After the major focus on affordable housing segment in India, real estate is now focusing on retirement housing, homes designed for assisted living and senior housing. Various developers have realized the importance of retirement homes for the elderly and are working towards the same to fulfill the needs.
Location is the most important factor to be considered while to check the viability for all the stakeholders. If the retirement housing plan is to be made prosperous, it should be sprawling across a large area. But most importantly, it should be affordable for the elderly or else the whole essence of the idea would be lost. Therefore, for it to be affordable, it should be located in the outlying areas, the reason being the low cost of land as compared to the cost of land in the main city.
The senior/retirement housing in India basically has 3 formats –
• 1 to 4 acre (small scale format)
• 4 to 10 acres (mid-scale formats)
• 10 to 60 acres (large-scale formats)
Usually the units in a single retirement project are 50 to 100 with maximum going to 400 and are in the format of 1-2BHK. The size of these units ranges between 500 square feet and 100 square feet.
The issues coming up in front of the developers while planning the retirement projects are the concern of affordability and the scarcity of skilled man-power who is incapable of managing such sensitive and significant projects.
