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Timber’s Fix: Retirement Living Helps Solve Aussie Housing Crisis

One of Australia's largest softwood manufacturers is helping one of the country's largest builders construct 800 lifestyle dwellings in Southeast Queensland.


Fri 17 Jan 25

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Retirement living is rising Australia-wide, with lighter, faster, and eco-friendly timber-framed lifestyle dwellings emerging as a fix to free up the housing squeeze. That is according to Hyne Timber, one of Australia’s oldest softwood manufacturers, now working with Brighton Homes to build 800 new builds for Ingenia, Stockwell Group, and Green Fort Capital alone.

According to the 2021 ABS Census, more than 250,000 Australians now live in retirement communities, an increase of 23% from 2016, which has helped to reduce the housing shortage by more than 18%. Typically, residents sell the family home to move into a ‘right size’ village without a mortgage, freeing up housing stock for future generations. According to a report by the Retirement Living Council, “growing this pipeline to meet demand could reduce the housing shortage by 67 per cent over the next 5 years.”

Patrick Cumner Brighton Homes James Hyne Hyne Timber and the Team at Ingenia 1
Patrick Cumner from Brighton Homes, with James Hyne of Hyne Timber and the Ingenia team. (Photo Credit: Supplied)

Brighton Homes Business Development Manager Patrick Cumner said the builder’s pipeline would deliver almost 12,000 dwellings in Queensland over the next few years: “Lifestyle villages have been hugely popular across America for many years, and this model is taking off here in Australia. These centrally located villages can have hundreds of low-maintenance dwellings along with the popular, shared facilities, services, and social programs that make these communities desirable for healthy and active retirees.”

“For the most part, homeowners do not own the village land on which their home sits, and therefore, by law, the home must be relocatable. This type of construction lends itself to timber while also delivering the many user-friendly and environmental benefits our locally grown timber provides.”

Patrick Cumner, Brighton Homes Business Development Manager, on the value of using locally grown timber framing to build retirement villages.

For James Hyne, the Hyne Group’s Stakeholder Engagement Manager, given the challenges in sourcing housing and land across the country, the new model contributes positively in many ways: “Not only are these lifestyle villages in hot demand but they’re also being largely built using timber for a range of benefits including the ability to relocate them, quieter buildings, locally grown, locally manufactured and locally processed into frames and trusses.”

Wood Central understands that the 800 builds, which will all be built across three Hervey Bay lifestyle villages, will use more than 3,500 cubic metres of timber and sequester 2,500 tonnes of carbon – taking the equivalent of 1,270 cars off the road. “This volume of structurally graded, softwood plantation pine will have regrown across the Australian softwood plantation estate in just 10 hours,” a Hyne Group representative told Wood Central. “Construction doesn’t get more renewable than that.”

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  • Wood Central

    Wood Central is Australia’s first and only dedicated platform covering wood-based media across all digital platforms. Our vision is to develop an integrated platform for media, events, education, and products that connect, inform, and inspire the people and organisations who work in and promote forestry, timber, and fibre.

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