The Midwest is a key area for growth when it comes to senior housing development thanks to a lack of supply compared to other geographic locations and a growing number of seniors, two analysts say.
And while the Great Recession hasn’t made it easy for many senior-oriented projects to get construction financing, the Toledo, Ohio area has been experiencing a senior housing boom, reports the Toledo Blade.
“We see it with the baby boomers aging and retiring and people living longer that the demand is there and the money is loosening up,” said Gary Haas, vice president of contracts and administration for Rudolph/Libbe Inc. “There are more of these projects going on compared to the overall commercial market.”
AdvertisementIn 2008, David Lynn and Tim Wang, two analysts for Clarion Partners Inc., predicted that there would be new opportunities for investors in the senior housing market, a niche they said would heat up and begin to take off, starting in 2010 and continuing through 2015.
One of the areas for growth: the Midwest.
They reasoned that there already was significantly more senior housing in the South and West, and that an increasing number of seniors were choosing to stay in their present states rather than relocate to the South and West.
Advertisement“As far as seniors or the elderly choosing to age in place, that’s probably true now,” Mr. Morgan said. “But the other dynamic is seniors want to move near their adult children or their children want to move them near them. So if you have a growing [area] with professionals in their 30s or 40s and with parents in their 70s or 80s, they may want to move their parents near them.” That is leading to growth in senior housing in several major Midwest metro areas, [Jay] Morgan [senior vice president of finance at Toledo-based Health Care REIT] added.
The article details several projects that have broken ground in recent weeks, along with others that are in the pipeline. Read the full piece here.
Written by Alyssa Gerace
