Please click on the Raise Hand emoji, and I will present you to the speakers. I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. David Dixon and Mr. John Carter, Joint CEOs of Aspen, Mr. Patrick Maddern, the Head of Asset Management, and Hamish Perks, Transaction Manager. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Tuan. Welcome, everybody. So today, I'll give a quick overview and then hand it over to Hamish and Patrick to talk about the results, and then John will talk about our strong outlook and upgraded guidance. As you know, Aspen is a specialist provider of quality rental accommodation on competitive terms. Our target market is the 40% of households with incomes of less than AUD 100,000 per annum. At that household income, they can typically afford rents of less than AUD 400-$500 a week, and purchase price of less than AUD 500,000-$600,000. This chart shows how competitive our rents and prices have become. We now offer, for example, residential units in metropolitan locations at 39% less than the average unit rental in Australia.
Last half, our average sale price of a lifestyle house was only AUD 465,000, which is now 56% less than the average dwelling price in Australia. That gap opened up by AUD 40,000 just in the last six months alone. This is the affordable end of the market, and it's the only end of the residential market that is scarce. There is no shortage of rentals above AUD 1,000 a week, and there's no shortage of housing at above AUD 1 million. So we operate at a very different part of the market than average. One reason why price, the average price is above AUD 1 million is because that's roughly the minimum cost of production in metropolitan Australia now. So cost of production is high. There's lots of reasons for it. We are seeing no evidence whatsoever of that improving.
So we think the high cost is here to stay, and it's particularly in areas like Sydney, and it's particularly related to high regulatory cost, high taxes, high contribution charges, which nowadays in Sydney, for a house and land package, which is a long way away from the metro area, of upwards of AUD 600,000. So Aspen naturally gravitates to house-friendly states like South Australia and Western Australia, where taxes and regulation are lower, and we're now seeing households gravitate to those states as well, because Sydney and other expensive markets have now hit an affordability ceiling. So it's no surprise to us that the strongest growth parts of the Australian residential markets are in more affordable, better lifestyle locations that offer better value for money, like South Australia, Western Australia, parts of Queensland.
It's no surprise to us that the strongest price and rental growth is happening at the lowest price and rent points. This chart on the bottom, the right-hand chart, is three months of price change to the end of December, after the government introduced its 5% deposit scheme. Clearly, when you stoke demand without solving the supply issues, you get, you know, rapid price acceleration. We think nothing's changing over the medium term. We don't see any resolution to the supply issues, so we remain very confident that we can continue to grow the business rapidly.
Thanks, David. For the six months to 31 December 2025, Aspen delivered total value creation of AUD 0.22 per share, AUD 0.22 based on comprehensive income per security, which has benefited security holders via a mix of distributions, earnings, and higher asset values. Aspen's strong track record of growing underlying earnings, distributions, and NAV have continued over the 6-month period, with underlying EPS increasing by 33% to AUD 0.107 per share, which is 23% per annum compound growth since FY 2020. Underlying EPS is cash-based and only includes realized development profits. Other properties, where we've added value but haven't realized a gain by the sale, benefit the group's NAV. In this regard, NAV has increased by 6% during the period, with compound NAV growth of 17% per annum achieved since FY 2020.
We'll talk in more detail regarding the rental and development growth achieved during the half in the slides that follow, but pleasingly, Aspen's underlying growth, earnings growth, has continued to accelerate. EBITDA increased 29%, while underlying earnings, operating earnings increased by 51% and is now running at almost AUD 50 million per annum. The average number of dwellings or sites in the rental pool increased by 5% to 4,154, predominantly due to the lifestyle development settlements and the purchase of the Adelaide Villas portfolio. Average gross rents, i.e., the amount our customers pay, increased by 8% to AUD 353 a week, while net rent grew 2x faster at 16% to AUD 194 a week. Margins expanded 4 percentage points to 55%.
Another way of looking at this is that over the last six months, gross rents grew by AUD 26 a week, while net rents increased by AUD 27 a week. So for every dollar increase in gross rent, more than 100% of this increase is dropping to the bottom line, helping to drive profitability for security holders. Overall, net rental income for the half increased by 22% to AUD 20.9 million. Looking more closely at our rental income by subsector, it's positive to see that each one is benefiting from the same residential market dynamics. Touching firstly on the residential portfolio, Aspen's portfolio of residential dwellings that are typically located in metropolitan areas remain competitively and affordably priced at just AUD 390 a week.
Due to capital recycling into lower rent properties, the number of residential dwellings was unchanged during the period, which has helped to keep a lid on gross rental growth, which was 5%. Margins expanded to 67%, which overall resulted in net rental income for the residential portfolio increasing by 8%. With parks, the number of park dwellings increased by 1% due to the settlements of new lifestyle houses at Highway 1. Across the parks portfolio, we continue to seek a more profitable mix of rate and occupancy, post recent refurbishments, with a key focus during the half on achieving a higher rate. This has resulted in the average gross rent increasing by 13% to AUD 386 a week.
A 5 percentage point increase in margin to 47% contributed a further 15% increase to net rents, with net rental income for the parks portfolio increasing overall by 29%. With the lifestyle, the average number of lifestyle sites increased by 24%. This was as a result of ongoing lifestyle development settlements and the purchase of the Adelaide Villas portfolio, with the increase being roughly split half, half. Typical land rent within our lifestyle portfolio is AUD 200 a week, excluding ancillary income, with 3.5% per annum contracted annual increases. Pleasingly, we've expanded the margin by 4 percentage points to 62%, which added an additional 10% to net rental income growth, with overall net rental income for the lifestyle portfolio increasing by 38%. Aspen's strategy remains to be a specialist provider of quality rental accommodation on competitive terms.
The group therefore focuses closely on keeping average gross rents affordable for our customers, while extracting higher net rental income through higher margins. Since FY 2020, gross rents have grown at 5% per annum, while net rents have grown at more than double that rate. This has resulted in margins expanding over time by 13 percentage points to 55%. We believe this trend has further to run as we continue to increase our weighting to the higher margin residential and lifestyle subsectors. Aspen also looks to create value through recycling out of high rent dwellings into dwellings at a lower rent point that are more suited to our core customer base. This helps to keep a lid on average rent levels, improves growth prospects, and reduces risk.
To highlight this point, we've compared the performance of the residential portfolio's actual result to what we believe it would have looked like had we held the portfolio static from three years ago. The results have been that Aspen owns 134, or 14% more dwellings, is earning an additional AUD 900,000 per annum of net rental income, a 6% increase, has an average weekly rent that's AUD 34 a week, or 7% lower per property, is AUD 13 million, or 8% less capital invested into this portfolio. On a per dwelling basis, this equates to AUD 32,000, or 19% less per dwelling. Taking all of these factors into account, the net effect on the group's return on invested capital is that the residential portfolio's return is 15% higher than it otherwise would have been at 10.2%.
Thanks, Hamish. This morning, I'll be providing an update for the development business and an overview of acquisitions for the half. On this image here, you can see the development of Alexandrina Cove Lifestyle Village with Coorong Quays on Hindmarsh Island. This site in recent years has had our highest sales rate and prices within our land lease business, and we still have over 100 homes to develop, as you can see here. Moving on to the results for the development business for the half. As foreshadowed in prior updates, we decided to materially increase the rate of development activity to drive sales. We are now seeing the fruits of those endeavors.
Sales are up 60% compared to the prior corresponding period for all sales, and almost 2.5 x up for land lease homes, which has a higher dollar margin. Importantly, we've been able to increase our profit while maintaining an attractive entry price for our customers, as seen in the middle chart. This has been achieved through a greater proportion of land lease homes as part of the development sales mix. As a result of the higher volumes and improved profit margins, we have realized 87% higher development profit compared to the prior corresponding half. Also important to note is that the increase in sales volumes for land lease homes has also a corresponding uplift to net asset value on NAV as a result of newly leased sites.
This slide is an important slide for us and highlights one of the major areas of focus for the lifestyle business. This shows our four key current largest markets, being Newcastle, Wodonga, WA, and SA for lifestyle, and how our prices are at material discounts to the local median house price, but are also at an even bigger discount to the metro median house price, where many of our customers originate from. Internally, we work very hard to keep the prices at an attractive level while not sacrificing margin. We think this is important for two reasons: A, it allows our customers a greater likelihood to free up capital when they purchase one of our homes, and it provides protection for us, knowing that we sit well below the median approximate residential prices. Following on from. Sorry, next.
Yeah, following on from the price slide, we can see that over the time, we have managed to increase our gross margins while maintaining attractive pricing. This has been achieved through product and project mix. On an apples-for-apples comparison of our products, we are seeing gradual price increases as we move through the projects, and we think this is important for a number of reasons, including buyer confidence and sales velocity. Pleasingly, we continue to sit above the 30% margins, a key focus for the business. As a result of the increased development rate, we have also experienced an increase in sales volumes, as illustrated by these charts. On a rolling twelve-month basis to 31 January, we have signed 187 EOIs or contracts.
Most of these are land lease due to supply; however, we expect to see more land sales as we begin to complete projects, bringing on supply to the market. Moving on to acquisitions for the half. In August, we settled Adelaide Villas for AUD 16.2 million. This portfolio has 113 villas and units located in premium Adelaide suburbs. This equates to approximately AUD 143,000 per dwelling. At acquisition, there were 84 retirement village leases and 29 residential leases within that 113. The strategy is to gradually convert all of the retirement village leases into residential leases, and in the first half, we have already converted 7% or 8% of the RV leases. Next, acquisition is Aspen Wallaroo.
That was settled in October and is a 13.5 hectare site located in Wallaroo, a coastal lifestyle town two hours north of Adelaide. Prior to purchase, we negotiated an in-principle master plan with the council for over 300 lots that included a lifestyle village, standard residential allotments, build to rent, and some complementary commercial. We are currently in the process of applying for a development approval, with the first tranches likely to be the residential land lots that have considerable infrastructure already in place. We will then, shortly thereafter, go to lodge the DA for the lifestyle village. Finally, our new Surry Hills office was settled in November, and we are planning to move into this following some fit-out works next month.
We will occupy roughly 50% of the space, and the balance of the area having just commenced a leasing campaign. We paid AUD 8 million for the property or about AUD 4,000 per meter, which is less than 50% of what other similar offices are trading for in the Surry Hills area. Today, we are announcing a new acquisition, an expansion to our Coorong Quays property. This is a 40-hectare site to the north of Coorong Quays , our 300-hectare master plan community that has been a very successful asset for us to date. We purchased this for AUD 7.5 million, or AUD 188,000 per hectare, as the current zoning allows for rural living and rural neighborhood allotments, which are between 2,000 square meters and 2 hectares in allotment size.
This basis, it would allow us to offer different product to what we offer at Coorong Quays, and this sort of product is highly desirable in locations like this. We also leave the option open to us to work with council to seek greater density on this site, which would improve the profitability. Either option will be a great outcome for Aspen and increase the Coorong Quays reported community.
Now looking just at the balance sheet. Aspen's balance sheet remains well positioned to support growth initiatives as they emerge. Aspen's ICR continued to strengthen over the half to 5.7 x, and we are in control of whether we sell our newly developed assets or retain them. Either way, with no development profit, the group would remain compliant with its debt covenants, with over 3 x interest cover. LTV remains conservative at 22%. Looking closer at the balance sheet, the book value of rental assets increased by 12% to AUD 660 million, which equates to 151,000 per dwelling or site, with the weighted average cap rate unchanged at 6.9%.
Looking at the development business, capital deployed increased by 19% to AUD 110 million, partially driven by the acquisition during the period of the Wallaroo land. Notably, working capital in the manufactured house inventory modestly declined by AUD 2 million, as we'd previously invested ahead of the curve for the increase in sales rate and settlement volumes. The business delivered 20% return on invested capital, in line with internal targets, despite the increase in capital deployed, and where approximately a third of the capital is invested into sites that are still in the planning stage and hence not income producing.
The carrying value of land remains low at AUD 43,000 per approved site and AUD 27,000 per site that's still in planning, and the total number of sites increased by 19% overall, which, based on current sales rate, provides a long runway for further growth into the future. Aspen's book values remain conservative, in our opinion. The cap rate on the residential portfolio is 5.1%, which compares to 2.2% for capital city dwellings nationally, or 2.7% in regional areas. Aspen has a track record of recycling residential properties at 3% cap rates. The parks portfolio is carried at a 10.1% cap rate, while the lifestyle portfolio is carried at a 5.8% cap rate.
This is 60-70 basis points above peers and provides further scope for future value uplift, but particularly when factoring in that our assets typically have lower rent levels and depreciation.
Thanks, Hamish. I just want to finally go on to our outlook and guidance. So the rental business, which is the biggest part of our business, long-term side of it, we expect to remain essentially fully occupied. We expect gross rents to increase by 4%-5% per annum, noting to assist with this, that we think our residential portfolio is around 10% under-rented. Our lifestyle leases have a fixed 3.5% increase. At our mixed parks, we have a high component of land long-term dwellings and land leases. Noting also going forward that the number of lifestyle leases we expect to grow by 15%-20% per annum due to our development, which Patrick has talked through.
Finally, on The Cove at Upper Mount Gravatt, the common facilities are being refurbished at the moment. That's very, very intensive process, and it's definitely impacting the income we're getting in FY 2026. So going into FY 2027, we'd expect the income from that property to increase. Going on to the short stay, the parks had a recent period over Christmas. We have talked about this before, but we have spent AUD 30 million over the last few years on the parks to get them in really good shape, and we want to maximize the income that we get out of those assets. Aspen Karratha is performing very well. Again, it's been maintained extremely well.
We've got a very good diversified base of customers, and we think the activity in Karratha is also stronger these days. Importantly, looking towards the end of the FY, our three-month forward bookings are ahead of last year. Turning to development, the build-to-rent side of the business, we think will be a very big opportunity. We think it's likely to be a much bigger opportunity than lifestyle long term. Our first of those build-to-rent programs is Australind, which is underway now, and we expect to have the first batch of houses ready to lease in April. Lifestyle, our focus is on getting DAs. We've got four projects that we're working on at the moment, which will add to the number of properties that we can sell going forward.
On land, we only have one, Mount Barker, that comes into this year at Ravenswood in WA. The civil works are underway for that, which we will start selling and have the first settlements in the next FY. Just going on to settled sales guidance, so we're very pleased today to increase the guidance for settlements this year from 150 to 160, of which 130 are lifestyle houses, up 10, and 30 are residential. Importantly, looking at what we've been achieving, our 12-month sale contracts are running at 187, and as of yesterday, we already had 115 settlements for FY 2026, so we're running ahead on an annualized basis of the 160 sales.
Looking to FY 2027, again, we're very happy to announce today that we've increased our settlement target to 220 from 200, with a target of at least 150 being lifestyle houses. Going on to acquisitions and disposals, pleasingly, the opportunities that we think are interesting for us have increased. We announced today the extra land at Hindmarsh Island, but we think there's a number of things that meet our very stringent targets in terms of acquisitions. So, definitely an improvement in opportunities there. We talked about this a bit, but both on the residential and also on the tourist park side, we will look to recycle some of those assets when it makes sense for the portfolio.
Finally, we talked in November 2024 at the AGM about releasing the handbrake. I'm very pleased to sort of talk about stepping up a gear today. So our guidance has been upgraded for FY 2026 EPS by 7% today to AUD 0.215, which is a 20%--28% increase on FY 2025. And then moving on to FY 2027.
W e've put out initial guidance of AUD 0.25 EPS, which is up 16% on the FY 2026 guidance. So on that note, I'd thank everyone for their support, and being on the call today, and we would welcome any questions.
Thank you very much. We'll now open the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please click on raise, raise the hand emoji. But to begin the questions, your first question comes from Andy MacFarlane from Bell Potter.
Morning, guys. Thanks, David, John, Patrick, Hamish, thanks for your time. Settlements, might just start there, if we can. Can you just walk through what you delivered in the first half, kind of by projects and what's still expected to contribute into 2026? And then for 2027, just in terms of the upgraded guidance, just interested in the color around the extra 20 lots there for FY 2027.
Yeah. So in terms of the product mix, the sales have come from, for lifestyle, have come from all of our current 7 active projects. WA and SA have definitely seen greater volumes, however, we're actually seeing a pickup in New South Wales and Victoria in the last sort of two or three months, and they will flow through to the second half, which will probably come. I'll come to answer that, or sort of half answer your next question as well. And then in terms of the land, we only had four lots contributed from Mount Barker.
There'll be another sort of 25+ that will go into the next half, and that was just based on the way that the titles landed and the settlements. What we'll do for the following year is there'll be Ravenswood that will come on board, which is there'll be 63 lots that we're developing there. And then there'll be another stage of Mount Barker again, and then potentially some options to add some land in as well with Coorong Quays and Wallaroo, but that's not sort of at the moment in the numbers. And then in terms of lifestyle, we'll continue for those seven projects to be moving, and I think it's fair to say that those projects are going, you know, well, and probably improving as we go along.
Basically, what's happening is that the more product we can produce, the more confidence the market gets, and the faster we are selling them. So at the moment, I think right now we only have sort of less than 10 completed product available for sale that's not contracted. And, you know, and that feels like it's been like that for a while, so it doesn't matter how fast we produce it, it seems to get purchased. And that's how we've got to the 220, is we're just seeing that there's an increased confidence in the sales for across all the projects.
Helpful. Thanks, Patrick. Just in terms of tourism, you talked about bookings being ahead, or three months kind of booking ahead of last year. Just interested if you're able to quantify to what degree they might be ahead, and then just interested in terms of the tourism business, kind of how it's performing versus your expectations and if there's any projects to call out or otherwise.
Yeah, I'll start with backward-looking. So we spent a lot of effort and money doing up Koala Shores and Tween Waters last half. And those projects weren't completed till late November, December, so we didn't really have the optimal lead-in from a marketing point of view. So those properties were pretty flat still on last year, while they were being disrupted and while we weren't marketing, so we think they will perform a lot better over the next 12 months. Forward bookings, look, I always hate to talk about forward bookings because it's easier to grow forward bookings by discounting. They're very comfortably ahead, and what we're really trying to achieve is a higher rate. So it's just across the board. It's, you know, tourism's been strong. AKV is very strong.
So it's really just good strength, and I think at this stage, it's all about getting a better rate and, and not worrying too much about occupancy as long as we make more money.
Those projects you talked about, potential capital recycling, is that a second half of 2026 story, a 2027 story?
No, I don't think so. I'd like-
No.
We'd like to get Koala Shores and Tween Waters to maximum net rental income-
Yeah
W hich will probably take through to next peak summer. So I think that'd probably be the optimal time to think about that again. I think what's maybe more likely is that some of our smaller residential apartment buildings in our, in Perth, now are getting to AUD 600 rentals, and if we can release that capital at 3 yields, that, that's kind of more interesting in the near term.
Yep. Makes sense. Just a last one for me, just on the NRI margin. You mentioned you thought it could kind of get higher from here, 55%. Obviously, it's increased a bit. You talked about, you know, maybe coming from a residential perspective, just interested in some color around, yeah, what could be contributing that and where you think you might be able to get it to from here?
Yeah, look, I naturally, just from a portfolio mix point of view, it's trending higher, because the park's pulling it down to 55% at the moment, and over time, you know, even selling Koala Shores and Tween Waters that do 40% margin, will contribute to that trend. I'd like to think that we can also run the properties better than we have to date. We've definitely, it's been management that's added to that, to that margin. I think residential is a 65%-67% margin asset class for us. So I think we're at the right level, the lifestyle that we think as you get more mature communities, we can move that 62 up towards you know, high 60s, for mature communities.
You know, there is a bit of margin expansion going on by property type, but we're going to move towards more resi and lifestyle over time.
Perfect. Thanks, David.
Your next question comes from Murray Connellan from Moelis Australia.
Hi, morning, everyone. John, David, Pat, and Hamish, congrats on the upgrade. I was wondering whether we could unpack the tax rate, as you can see it coming forward, if you wouldn't mind. You've sort of said here as, as like, I guess, previously stated, that you're expecting the tax rate on underlying to be somewhere between a 5%-10% rate, but that this is going to be closer to 10%-15% for 2027.
Just, like, you know, I guess as the market gets used to modeling an underlying tax rate for Aspen for the first time, I was wondering whether you could just talk us through what's responsible for that shift, and I guess what might be responsible for that, for these sorts of fluctuations going forward?
Good question. Thanks, Murray. So, you know, five years ago, Aspen Group Limited, the company part of our stapled, had 100 million of tax losses, and so we've been running, deliberately running, you know, optimizing the amount of income that's been flowing through the company to utilize those tax losses. We've now run out, we've now run out of tax losses. And over time, we think ultimately, buying, whether you buy assets in the trust or the company really dictates that average tax rate. Over time, we'll be buying more property in the trust, and over time, we would expect that we will get the group tax rate to be around that 5%-10% range, which is consistent with other stapled, real estate groups in the market. So we think that's kind of an efficient level.
We don't think FY 2027 will be efficient because right now, you know, in the past, we've been set up to run more income through the company. So I think longer term, it's 5%-10%, but we want to flag that in FY 2027, it may be a bit higher, and that assumes we don't buy any assets, so that could also, we could improve it quicker.
Would it be fair to say that it's gonna sort of start off in the sort of early to mid-teens and then gradually trend downwards, as far as you can tell?
Yeah.
Rather than FY 27 being something of an anomaly?
Yeah, like we think long run, medium to long run, it's, we'll be at the 5%-10% consistent with other stapled security groups.
Got it. Just one on the development business, please. What is the current run rate on actual developments that are coming out of the ground, I guess, on an annual basis? And how do you see working capital fluctuating in the next year, please?
Yeah. We generally target 24 sales per annum for lifestyle. We think most of the projects have kind of got to that level now. We think that could get higher for places like Australind and Ravenswood. So we're still comfortable with thinking of 24 per project. Currently have 7 projects. We hope that goes to 10+ over the next couple of years as we get DAs. And we want to grow that lifestyle consistently by at least 20% per annum, lifestyle sales. On the land, resi land front, it makes, as John said, it makes more sense to produce 40-50 lots for cost reasons. It also makes sense to sell them in the same financial year because we get hit with land tax, higher land tax, once they're titled.
So that part of the business, you know, will probably end up being 40-50, you call it 30-50 sales per project. We only had one project this year, and we're looking to move towards four projects. To the extent we only do the—we do the 220 guidance for next year, there's very little additional capital going in next year because we were already producing about 200 widgets, you know, 12 months ago.
Thanks for that, David. And then just lastly, it looks as if the performance coming out of Karratha, based on commentary, seems relatively strong at the moment. Would you mind giving your thoughts around the outlook based on, I guess, the leading indicators that you're seeing there in terms of project works switching on and off over time? And then it would also be good to just hear your, I guess, strategic plans for that asset longer term, please.
Sure. So, the next period of time, sort of next few months for Karratha look strong. We've had a sort of core anchor tenant that has kept extending for a few months. The occupancy is still, you know, very close to full on most nights. We've got over 100 corporates that use that asset now, so we are thinking about what proportion we'd like to lock in with a key customer. And that sort of work is going on at the moment.
Long, longer term, you know, this year will be very strong on income. Longer term, we think that the income can come off on this asset, but we think that, you know, we think it's still going to be make a decent amount of money. I think for us, and how we valued it, it is valued way below replacement cost. I think for the December accounts, we used a 30% cap rate. What that really says is that we're thinking about a lower, you know, sustainable income for that asset. We're not. It's not one of the assets that we think we're actively looking to sell, unless, you know, unless someone had a particular reason for paying a decent price for it.
That's sort of how we think about it.
Thank you. Appreciate the color. That's it for me.
Thank you. Next question comes from Lionel McFadden. He's typed his question, so I'll read it out loud. Can management provide specific economic per BTR dwelling, all-in development cost per dwelling, target rental yield on cost, and expected market cap rate for valuation purposes?
Sure. So, like, our build-to-rent model, we're still refining, except, you know, trying to optimize what makes sense. You know, ultimately, we think we're going to produce a combination of one- and two-bedroom units, which potentially suit different markets. Maybe the one bedroom is a market for rentals, and a two bedroom might be a better market for sale. So I'll just talk to the one-bedroom product. We're thinking of, you know, 45-50 square meter product. Just quite a good size space, particularly if you're located in, around facilities, which will be our target market. We think that is a production cost of about AUD 200,000. We think we can fit 50 per hectare. So for us, with our current land bank, the land is only AUD 20,000.
So all our production costs, 220,000 at AUD 400 rentals, it's a 6% yield on cost, which is our target yield for everything we do as a minimum. We think as a strata-titled unit or community title that could be sold, that that asset sells for about a 3% yield, so twice production cost. We think it's gonna quickly become a very large part of our business. We think the margin profitability yield is better than lifestyle, so it's a really good opportunity for us going forward.
Lionel, did you want to say anything else?
Oh, yeah. No, just one further one. Can you hear-
Yeah.
On the get back on the BTR program, are you expected to require any external debt financing at the project level? Or will it be funded from the same self-funding mechanism that supports lifestyle and residential?
Yeah, good, good question. So it's clearly an asset that if you just build to rent, it's potentially a more capital-heavy asset than lifestyle, where we sell the house and keep the land. So in lifestyle, the profit we make on the house totally, completely covers the land and civils costs, so there's no capital employed at the end of that project being produced. In lifestyle, we're thinking about, you know, do we keep it capital light, and how would we do that? So it goes back to sort of my point about one- and two-bedroom product, and maybe it's a slightly different product for sale versus rental. And, you know, you can cut and slice and dice the same way as we do lifestyle.
You can ultimately just sell a portion of your build-to-rent production and make it capital light or capital free as well, given we're producing at half the, you know, half the market value. So we can free up that capital again, given how cheap our cost of production is relative to the market value of the completed product.
Okay. And one more, if I may. Just again, on the FY 2026 and 2027 guidance excludes any contribution from Australind, Ravenswood, and Wallaroo. What's a realistic timeframe for first settlements, and when might, you know, you think those projects will enter the guidance framework?
You've put me in a tough spot here, Lionel. I think we're trying to get all of those approvals at the moment. We think Ravenswood, we're a good chance of, you know, getting the DA through this half. And then from that point, it's about getting civil guys mobilized, and then, you know, there's an outside chance you could maybe have some in the tail end of FY 2027, but, you know, probably not likely. We're also in the process, 'cause we're doing civil works at Ravenswood already, and we're doing other civil works, shortly in Meadowbrooke, too. We'll be getting a bit of a contractor base, so that we'll be able to get those guys to roll straight into those projects straight away from Meadowbrooke, which is in Boyanup, to Australind.
Australind, we're in the process of getting the DA to go in. We've been in discussions with council on that quite closely. And, you know, it won't be a shock to them what we'll be putting up. There'll be naturally some negotiation required. I expect that would be in the next six months as well, and then the same sort of program where there's an outside chance of completing in the tail end of 2027, but-
I'd be putting my life on it. And then the other one, Wallaroo, what we're looking at the moment is the first portion of that is around the rim of the site are existing residential allotments that had prior approvals and have largely all of the infrastructure in place. We'll be lodging those DAs first, which is essentially to try and bring back to life the prior approvals. They should be largely uncontroversial, famous last words. And then, following on from that, we'll put in the DA for the lifestyle village, and that will then, you know, take probably another six months or so, and same again. Outside chance of the tail end of 2027, but wouldn't put my life on it.
We're also still working away on Normanville and Adelaide Caravan Park, so-
Yeah.
They're both very, very much not gonna be in FY 27.
Right. Right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from Monty Swift from Taylor Collison.
Hi, guys. Congrats on the result. Just one from me. John, you said, you know, spent AUD 30 million on the refurb on parks the last few years, but, I mean, it seems like you're getting close to refurbing most of the opportunity, and you're doing The Cove at the moment. Are there any other sort of opportunities there and potentially the Adelaide RVs? Thank you.
Yeah. So you're right that we have gone through and refurbed most of the cabin stock within the parks. There are still probably some more to do, and naturally, as time goes on, the ones, you know, there are ones that five years ago might not have needed anything, and now they do. So there's a little bit of a rolling process that we'll go through with those. In terms of the RV, Adelaide RVs, that is definitely an area that we're doing. So as the retirement village level leases vacate, what we're doing is we're looking at doing refurbs on those and then trying to maximize the residential lease that we can get.
And so there's probably, you know, somewhere around about, you know, 15-20 of those that we'd be looking to do a year. And that's an area that we think as well, that over time, there may be a further refurbishment should you come to look to potentially sell some, so some of those at some point. And then in terms of other refurbishment works, nothing. There's bits and pieces across the apartment portfolio, which is actually largely to do with some of the external works. So when we did the Perth apartments, we obviously spent a lot of time very quickly trying to get all of the internals done so that we could lease them up quickly and get some income.
Now, what we're doing is we're actually going back to some of those ones and doing some of the external works, and that will include things like common facilities and gardens and those sorts of things, which actually do probably increase rents as well, and there will be a return on those. But that's once again, not probably traditionally what you've thought of as a refurbishment. It's sort of a broader refurbishment of the portfolio.
So sort of as a sidebar, Monty, the other thing—there's two other things that we're doing at the moment. One is for the lifestyle villages, upgrading the clubhouses, and a lot of work's been done on those. Some of them are already complete, and the next bit of that is doing the externals, so things like pickleball and pools and bowling greens. So that work is advancing, and that's making the product and also the sales velocity a lot better. And the other thing that we're doing is, I guess, the smaller sort of opportunities in really good locations. So Fivea sh, we've got a DA in for 12 more one-bedders, and in the Perth apartments, we're close to putting, hopefully, our first DA in for additional units as well.
So those extra things where the land really isn't in at zero cost should be pretty good opportunities for us.
Thanks, Patrick and John.
As there are no further questions at this time, I'll hand back to the Aspen management team for the closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Tuan. Thank you, everyone, for joining today. As always, we're available whenever you need us, so feel free to touch base. Thank you very much.
Okay, that concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your attendance and patience, and you are now disconnected from the meeting.