The senior living industry in India has a dirty secret

I am in real estate so I have been to a bunch of these so called 'senior living' projects over the last year or two and I have something to say.

A lot of these projects aren't built as senior living. They start as regular apartment towers. When sales are slow developers rebrand the unsold units mid construction, slap on a new name add a clubhouse render and start calling it 'premium senior living'. The same building with a new pitch and a higher price.

That's the dirty secret. I am not saying that all senior living is bad some of it's genuinely well run. It's that a chunk of the market is just repackaged inventory sold to NRI kids who want to feel better about not being around.

How to tell the difference:

• Ask if medical staff is in house or a tie up with a nearby hospital.
• Ask the doctor to resident ratio (a good facility will tell you the number right away as they track it)
• Ask how long the project has been marketed as senior living. If it changed branding partway through construction then you know

Not naming names since I still work in this space but if you're looking at one for a parent these three questions will filter out most of the bad ones fast