Acquisition lead improvement for failing providers- an answer to future Baby-Boom strain?
Published on 24 July 2025
As the dust settles on Australia’s largest real estate deal ever recorded, an emerging trend and interest in the senior living sector is emerging. With Brookfield Asset Management selling senior living operator Aveo to The Living Company for $3.85 billion AUD, eclipsing Blackstone’s $3.8 billion AUD sale in 2021, the sector is proving resilient with extensive growth.
Management-intensive strategy
Formerly ASX-listed, Aveo was made private in 2019 by Brookfield. Starting at an initial valuation of $1.9 billion, the Brookfield group sunk A$500 million into improvements, a risk that has been significantly concluded. Fund head Baron highlights the recent sale as a prime example of their management-intensive turnaround strategy. “Aveo is a prime example of the operations-led turnaround investing that we excel at, CEO Lowell Baron voices. “Working with the Aveo team we leveraged our operating expertise to significantly transform the business, improving the resident experience and creating vibrant communities, all of which have led to record sales and occupancy levels.”
Hands-On improvement
Far from the acquisition and wait strategy the sector has seen from Asset management and investment funds actors in the past, Brookfield’s 6 year tenure at the helm of Aveo saw intensive measures to improve process at executive and customer levels.
Widely known in 2019 was the financial distress of Aveo ahead of the acquisition. However the Brookfield team has outlined the degrees of improvement that they prioritised in their tenure, from simplifying customer contracts to partnering with national leadership group, Retirement Living Council, to navigate towards elevating standards and consumer protection.
Ruban Kaneshamoorthy, Brookfield’s co-head of Australia real estate states, “We identified a challenged platform that owned great real estate and this allowed us to execute an operations-driven turnaround.” He continues, “During the past five years, in partnership with the Aveo management team, we invested heavily in the business and executed a business plan that moved Aveo from a platform with a lack of focus and direction to a high-performance, resident-first organisation that is well placed to take advantage of the strong demographic and structural tailwinds underpinning the growth of retirement living.”
A way forward for poor performers
The turnaround of Aveo under the banner of Brookfield and its subsequent landmark sale highlights the opportunity in the market for intensive management overhauls of poor performers.
As compliance regulation continues to require increasing time from Providers, executives and front-line staff, the need to manage poor performers through other means is increasingly warranted.
Through the overhaul of Aveo, and the subsequent turnaround commercial success, along with customer/resident protections strengthened, this way forward for improvement across senior living and their operators shows great promise.
Which asset management and investment Groups to take a similar approach in the residential aged care sector, with poor performers acquired and improved, is yet to be seen.
Caution is advisable
As with most real estate in the Australian market, prices have continued to soar. The retirement village and independent seniors’ living sector is no exception. Aveo’s projects are seeing homes consistently sell for a A$1.6 million price tag across the nation. This price-point places it definitively on the higher end of an already high market.
For all parties involved across the public and private actors, keen collaboration and aligned strategic vision will be required to see the increasing demand of the Baby-Boomer demographic met with a variety of offering points according to current means tested and policy provisions.