In a recent interview, acclaimed futurist and demographer Bernard Salt says that retirement village living of the future will be all about lifestyle, suggesting that baby boomers will make retirement ‘fashionable’ by the end of the decade.

“We will remove the ‘R word’ from our vocabulary and replace it with ‘lifestyle’,” Salt says.

This shift represents the evolvement of retirement products for people with a desire for youthful longevity in their later years. In the built environment, this will translate into more “gated lifestyle communities,” with all the services and likeminded residents found in the retirement villages of today.

Salt also suggests that we can expect to see the trend of ageing Australians looking for a seachange increasing, hinting that the Bellarine and Mornington peninsulas in Victoria, Central and South coasts in New South Wales, and Gold and Sunshine coasts in Queensland, will continue to hold appeal.

Bernard Salt will be giving more original insights into the subject as a keynote speaker, at the Property Council’s Retirement Living Summit in November on the Gold Coast.