said Vaggelas, a GreenFort partner. “We see a compelling opportunity to deliver quality, well-located land lease accommodation which will assist senior Australians to downsize and release equity to fund their retirement.”

GreenFort is also developing a 1,500-unit rental housing portfolio with Switzerland’s Partners Group and North American investor BentallGreenOak, targeting the east coast of Australia.

Hot on Housing

With nearly $36 billion in assets under management, Gaw Capital is leaping into land lease after Singapore sovereign fund GIC exited its investment in community operator Serenitas in a deal announced last October.

Mirvac Group joined with local private equity firm Pacific Equity Partners to buy out Serenitas and its 27 land lease communities for A$1 billion. GIC had acquired what is now Serenitas from a Blackstone venture five years earlier.

For property investor Mirvac, the Serenitas deal marked an expansion of its bets on rental residential, known in Australia as build-to-rent, after launching an A$1.8 billion fund dedicated to BTR last June.