Mark Moran of the fractured Moran family is going it alone to develop a series of ultra-luxury retirement facilities staffed by former employees of high-end resorts such as Queensland’s six-star Hayman Island.
“We are looking at baby boomers who want lifestyle and community engagement until the day they die: that is going to be the new model for us,” said Mr Moran, who is developing a 100-apartment retirement and aged care complex in Sydney’s Vaucluse with prices up to $3.5 million.
“There is definitely a huge demand for aged-care product and that demand is not being met,” said Mr Moran, fourth son of Doug and Greta Moran, who has worked in the aged-care sector all his life. Mr Moran split from the Moran Group, an aged-care operator established by his late multi-billionaire father, Doug Moran. Mr Moran left the family business to build his own string of luxury retirement facilities, predominantly in Sydney.
In 2010, he bought an existing retirement facility at Sydney’s Little Bay, rebranding it Mark Moran at Little Bay. But by far his most ambitious project to date is Mark Moran Vaucluse.
Opening next year and set on 1.2ha of gardens fronting Old South Head Road, in the eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse, it will sport 24-hour qualified nursing staff, counsellors, health instructors and on-site medical suites. It will also have a dedicated wellness spa offering massage and reiki treatments, expert chefs, and even a hen house and apiary with bees for honey production.
Mr Moran said corporate companies, such as Lend Lease, the former Babcock & Brown and Japara had traditionally struggled in the aged care and retirement sector.
“The main reason why there has not been greater investment historically is because the sector is very heavily regulated and you need to have good operational skills with the capital investment side,’’ the low-profile Mr Moran told The Australian.
“There’s always been a lot of interest from the corporate sector but it is difficult to get the balance between operational outcomes and capital outlays right.
“Where public companies have struggled is when they have moved into aged care solely as a real estate play and not as operators. Or if they have been operators they have done it from a corporate mindset.
“Macquarie, for example, has had mixed results.”
Having sold 60 per cent of the suites in the Vaucluse facility — equating to more than $100m in sales — ahead of its completion mid next year, Mr Moran is looking to buy more sites.
Most of his buyers at Vaucluse, which is a co-located retirement home and a 90-bed aged care facility, hail from Sydney’s east, Japan and South Africa. Mark Moran Group vice president Evette Moran says she wants to develop homes for older people, not institutions. “The … property will be run more like a hotel,” she says. As such the Mark Moran Group have hired Matthew Warby, a former senior food and beverage manager at Queensland’s opulent Hayman Island.
International health economist Paul Gross backs the Morans in saying the amount of money looking for a home in the health sector is “unbelievable”.
Recent federal government budget measures will see government aged care subsidies go directly to the individual (instead of service providers) so they can choose the care they need in their own home from February 1, 2017.
“This is a significant breakthrough … but late coming versus the rest of the world,” Dr Gross said. “At last we realise there are problems in our hospital system where aged people who have no other care in the community and are too sick to be in a nursing home end up in a hospital bed inappropriately.”
He said appetite for investment in aged care is heating up. “The market is on the move, it is responding to signals and the budget will do something to create new types of care … These new innovations suggest that the government has realised it needed to do something.”
This article first appeared in The Australian Business Review