Singaporeans buy 24.9% of five-village retirement chain Freedom Lifestyle Villages for $40m

A property owned by Freedom Lifestyle Villages: Freedom Lakes in Rotorua. A quarter of the business has been sold. Photo / Freedom Lifestyle Villages

A company owned by Singaporean-headquartered investment fund AGP has bought just under a quarter of a privately owned five-property national retirement business for $40 million.

Bill McDonald, chairman of Freedom Lifestyle Villages and former chief executive of NZX-listed Arvida Group, said Assetz ANZ, owned by AGP of Singapore, had bought 24.9% of the business.

Freedom, whose advertising slogan is “waiting for you”, has three villages completed and a further two operating and being expanded.

Bill McDonald of Freedom Lifestyle Villages.

The three finished villages are at Pāpāmoa, Cambridge and Matamata. The other two being expanded are in Rotorua and at Ravenswood, near Lincoln in Christchurch.

AGP has associations with New York-headquartered Stonepeak, which last month won approval from shareholders in listed Arvida Group for a full $1.2 billion takeover, due to be completed in the next few weeks.

McDonald said a new joint venture company between Freedom and Assetz ANZ was planned to develop further new villages.

No Overseas Investment Office clearance was needed for the 24.9% deal because that scrapes in below the 25% threshold that would trigger the state entity clearance.

“But with the further investment, there will be an application to the OIO. This is a capital-intensive business. We really want to expand the business. With Assetz ANZ’s backing, Freedom is well-positioned to grow, and improve the experiences of our residents,” he said.

Selling a quarter of the business for $40m indicates the company is worth around $160m, but asked what the assets were valued at, McDonald said he could not say.

A property owned by Freedom Lifestyle Villages at Ravenswood in Christchurch. Photo / Freedom Lifestyle Villages

Around 1000 people live in the five villages and their average age is around 70, McDonald said. The villages have 750 independent villas but no apartments or hospitals.

Freedom sells licences to occupy to people aged 50 years and over.

Asked who was selling the 24.9% stake, McDonald said new shares were being issued via Freedom Group Holdings.

Companies Office records show that entity has 29 shareholders, including Freeman Bay’s Bill Smale, who is on the NBR Rich List and of Smales Farm, the Takapuna business and dining precinct where many apartments are also planned. Smale and a trust have the largest shareholding at 12.77%.

The North Shore’s Alan Wiltshire is another major shareholder with 7.33%. He is managing director of Wiltshire Property Group, the well-established real estate investment and development business.

Properties that business owns include the former Michael Hill Takapuna on the corner of Hurstmere Rd and Lake Rd, where the jeweller closed due to ram raids.

McDonald’s shareholding is under Freedom Group Holdings (Nominee), which has 11.64%.

“There’s a lot of small shareholders. They are friends and associates,” McDonald said.

Directors of Freedom Group Holdings are Tauranga surgeon John Calder, Bill McDonald of Kerikeri, Alan Morris of Waihī Beach, Catherine Parsons of Remuera, Jason Smale of Freemans Bay, Jacob (known as Rudy) Van Het Wout of Queenstown and Rene Verhoeven of Tauranga, according to the Companies Office.

In 2021, contractors broke ground on the new lifestyle village along Pukehangi Rd in Rotorua but now homes have been completed and people live there.

In 2021, the Herald reported on the development of the 197-home Freedom village in Rotorua. The application to develop that was said to be the largest single consent issued in that area in 20 years.

That village is at the Ngongotahā end of Pukehangi Rd.

Rotorua Lakes Council District Development deputy chief executive Jean-Paul Gaston said then that unlocking land and enabling new developments was the number one priority for the council.

Sir John Key opened Pāpāmoa’s Freedom village in 2014, having said when he was a Member of Parliament that he would return when it was completed.

Rudy Van Het Wout and Juliette Yarrell.

Freedom advertises its properties as being unlike many other retirement villages because people retain capital gains.

Juliette Yarrell and husband Van Het Wout – one of Freedom Lifestyle Villages’ founders – were featured in the Bay of Plenty Times in 2016 in an article about couples who work together.

They were together only a matter of months before they decided to throw everything into the dream of creating a new type of retirement village, which was Freedom.

A decade on, and after years of hard slog the dream has come to fruition and their relationship and the business were thriving, that article said.

Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.