Dear Rocket ... I notice that you are a fan of dropping markets ... maybe you should think about a more suitable pen name ;); Dropping is not good for rockets :);
We absolutely agree that both stock markets as well as property markets are cyclical, however for both is the down cycle always smaller than the up cycle and - to be fair - at least in NZ was the property down cycle over the last 100 years or so typically characterised by lower or stagnating growth rates, not a sharp drop in prices.
It is easy to understand why property crashes are always softer than share market crashes. Selling a share in panic is easy. Just press a button. Haven't yet found a button to sell our house, though - and there is always the problem where my family and I would live if I panic sell the house ;p;
But back to retirement stocks. If we look at the GFC - Ryman (the only at that stage listed retirement village provider) lost during the GFC peak to bottom roughly 50% in value. This is a lot, but than - Ryman had at that stage only limited earnings - i.e. it was rated as "growth" stock.
Sum has much better earnings (and dividends) than Ryman had at that stage - it has currently already a PE which would stand up, even if there is no growth at all from here. So - even if we assume things are getting as worse as during the GFC, it would be unlikely it would drop 50% off peak - and it is anyway already 23% down, so where do you think they are going?
To top that - there are not many experts expecting a serious downturn at this stage (and certainly not another GFC). There is still a serious housing shortage in NZ and out current government would need to reign for millenia to fix that, given their prevailing build rate of some 30 houses per year. Did I forget to mention that there are still more people coming in than going out? Need more houses. Ouch.
How do I summarise that in the nicest possible terms? I think your thesis of a housing crash combined with a retirement stock crash (or vice versa) is standing on quite weak feet. But than - everybody is entitled to their opinion ... and if people would not disagree on their assessment of the market, their would not be a market.
I like it that our views disagree - let's just wait and see who is right - shall we?
Happy droppings ;);