Senior Citizens Housing : Real estate developers are targeting untapped segment
senior citizen of India
In country, real estate developers are focusing on the untapped segment where demand is still high and that untapped segment is senior homes however; the rest of the real estate market is showcasing the dull effect and there are less sales and more inventory available in all over Mumbai. Some premium real estate developers such as; Adani Realty, Silverglades, Paranjape Schemes, Tata Housing, and Brigade have started to design special homes for senior citizens as they are targeting at well to do seniors, who have enough amount of money to buy property and want to live independently after retirement. Unlike traditional old age home, these senior homes are the part of some largest projects and well developed townships.
According to Arun Gupta, CEO of Age Ventures India, “In present, most of the real estate builders are realizing that it could be the differentiating factor in their major residential projects and have potential to emerge as entirely new real estate market, which are still untapped”. Age Ventures India is a non-profit organization which is working closely with real estate developers to design and manage the senior homes. In real estate market for senior homes segment, the growth opportunity is much more as in 2012, India had more than 100 million senior citizens and till now it’s expected that number is more than double. According to Manish Kumar, MD for strategic consulting at JLL India, “In present our country is contributing less than one per cent in the global segment of senior homes”. The more he added that there are huge gap between supply and demand for same segment, but it’s have growth potential. According to reports of JLL India, currently there are 30 to 35 senior living projects in all over the country and there valuation depends on the offered facilities of those senior homes.
Design of Senior Homes:
Currently, in our country there are many people in the age bracket of 54 to 72 years and these people prefer to buy senior homes because now most of the senior peoples want to live independently. Normally, senior home have one to two bedrooms with bigger bathrooms and wider doors, so that seniors can use the wheelchairs. However; the other fine details which builders are keeping in mind; while designing the senior home are keeping the switch points at low height, so that person from wheelchair can operate it. Apart from that senior homes project comes with some special facilities such as; on call doctors, nurses’ facility, physio rooms, common dining room if they don’t want to cook and many more other facilities.
Most of the senior homes project have tie up with hospitals and clinics as Columbia Asia Hospital of Ahmedabad are working closely with Adani Realty, which is one of the senior home project and in the same way Artemis Hospital of Gurgaon is associated with Silverglades project and NH Hospitals of Bengaluru is associated with Brigade project.
According to Dipesh Roy, VP of Marketing at Adani Realty, “Till now there are no regular service providers in this segment due to that now charitable trust are handling the facilities for senior citizen homes”. Om Ahuja, CEO of Brigade Group stated that my most of the friends prefer to buy assisted living homes, so that they can live their even after retirement. However; people who are in their 40s are planning to own retirement homes for their future because they know that there are major chances that their children’s will settle down abroad after study. Paranjape Schemes has developed six projects for senior homes; one in Bengaluru and five in Pune, and now they are planning to start three more projects in country, they are also reviewing three projects in San Jose (USA) for senior Indians, who are living over there.
