‘We Have to Disrupt’: The Living Company Plots Its Next Move

“I want to make it 100,000 apartments by 2030.” Even after an eye-watering expansion, The Living Company’s Stephen Gaitanos is far from done. The former Morgan Stanley banker Gaitanos and co-chief executive Craig Carracher made headlines last year with the creation of The Living Company which brought together Scape, the student accommodation business they founded in 2014, and Aveo, the retirement specialist they acquired in a $3.85-billion deal in 2025. “You can’t say you want to be the Earth’s best living company if you can’t look after 55-year-olds and older,” Gaitanos said. Speaking at The Urban Developer ’s Aged Care and Residential Summit this month, Gaitanos described how they built a dominant, tech-enabled, multi-format living platform at scale, anchored by quality land and long-term capital. The Living Company now has 2500 staff and a portfolio of 40,000 homes. It was no mean feat, but two ingredients made up the secret sauce to The Living Company’s success, he said. “Metro freehold land is the gift that keeps on giving,” Gaitanos said. “And we know how important scale is, and we were lucky enough to buy it.” The secret to scale Scale has never been more important, yet the team was initially unconvinced by the idea of buying Aveo, Gaitanos said. But once they understood the retirement model’s specialisms, from deferred management fees to assets, locations and demographics, they were all in. “When we decide we want it, we’re a very competitive bunch of people. It’s like Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes Formula One team—if we want to win, it’s very hard for us to lose.” ▲ The Living Company founder and co-chief executive Stephen Gaitanos: Scale and location are the key to success. The most attractive element was the scale it gave the wider group. “You need to have scale, [because] it’s very hard, frankly, to make money in perpetuity when you have a small business because these asset classes are operational. The cash flow comes in and out every single day,” Gaitanos said. “The idea was to consolidate. That’s when you can start spending the money in IT, in AI, in staff.” Taking a holistic approach The term “synergy” might be trite, but the real advantage of operating across living sectors is knowing people, Gaitanos said. “[With scale] you can learn from a 17-year-old Chinese international student, a young professional kid at Marrickville or a 75-year-old at Carindale. “We’re all humans. We all want the same stuff, and we’re learning and packaging that into the next step and the next evolution of what we’re designing.” The Living Company is investing in AI to understand behaviour—when leases are going to be broken for instance. ▲ The Aveo retirement portfolio brought 10,000 homes under The Living Company umbrella. “Fundamentally, it’s a turnover business. So if I can spend money with predictive AI to try and get an idea of when student X is going to leave, then I can already be leasing that room to somebody else. Same in our retirement business. We’re just doing it at scale and faster.” But a focus on human connection remains important, from buyer to builder relationships, Gaitanos said. “Most builders today, honestly, if I push them hard enough, they’re insolvent. I haven’t seen trading conditions this hard since I started the business. “So if I can’t sit down with one of those builders, have a cup of coffee or dinner with them, I’m not interested.” The Living Company recently broke ground with Built on “the world’s tallest dorm”, a 58-storey tower above the new State Library train station in Melbourne, and topped out a 40-storey PBSA tower in that capital’s CBD with Multiplex earlier this year. Capital and Australian market uncertainty While The Living Company is looking beyond Australian shores to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong, Australia will always be its heartland. “Capital goes where deals are best. Australia is always going to be a better place to invest … it has strong population growth, [it’s] safe and secure, has a very strong legal system and a strong tax system.” But growth in this country is “anaemic,” he said. “At best, productivity is non-existent. I am super worried about that, and it’s not me just seeing this. Investors read the same reports that I read. “Sure, there’s this silver tsunami and sure we have very strong demographics. But at the end of the day, they care about returns, right? Rates should be 100 points lower, and until that happens, you’re not going to see private capital really go along in any sector.” ▲ Scape’s tower above the new State Library train station in Victoria would comprise 1400 beds. The next six to 12 months will be difficult, Gaitanos predicted. “Many businesses are going to think about cost cutting. Days on market are longer and longer, we’re not seeing the same velocity in sales that I want to see.” Rents are reaching “nosebleed level,” he said, but in other cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and London, 50 per cent of income is being spent on accommodation, so there is still room to grow. Renting is becoming the only feasible option long-term with house prices where they are, and places like the US have more rent-focused housing markets. “[In Australia] we need to be a little bit more clever in how we can attack a bigger part of the population.” So, The Living Company is investing heavily in renting models, including looking at land lease and retirement rental. “We didn’t just buy [Aveo] to manage it. We have to disrupt,” Gaitanos said. “We need new ways of living, and we have to put the customer first.”

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Clare Burnett
Mon 21 Sep 26

‘We Have to Disrupt’: The Living Company Plots Its Next Move