When you’re holidaying in a pretty coastal town, do you ever start fantasising about rallying your friends together to buy a decent plot of land? A place where you could all build houses and create an idyllic community filled with your favourite people and pastimes? Somewhere with a shared garden, a resort-style pool and all the amenities you’d expect at a top resort. A welcoming haven for you – and somewhere your adult kids are actually happy to visit.
It’s less of a fantasy than you might think. Land-lease communities like Palm Lake Resort have quietly been building exactly this, and the over-50s who’ve made the move say it’s rewritten everything they thought they knew about retirement.
The industry is starting to agree: Palm Lake Resort Pelican Waters has spent 2026 collecting one honour after another, from a Best Tourism & Leisure Facility win at the Master Builders Sunshine Coast Housing & Construction Awards to a swag of six wins at this year’s PropertyGuru Awards in Sydney. It’s the kind of recognition that tends to follow when a community actually delivers on what it promises.
More time
Downsizing has always been sold as giving something up. In reality, the homeowners trading a big backyard for a low-maintenance house are the ones with time back on their side – for travel, grandchildren, hobbies they’d shelved for decades, and friends they finally have room to see.
More connection
The old idea of retirement as a quiet withdrawal doesn’t hold up anymore. Communities like this run on shared spaces – clubhouses, pools, gardens, activities – built specifically so neighbours become friends rather than just people you wave to. It’s this sense of a genuinely lived-in, well-loved community that recently earned Palm Lake Resort Pelican Waters the Property Council of Australia’s top honour for Best Community Land Lease Development in the country.
More freedom
Lock-up-and-leave living matters more than ever to people who still want to travel. A resort-style home means you can close the door for a month and know the gardens, the pool and the place itself are being looked after without you.
More choice
The best time to make this move isn’t when you have to – it’s while you’re still fit, active and capable of choosing the lifestyle you actually want, rather than the one circumstances hand you later.
More financial flexibility
For many, the property decision has become part of a broader retirement strategy, not just a housing one – freeing up capital and reducing the ongoing costs of maintaining a larger, older home.
Palm Lake Resort has spent almost 50 years refining this model. Since 1977, the family-owned company has grown to 27 communities across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, home to more than 12,000 homeowners who’ve traded mowing and maintenance for architecturally designed homes and neighbours who become friends.
At Pelican Waters, that vision took shape as a genuine Palm Springs-inspired resort, anchored by a $55 million country club and preceded by an $80 million capital investment before the first house was even built. It’s the kind of ambition that turns a retirement community into a national award winner – and a lifestyle worth fantasising about.
New homes are now selling at Palm Lake Resort Pelican Waters, Bargara, Paynesville, Yamba Cove and Forster Lakes. This is your time.
You’ve spent decades looking after a family home. This is your time for a home that looks after you. Established in 1977, Palm Lake Resort pioneered over-50s resort living in Australia, and almost fifty years on, we’re still family-owned. Across 27 communities, more than 12,000 homeowners have traded the mowing, the maintenance and the spare rooms for architecturally designed homes, world-class resort facilities and neighbours who become friends. New homes are now selling at five locations across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
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