Figures Don't Add up

I have no idea why you are approaching the idea of a five unit mini-retirement village on this block of land.

Firstly the specs for a retirement unit these days are usually first class anyway .. and you wont end up with a nice package for the amount you ask.

Secondly any retirement unit worth its salt has facilities on-call or standby so that any genuinely retired person needing assistance has a competant nurse or handyperson available should they be required.

Finally the obvious … why would you be looking at a bunch of gated units behind a fence? A retiree wants security sociability and safety in his/her retirement lodge. By just having a gated fence you are actually doing the opposite and isolating the retiree.

I work with 4000sqm of land all the time and you cannot possibly be approaching it from the right perspective. 4040sqm is an acre .. so you are working with a sizeable block of land. I manage to get 24 units into a block that size .. with underground parking facilities and even commercial shopfronts.

The answer is really simple .. you are producing way too few structures on the land at the moment to validate and justify your purchase RELATIVE TO PRICE PAID. For some reason you are creating your own market rather than actually looking at what the site value per unit and the OUTCOME per unit will be.

A developer isnt usually a fool. A developer is out there to make money and do that through working the best deal out of the land.

I've built on 200sqm with the aid of an architect .. and built 18 townhouses on a 5000sqm non rectangular block.

So with what you've got .. the problem isnt the price of the land (which probably already takes in the existing price per unit block site and just multiplies it for the total land area) but the way you are about to utilise it with what your designs are on top of it.

Answer is .. land is worth a million. You have to use it better to justify that million to your further use.

Development is a risky game. You may overguess the market's needs and end up with a fabulous product that people will still only pay the standard unit price for regardless of quality. I have done that once or twice .. and you learn from that quickly.

Your block you have suggested is big enough to produce more than you can currently financially manage. Instead of restricting what is a large block to your budget .. why not STAGGER your development with a larger project in stages? That way you can condition the purchaser to the idea of the site having multiple units on it .. you can supply a plan that covers a larger body of units .. and then represent the current stage only !! Your budget covers the current stage with room to move .. and from the profits you can build the other stages as they come to hand.

A retirement unit site works best when you have lots of people who you can interact and relate with. Having a large amount of units on the site tends to keep the overall expenses required by the retirees to a minimum as the costs are shared over a larger group.

The other thing is .. having come across lovely little 5 or 6 unit sites like you are talking about creating .. they were usually achieved on the purchase of young blocks (in other words fresh subdivisions with new housing and cheap land). So it is possible to do what you are thinking .. just on a 400k acre .. rather than a million dollar one.