Blackstone in $150m Australia care homes investment

New York-based private equity and real estate firm, The Blackstone Group, has formed a strategic partnership with National Lifestyle Villages, a greenfield developer of retirement communities in Australia, according to a statement.

The firm will invest $150 million in nine communities in Western Australia and one in Victoria. 

The developer focuses on land-lease communities, which have “struck a significant chord with Australia’s baby boomers and early retirees who want to release equity in their homes and live in a secure and safe gated environment,” it said. 

National Lifestyle currently provides more than 1,800 homes in the country and plans to increase the number to 3,100 over the next few years. In the short-term, the business plans to develop a further six communities of around 2,100 homes.

Blackstone will invest in both the operating company and real estate assets through its Tactical Opportunities Fund, which employs an opportunistic, multi-asset class investment strategy focused on special situations. 

The Tactical Opportunities Group has a flexible mandate that allows it to shift its strategy depending on market conditions. The group targets investments from real assets to corporate debt and equity securities to unsecuritized streams of cash flows. 

Commenting on the investment, Kishore Moorjani, Blackstone managing director and head of the firm’s Tactical Opportunities Group in Asia, said the partnership represents “an attractive and long-term opportunity to invest alongside a well-respected and successful Australian company.”

“Blackstone’s investment follows extensive due diligence and we look forward to providing our global knowledge, expertise, and capital to develop this emerging sector in Australia.”

John Wood, founder and managing director of National Lifestyle, added, “We are very excited to have Blackstone as our financial partner, with this investment ranking as one of the largest single investments in the Australian industry to date.”