Spain's Lower Care Costs Threaten US Senior Housing REITs

Rod Dubitsky, a 62-year-old fintech founder in New York, watches his mother pay $7,000 each month for assisted living. His response is not to search for a cheaper local facility. He is considering relocating to Spain, where long-term care costs are significantly lower. This personal decision captures a cost dynamic that the US senior living industry is only beginning to confront.

The $7,000 monthly figure is not an outlier for high-end assisted living in metropolitan areas. For a middle-class retiree without long-term care insurance, that expense can exhaust savings within a few years. Dubitsky’s alternative – moving to a country with a lower cost of care – reflects a calculation that more families may start to make. If the trend scales, it could shift demand away from US-based senior housing properties.

Why Senior Housing Operators Should Care

Publicly traded senior housing operators and healthcare REITs have long relied on demographic tailwinds from the aging baby boomer population. The implicit assumption is that seniors will stay in the US and pay a premium for care. Dubitsky’s plan challenges that assumption. A sustained outflow of price-sensitive retirees would reduce occupancy rates and limit pricing power for operators. The effect would be most acute in high-cost coastal markets.