Is Buying a Retirement Home Worth It? An analysis of how price performance affects demand of senior housing in England

This paper, written by Gus Wiseman at the Department of Business and Trade as part of his Master's at Oxford University, explores how price performance and financial trade-offs may be depressing demand amongst seniors and suggests that regulatory and product reform may be necessary to restore consumer confidence and attract institutional investment into a growing but fragile sector.

This study finds:

• Scale is a win-win - larger schemes reduce consumer costs and deliver more predictable investor returns.
• Healthcare integration is a missing ingredient for scale - it protects value and cuts public costs.
• Consumer confidence is a commercial precondition - demand won’t scale until exit risks are mitigated.
• Regulation is the unlock – the UK is stuck in the 80s compared to global models (NZ, Australia, Canada). We can catch up fast.
• First mover benefit – innovators in tenure and care integration will capture outsized market share because incumbents are either wedded to legacy models or too poorly capitalised to adapt.

Written around the time the Older People’s Housing Taskforce was considering the evidence, for businesses and investors, the message is clear: without reform, senior housing remains a niche, illiquid segment. But, with the right structures – scale, healthcare integration, and tenure reform – the sector can deliver resilient, long-duration cashflows perfectly matched to the needs of the UK’s growing pool of pension capital. This represents one of the UK’s most significant untapped real asset opportunities.