Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ingenia Communities Group FY 2022 results teleconference and wWebcast. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Simon Owen, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and I'm pleased to be presenting what I believe is a strong result in an incredibly challenging market. I thought I would make a few opening comments before getting into depth by PowerPoint. Let's get the challenges and bad news out of the way. Our holiday parks in New South Wales and Victoria were effectively closed to short-term guests for the first four months of the year. Many of our development sites, particularly in Southeast Queensland, were significantly impacted by constant heavy rain at the beginning of this calendar year, forcing multiple site closures and construction delays. We continue to experience chronic labor shortages at both our development sites and regional communities, and the cost of attracting and retaining great talent continues to escalate. We are continuing to navigate unprecedented supply chain and sequencing challenges.
Construction costs are up at least 25% over the last 12 months, and the timeframe for new home construction is now up from four months to between six and eight months, depending upon the location. The near-term economic outlook indicates that we are entering a recession with rising interest rates, rapidly rising inflation, and declining consumer sentiment. There are some positives. Across basically every aspect of our business, rental, new home sales, and holidays, we are grappling with incredibly strong levels of demand, which show absolutely no signs of dissipating. In the key outer metro and regional markets where we are building communities and selling homes, we are just not seeing the evidence of the impending 10%-20% drop in resi markets that the experts in the metro broadsheets keep jawboning.
In markets like Geelong, Port Stephens, Moreton Bay, Toowoomba, and Hervey Bay, prices for freestanding homes are broadly holding, volumes remain strong, and days on market remains tight. Ingenia employs over 30 in-house residential sales experts who are interacting with literally thousands of customers every week, and today, I'm not getting any suggestion of a market in decline. The key demographic drivers that underpins Ingenia's business model remain firmly in place. An aging population, a housing affordability crisis, especially with rental accommodation, the population drift to the regions, and strong domestic travel. We are enjoying strong pricing power, and we have inbuilt inflation protection. Our business model remains highly leveraged to the COVID reopening play. We are enjoying increasing demand from changing work habits, and Ingenia is a sector leader with sustainability and carbon reduction. At its essence, Ingenia's business is underpinned by owning land and collecting cash rent.
A significant component of this rent is supported by Commonwealth pension and rent assistance. This is supplemented by low risk, high velocity, and profitable development of regional and outer metro lifestyle communities geared towards the rapidly growing number of downsizers and young retirees across the East Coast. COVID and subsequent supply chain blockages and labor shortages continue to impact and disrupt elements of our business model. It has also accelerated macro trends and consumer behaviors, which are hugely positive for both Ingenia's immediate and longer-term growth aspirations. Many companies have used COVID as an opportunity to shrink or resize their operations. After some careful consideration, Ingenia used this period as an opportunity to significantly expand our market share and operational footprint. Ingenia is a significantly larger business today than when we entered into COVID back in February 2020.
The value of investment properties we own or manage is up over 90% to AUD 2.1 billion. The number of communities we own or manage is up 46% to 110 communities. The size of our development pipeline, a great indicator for future growth and profitability, has increased by upwards of 55%. Ingenia is one of the fastest-growing REITs in Australia, and I would comfortably predict that we are only several years into a 30-year super cycle being driven by the aging of the population and the desire for high-quality community living.
Joining me on the call today are a number of the Ingenia executive team, including Scott Noble, our CFO, Donna Byrne, who heads up investor relations and sustainability, Natalie Kwok, our chief investment officer, Justin Blomfield, who heads up residential communities, Matt Young, who heads up our holiday parks, and Von Slater, who leads our development business. I'll now move on to slide 2, which is about executing on strategy. As noted earlier, Ingenia has utilized the disruption of COVID as a once-in-a-decade opportunity to build longer-term sustainable market share and slingshot past the competition. We have unrivaled networks across the sectors that we operate in, and our ability to originate and execute upon M&A opportunities is without peer. Over the past 12 months, we have increased our total assets under ownership or management by some 61%.
Lifestyle communities now represent over 55% of group assets, and our development pipeline comprises some 6,580 future development sites, which will underpin many years of future growth. Over 90% of our development pipeline is located in Queensland or coastal New South Wales, which is increasingly where many downsizing Australians wish to live, driven by quality of life, value, and the ability to release equity from the sale of their family home. The holiday domestic thematic will be with Australians far longer than many of us are thinking, and Ingenia is strongly leveraged to this story. Our forward bookings are up strongly when compared to pre-COVID levels, and Ingenia is now the largest owner of holiday parks on the East Coast.
The two most popular regions in Australia for caravanning and camping is both heading north and heading south out of Sydney, and these are two markets where Ingenia is the clear, unassailable market leader. The group continues to prioritize our ESG program, which remains core to our strategy and aligned with our vision, purpose, and values. We remain a leader in diversity and inclusion and are well advanced with our Green Star strategy for pending new lifestyle community developments. I'll now just touch on slide 3, which is the result summary. As noted previously, today Ingenia announces a strong result, but not without its challenges. Our revenue was up 14% to AUD 338 million.
Our underlying earnings per security was marginally down to AUD 0.233, reflecting the drag on earnings as we move to deploy the proceeds from last year's capital raising. Over the course of the year, we completed over AUD 650 million of acquisitions. We added 30 communities and development projects to our business, and we settled a record 409 homes. I'm now going to hand over to Scott to discuss in more detail the group's financial performance and capital management.
Thanks very much, Simon. I'm going to start on slide 6. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. 2022 was both a transformational year and also another challenging year. While we started the year with mandated lockdowns and managed through cost growth, supply chain, and labor shortages, positively, we're seeing the demand grow for our lifestyle, rental, and holiday businesses. We've grown the group's total assets by over 60% this year. We materially increased the group's recurring rental cash flows, and we grew the group's development pipeline by a further 2,360 sites, which underpins future growth and future development returns. During the year, we added 28 individual assets to the Ingenia balance sheet with a further two greenfield development sites added to the joint venture. We now own or manage 110 individual properties.
While revenue grew 14%, pleasingly the group's non-development revenue grew 35% on prior year through acquisition, inflation-linked rental increases, and strong growth in occupancy and rate in the tourism business once COVID restrictions eased. The group's statutory EPS was up 19%, driven by positive valuations as cap rates continued to compress across the portfolio through the year. Underlying EPS was marginally down on prior year. While underlying profit increased AUD 10.7 million, EPS was adversely impacted by lost earnings from tourism and development due to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions and supply chain constraints. EPS was also impacted by the November equity raise, which increased the mix of earnings to yielding assets and increased securities on issue.
A final distribution of AUD 0.058 per security has been declared, taking the full year distribution to AUD 0.11 per security, up 4.8% on prior year. Moving to slide 7. The group delivered an 8% growth in EBIT, driven by strong growth in the group's lifestyle rental and holidays businesses, offset by a reduction in development earnings. Our lifestyle rental business result benefited from new acquisitions and rent increases linked to inflation, with lifestyle EBIT growing 62% on the prior year result. While our development business experienced significantly stronger demand and settlements grew on prior year, the major focus was on the management of supply chain, labor, and cost increases that impacted the business.
As flagged to the market, we recorded a lower above ground average development profit in FY 2022, following the completion of the group's Latitude One project in 2021. The development business also incurred increased costs in FY 2022 associated with projects that will deliver future settlements. The Ingenia Gardens result grew from the acquisition of the new Victorian village and continued to deliver strong cash flow and margin to the group, ending the year with an occupancy of 95.5%. After a slow start to the year with lockdowns, the holiday result was up 23% on FY 2021, driven by acquisitions, rate growth, and increased occupancy. The contribution from our capital partnerships was positively impacted by performance fee and realized gain on co-investment on the wind-up of the group's fund that held three lifestyle assets in Victoria.
The earnings from the JV with some communities grew strongly on the back of increased settlements. As we've materially increased our asset base, corporate costs have increased to support this growth. Turning to slide 8. The group's balance sheet and capital position are well positioned for current economic conditions, with gearing of 20.6% and an LVR of 25.7% at June 30, compared to a covenant of 55%. The group's debt facility has increased AUD 255 million to AUD 780 million. These facilities have a weighted average debt maturity of 4.4 years. Our current hedging is 51% of our June 30, drawn debt level.
At June 30, we had AUD 125 million of fixed debt in place and increased our hedging by a further AUD 100 million in late July and early August when pricing eased. The group's AUD 225 million of hedging has a weighted average tenor of 3.7 years, with an average hedge base rate over the next 2.5 years through to January 2025 being a minimum of 1.5% and maximum of 1.83%, depending on the prevailing BBSY rate due to having collars in place. At June 30, the average cost of debt drawn inclusive of margin was 2.1%, and the fixed base rate on the AUD 125 million of hedging in place was 0.7%.
While we're facing cost growth pressures through higher inflation interest rates, revenue from our residential rental contracts are inflation-linked and delivered a 5% like-for-like rental growth across the year, outperforming median inflation. Moving to slide 9. Strong valuation gains were delivered over the year and in the second half, with growing demand for lifestyle assets driving cap rate compression. Average cap rates in lifestyle compressed by 59 basis points over the year to an average of 5.21%, with our premium Latitude One project now valued at a 4.65% cap rate. While the average cap rates compressed marginally in our holidays and Ingenia Gardens portfolios over the year, the cap rates used by valuers still remain high, at 7.45% and 9.02% respectively. The positive impact of valuation uplifts to the result was partly offset by transaction costs and stamp duty on new acquisitions and the realization of development profits on development projects. Thank you.
Thanks, Scott. I'll now move to page 12 and discuss our lifestyle rental business, where we grew the number of income-producing sites by some 57% over the year. We're also able to expand our operating margin by 170 basis points and achieve same-store rent growth of 5% for the period, which compares to weighted CPI for the same period of around 3%. The quality and resilience of this business cannot be overstated. We have high quality CPI-linked rents supported by government pensions or transfer payments and Commonwealth rental assistance. We are experiencing rapidly growing demand, both for over 55 years and all age, with limited new supply being delivered, particularly at the lower and mid-pricing quartiles. We are scalable in both metro and regional markets.
We enjoy strong pricing power with new homes, and we are delivering quality, measurable, and increasing social and sustainability outcomes, and Ingenia has the first mover advantage. On slide 13, we discuss Ingenia Gardens, which is Australia's original build-to-rent business, established over 20 years ago. During the year, we were able to hold record levels of occupancy, expand our operating margins by 140 basis points, grow rents in line with CPI, acquire an additional community in Melbourne southeastern suburbs, and enhance ongoing resident health and welfare with our unique Ingenia Connect program. Let's move to slide 14, lifestyle development. Over the course of the year, we settled a record 409 homes with a further 18 homes in our funds management business. Margins contracted by around 500 basis points when compared to the prior year, principally driven by a lower average sales price.
This is a sales mix issue and reflects the 2021 sellout of our highly successful Latitude One community in Port Stephens. This also impacted the development earnings. I would expect both margin and earnings to recover and improve in this current financial year, reflecting the higher price projects we are now bringing to market, as well as scale efficiencies. I think the virtue of developing land lease communities cannot be overstated. You can achieve a return of your capital, plus a profit during development. Then you get an ongoing return on your capital, which is the rent on the asset you have created. You certainly don't get that in office sheds, retail, or most other commercial property classes. Our development business has absolutely been impacted by supply chain disruption and labor shortages over the course of the year.
As noted earlier, demand currently strongly exceeds our near-term ability to supply. However, we are presently sitting on over 430 deposits and contracts, which provides us with great visibility on future settlements. On page 16, we have mapped out the median house price and price growth achieved over the past 12 months in the regions where our core developments are underway, as well as in a few new planned communities that we are about to commence. As you can see, 14 of the 17 regions where we have projects in market or soon to launch have experienced price growth over the last 12 months of at least 20%, with several materially above that level. Our sector remains supply-constrained and demand continues to grow.
Prices in these markets are generally holding firm and demonstrating much greater resilience than Metro Sydney and Melbourne. Ingenia also continues to offer a broad range of price points, both within individual projects and between projects, enabling us to gain the maximum share of the addressable market. Finally, on development on page 17, our greenfields development strategy remains a major driver of future growth in rental earnings and delivering sustainable communities.
Demand remains very strong and prices robust. However, supply constraints and labor shortages remain key near-term risks. We presently have 12 projects underway, and we are forecasting a further 10 projects commencing development in the current year. We fully intend to maintain our position as the leading developer of land lease communities in Australia. We also presently have over 500 homes now under construction or ordered with our core builders, with more to follow.
In the current financial year, we are targeting between 525 and 550 new home settlements, and between 2,000 and 2,200 new home settlements over the next three years, and we would see further growth beyond that. There is a risk to the upside and the downside on these forecasts, principally around access to labor. I'll now touch on our holiday business, which is on pages 19 and 20 of the presentation. Ingenia now owns the largest portfolio of holiday parks on the East Coast, with a network extending from the Great Barrier Reef to the Great Ocean Road. Over the course of the year, we added 11 parks to the network and increased our site numbers by 36% to over 7,200 income-yielding sites. We grew holiday parks income by 35% to over AUD 71 million.
Earnings were up by 23% to over AUD 35 million, and we expanded our operating margin by 90 basis points to 39.7%. On a same-store basis, we were able to grow our room rate by 30% and our occupancy by 7%. I would also note that these numbers would have been materially stronger had our parks in Victoria and New South Wales not effectively being closed to short-term guests for the first four months of the year. Based on forward bookings and the inconvenience and cost associated with traveling overseas, we anticipate the strong demand for our holiday parks to continue for the foreseeable future. On page 22, we discuss our development partnership with Sun, who is the largest global owner, operator, and developer of lifestyle and holiday communities.
Our partnership is progressing well, and we're reporting strong sales at our first development project at Burpengary, just north of Brisbane, and we have several new projects breaking ground as we speak. Our share of earnings from the JV is up sharply to over AUD 8 million, driven by improved underlying profits from selling new homes and investment property gains. Once a community has been developed in the JV and it's been sold down, then Ingenia has an option to acquire Sun Communities' interest at market value, which continues to feed our origination machine. Touching on sustainability on page 25, I would like to highlight a couple of key achievements. We completed the construction of our first Green Star home under the GBCA pilot program in recent months, and this home, located on the New South Wales Mid-North Coast, is presently undergoing final certification.
For the second year in a row, Ingenia ranked second nationally for women in executive leadership roles as per the CEW Senior Executive Census. We are making great progress towards our goal of a carbon-neutral operation by 2035, with a continuing solar and LED investment program now in place across over 52 communities. I'll now finally move to outlook on page 31. In the current year, we would anticipate further modest levels of acquisitions. However, the key focus will be on accelerating the build-out of our development pipeline, organic expansion, and platform enhancement. We are categorically not looking at raising new capital within Ingenia.
We are anticipating strong trading conditions for our holiday communities, both in terms of occupancy and rate growth, and continuing strong performance with our lifestyle and seniors rental communities. As noted previously, we are targeting between 525 and 550 new home settlements in the current financial year and between 2,000 and 2,200 new home settlements over the three years to FY 2025. The key risk here, as I've noted previously, is around labor availability and our ability to complete new homes in a timely and cost-effective manner.
In terms of guidance, we are forecasting EBIT growth of between 30% and 35% and underlying EPS growth of between 5% and 10%. There is both some modest downside and upside risk to these targets, noting that we presently have over 500 homes under construction or on order and have some 433 contracts and deposits on hand. That's all Scott and I were going to present today, so we're now delighted to hand over to Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star- one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star- two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from [Michael Kit] from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, Simon and Scott. Congratulations on the result in a difficult environment. Just first question, just on the guidance on developments 525-550, could you give us a rough split on what you think it might be, the joint ventures' contribution there?
Yeah. Thanks very much, Michael. Yeah, look, the joint venture is probably going to deliver about 10%-15% of that.
Great. Thank you. Just on the rents, 5% last year on the permanent sites, what sort of rent increase do you envisage for 2023?
Yeah. Look, we would like, we'd be anticipating to at least keep up with inflation, Michael. It'll depend where the inflation lands over the year, but we'd certainly like to exceed inflation.
Okay. Just final one on acquisitions and CapEx. Simon, what's your thoughts in terms of pursuing further acquisitions? What's the pipeline like and do you expect many completions this year? Just on CapEx, if I could, Scott, what's the sort of guide you could give there, maybe a rough split between the you know, CapEx associated with new homes and the other parts of the business? Thank you.
Yeah, look, I think around acquisitions, look, [Natalie leads an acquisitions team of eight people, and we're not doing feasibilities for practice. We're going to continue to acquire additional properties, and that'll be mature, stabilized land lease communities, iconic coastal holiday parks, and we're going to continue to, you know, option up land in the key growth corridors that we're looking at. I really don't think we would be looking at any portfolio. It'll be, you know, more targeted assets and sites in the key growth corridors that we have identified. Yeah, I would expect that between now and, you know, our next reporting season in February, we'll probably announce, you know, another four or five acquisitions.
Yeah, Michael, just to answer your question on CapEx. Yeah, for sort of FY 2023, just in terms of where we are at this point in the year, I'd be penciling in around AUD 100-AUD 110 million of CapEx with Ingenia head office. That'll be sort of in that AUD 70 million-AUD 75 million range for development EMWs or earthworks. AUD 10 million-AUD 12 million in new tourism cabins and refurbishments. AUD 8 million-AUD 10 million in continuing to roll out our rental cabins and operating CapEx across the group of about AUD 10 million-AUD 12 million. There'll be a further AUD 50 million-AUD 60 million of CapEx within the joint venture as well. That's obviously funded separately through equity contributions from both Ingenia and Sun, as well as its own debt facility.
Great. Thanks, Simon. Thanks, Scott.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Bodor from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for your time. I'd just be interested in, you know, the leading indicators of development being sort of sales and inquiry and more specifically sales in June, July and what you've seen in August so far, and sort of more of that inquiry piece. Has it sort of changed in the last couple of months, or has it been relatively consistent with last year?
Yeah. I think, Tom, firstly, the level of settlements in July and August, you know, will be relatively modest. We sucked forward a lot of settlements that we would have otherwise expected in July and August into May and June. At all of our sites, we had, you know, our traditional May, June scramble. There won't be a lot of settlements in July and August. We have changed our sales strategy. In years gone by, we would typically start selling a stage at the same time as we commit it to the builder. Then by the time the homes are ready, we would have residents ready to move in.
We've now changed that so that we're really not releasing homes to the market until we have absolute certainty on the final costs, and the homes are approaching completion. That's, I guess, a change that we've adopted over the last six to 12 months. In terms of what we're hearing at the site level, what we're experiencing, there's been no significant slowdown. There's certainly a lot of cautiousness out there from seniors. They're reading what's in the headlines and listening to the radio about what's going on in the residential market. They're still coming out, they're still making their deposits, they're still commencing their sales journey.
You know, those key outer metro markets and the regional markets that I noted, you know, markets like Hervey Bay, Port Stephens, Geelong, Toowoomba, you know, the markets are holding pretty firm there. You know, we're getting a lot of interest in those markets. Probably our softer communities at the moment would be the two communities we have in Logan, where, you know, they are in effectively a broader part of Brisbane, and that has slowed down, you know, marginally. You know, we're very confident that we remain well-positioned to hit that 525 - 550 settlements.
You know, I think probably, you know, going back six months ago, when we would've been thinking about the settlements for the current year, I would've thought we would be on track to achieve, you know, a higher level in this current year. We've had to temper our forecast slightly just as an acknowledgement that, you know, it is incredibly challenging out there with labor, particularly, you know, down in Victoria to get the trades and, you know, I reference the sequencing challenges there that, you know, if your roofers don't turn up on a particular day, then you can't do all the tiling and putting in the windows and so, you know, it is incredibly challenging out there. I think in, you know, 30 years that I've been doing this, I've never experienced market conditions like that.
That's clear. Just on the sort of inquiry, though, has there been a drop-off in monthly inquiries since, say, the main interest rate increases, or has it just been steady relatively?
Look, I think, you know, absolutely the level of inquiry has dropped off slightly, but not in any way that. You know, we still, I think I mentioned it, you know, four or five times during the presentation, that we are not experiencing any challenges with demand. We're experiencing supply chain challenges, and so we have zero homes in inventory at the moment. Every home that, you know, we have under construction at the moment has already been pre-sold, and that's, you know, well in excess of 250 homes. We won't be releasing any of the homes that we're about to start construction on until, you know, they're probably three months into the journey.
The level of inquiry has dropped off slightly, but certainly, you know, not that it would cause us to change our forecast. We're in a position where seniors have been sitting on their hands right through COVID. The pent-up demand is immense. You know, when we do release product to the market, it's traditionally, you know, deposited out within, you know, days or weeks of release. You know, we're not concerned with that any way. We just have to, you know, be realistic that the, you know, the RBA has been raising interest rates.
I'm not pretending that consumer sentiment hasn't moved to, you know, from a positive bias to a negative bias, but consumers are sitting on a lot of money. You know, we've got wait lists of people who are interested in the next releases, you know, which are incredibly deep and, you know, we're very confident that every new project we're bringing to market, we'll, you know, we'll be able to sell that down at very profitable margins as quickly as we release it.
It's clear. Now, just onto the supply chain issues. Some of your peers, not probably land lease peers, but some of your resi developer peers have talked about very early signs that some of those pressures are easing. Have you seen anything to suggest that, be it on the material side? I appreciate labor's still very hard, but are there any signs or is it still just as it was, say, three months ago?
Look, we're definitely seeing that, you know, going back three or six months ago, the ability to access steel and timber in particular, but also, you know, tapware, glass, gyprock, some of the other key inputs into building a home, you know, that was incredibly challenging. That has broadly eased up now. Labor is the key challenge. I think Von, our Head of Development's on the call. So Von, why don't you give Tom, I guess, your assessment of what you're experiencing.
Hi, Tom. Thanks, Simon. Look, Simon's right. Certainly labor is the most challenging. The supply a lot more manageable and somewhat easier to mitigate. You know, we've got a fantastic pipeline at Ingenia Lifestyle, at Ingenia Communities, and we are really focused on pairing up with key suppliers all the way through specifications. That's giving us great pricing. It's giving us that front-of-queue access, and that's really helping us, I guess, shore up some of the delays in supply. Really it's the labor. There's a number of things we're doing with our contractors where we can to help with labor, but we're feeling a lot more comfortable in the supply side rather than the labor.
Von, I'm glad you clarified where you work.
Cannot believe I just said that.
Yeah. Okay. No, that's great. Just one final one on the hedging. You know, I suppose clearly debt costs are going up, hedging's relatively low, and there's some different instruments used there to protect you on the rate. How do I think about hedging, say, at the end of FY 2023 and into 2024? You know, where do you want to be hedged ideally from a debt perspective?
Yeah. No, thanks for that, Tom. Well, look, we're going to continue to try and target that 50% level. Obviously depends on pricing versus market expectations, but yeah, we're at 50% now, and we'll continue to try and maintain that level as being hedged. We will look at different instruments. We just placed AUD 100 million of collars at the end of July, beginning of August. That has given us a little bit of participation going forward. It also gives us, I suppose, a cap level as well. I've included those in the presentation.
Okay, sorry, or is that included in the 51%?
That's included in the 51%. Just as pricing declined in late July, we took the opportunity to put on some additional hedging.
Okay, thanks. Can you confirm that you haven't used capital to put hedging in place, so you haven't paid anything for the hedges?
On the collars we've just put in in late July, August, there's a premium of AUD 1.4 million f or three years' columns.
Yep. No, that's great. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Druce from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning, Simon. Good morning, Scott. Can we just talk about margins next year? You're expecting a bit of a bounce back. What kind of bounce back are we expecting?
Yeah, James, I would, you know, think that we'd be targeting a reversion to the margin that we enjoyed in FY 2021. There's a number of factors at play there. Firstly, a majority of the new communities that we're bringing to market are priced at a much higher level than, you know, the communities that we have had in the market. So, you know, back in FY 2021 and FY 2020, we, you know, were selling basically 100 homes a year at Latitude One for close to AUD 400,000 margin, which is around double what we are currently achieving. When we strip that out in the year that just finished, that obviously had a significant impact on the EBIT and the margin in our development business.
The new projects we're bringing to market are increasingly going to be priced at a similar level to Latitude One. The higher priced homes, the greater the typically the margin is. Secondly, we are getting scale efficiency. We've got great sales and development teams in place, and the more homes that we can pump through the system, that ends up lowering the dollar cost of producing those homes. That has a very significant impact as well. I guess the unknown at the moment is just where we are going to be with the cost of building the homes. Labor typically represents around 55% of the cost of a home.
You know, that is continuing to go up. I was pretty, you know, clear that over the last 12 months, we've seen the cost of building a home go up by at least 25%. That has, you know, impacted our margins. Equally, you know, I wouldn't believe everything you read in The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald. If you look at the data that we put into the presentation, the markets where we're building the vast majority of our homes, which is up at Port Stephens, Toowoomba, Hervey Bay, you know, out at Redlands, those housing markets are remaining very firm. You know, volumes are continuing to flow through and days on market are remaining tight. We think we're going to have additional pricing power. There's very little stock out there in the market, whether it's land lease or new residential homes. I mean, apartments is a little bit different. You know, we fully expect that we'll be able to raise our prices sufficiently to, you know, recover any additional input costs that we experience in the current year.
Okay. That's clear. What sort of skew do you expect first half, second half? Is it going to be similar to the prior year, or is there anything to call out there?
Look, we would normally be 1/3 first half, 2/3 second half, and I would expect the skew will be possibly even more profound than that. The primary reason for that is that pre-COVID, it would take us on average 12-16 weeks to build a home. From the time we appointed the builder to the time we could hand over the home to the incoming homeowner, you know, completely landscaped, completely finished, was between 12 and 16 weeks. Now, you know, we're looking at, you know, at best it's 24 weeks and it can be, you know, as long as 36 weeks. That means that the homes that we don't currently have under construction aren't going to be completed until well into the second half of this year. That combined with the, you know, the additional 10 communities that we're launching this year, you know, I would expect that we could be looking at something like, you know, 25% of new home settlements in the first half and, you know, 75% in the second half.
That's clear. Thank you. Maybe just one more, if I may. If you look at the Holiday result, are we sort of at the run rate for 2023, are we kind of doing a bit more than the second half annualized, or how are we thinking about that?
Look, Matt Young, who heads up our Holidays business, is on the line. Matt, do you want to take that question from James?
Yeah, thanks, Simon. Hi, James. Look, we are seeing exceptional short lead trading at the moment. The next three months is looking very positive. Obviously, the summer period for us is our peak period through the year. Then we also see April around that Easter holiday period showing strong trading conditions.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star -one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Andy McFarlane from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, guys. Thanks for your time. Look, just some questions around the guidance. You mentioned on the call just around some up and downside items. Can you just sort of talk to what actually are the pillars or the, you know, constituents sitting within the guidance for FY 2023?
Scott, I think that's got you written all over it.
Excellent. Thanks, Andy. I appreciate the question. Look, the really top-end, bottom-end are really driven by settlements and that settlement range we've provided. There's also a little bit of a mix in there in terms of, you know, some of that coming through the joint venture and also within Ingenia with the split. We've given a bit of a range around that. Tourism is probably the other one. You know, there is a bit of certainly flex in the forecast around that, depending how the tourism result goes and, you know, should there be any events during the year. Main one is settlements.
Got it. In terms of the tourism, you're sort of thinking status quo on this year .
Look, it'll have an impact on acquisitions we made during this year, so you'd expect to see the full year impact of that come through for tourism. You're also going to see recovery of the lost revenue that we lost in the first half from the COVID lockdowns.
Yep, got it. Makes sense.
I would expect further material upside in our holidays business for this financial year compared to last year. You know, because we, as I noted, we had effectively no short-term income coming through our New South Wales and Victorian holiday parks for the first four months of the year, plus interstate travelers could not travel into our holiday parks in Queensland. We've also, you know, undertaken a significant organic investment program, putting in additional cabins, and we're also, you know, continuing to find that as we keep pushing prices, particularly for cabins, that, you know, we're not meeting any, you know, real resistance yet.
You know, I think we're going to get, you know, a full year contribution from a lot more parks, plus, you know, further rate expansion and occupancy growth. You know, in holiday parks, we basically segment the year into, you know, off-peak, shoulder, and, you know, high. At the moment, you know, in winter, this would be our off-peak time, and pretty much every one of our holiday parks within two or three hours of a capital city is full every weekend. We've got families bringing their young kids out of school on a Thursday, going up to the parks on a Friday. We're seeing gray nomads with their new caravans heading out in numbers that we've never seen before. We can't really overstate how well that holiday parks business is performing at the moment.
Got it. That's helpful. Just in terms of Sun as well, is there any assets that are planned to be acquired over the next 2023 or 2024? W hat's the thinking or outlook there?
Do you mean for Ingenia to acquire any completed communities within the JV?
That's right.
The first community is still probably another 18 months away from stabilization, which is our Freshwater community up in Burpengary . Yeah, and we would, you know, intend to exercise our option to acquire that. And then the next communities, we're starting two on the New South Wales Mid North Coast. They're both, you know, premium boutique communities of typically, you know, 110- 130 homes, and I would anticipate they'll sell out within 12 months. Again, you know, we would be looking to exercise our option there. You know, premium, irreplaceable communities in markets readily accessible to Sydney and, you know, we would see those or consider those as irreplaceable assets.
Got it. That's helpful. One last one for me, just back sort of on the guidance part of this. Is there a number that you're assuming there's going to be a lot of other rates in terms of making an assumption around BBSY or BBSW? Is there an assumption you guys have in your guidance for that base rate ?
It's just basically the latest curve at the moment that was basically last week when we put the guidance together on Friday, updated it for the latest current curve shape and pricing that's coming through that. We've also got the hedging in place that we've got that will obviously reduce the impact of that BBSY.
Got it. Thanks, guys. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Owen for closing remarks.
Thank you for your time this morning, and Donna, Scott, and myself look forward to catching up with everyone over the coming weeks. In terms of key priorities and news flow over the next six months, we're going to continue to be focused around accelerating the build-out of our development pipeline, rolling out further key sustainability initiatives and priorities, progressing our successful development partnership with Sun Communities, executing on identified organic growth opportunities, particularly within our rental and holiday communities, and closing on a few targeted acquisitions.