The price elasticity of senior housing demand: is it a necessity or a luxury?

Senior housing properties provide tailored lifestyle, housing, and personal care services to aging adults. Having emerged from needs-based settings, senior housing is typically viewed as a necessity. As a result, demand estimates often rely on assumed utilization rates. We use monthly data beginning in 2017 to model occupied senior housing units as a function of price and a time trend. Our two-stage least squares approach provides an estimate of senior housing’s price elasticity of demand. Results show elasticity coefficients of greater than one, implying senior housing market is more of a luxury than a necessity.