Among the largest senior-housing companies are Chicago- based Ventas Inc., which owns 713 communities; Toledo, Ohio- based Health Care REIT Inc., with 711 properties; Long Beach, California-based HCP Inc., with 444; and Brookdale, with 555. In February, Brookdale agreed to buy Seattle-based Emeritus.

Messages left yesterday for Ross Roadman, senior vice president of investor relations at Brookdale, weren’t returned.

“There’s been a little bit of an uptick -- we’re mindful of that,” said Brookdale Chief Executive Officer T. Andrew Smith when asked about supply at a Barclays Plc conference in March. “You have to go down and look at what’s happening in each local market. We just don’t see that much. It’s not to say that there is none, but we don’t see that much truly, directly, adversely new competition.”

Houston Surge

Houston is one area where the senior-housing surge is particularly striking. The 1,591 units under construction in the city is the highest since at least late 2005, according to the National Investment Center. Houston has a fast-growing population and is a relatively easy market for development, said Hessam Nadji, chief strategy officer at Calabasas, California- based Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services Inc.

Across the U.S., peak demand for senior housing is 15 to 20 years away, according to Jacob Gehl, managing director and founding partner of Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, a brokerage and advisory firm in Chicago.

The average person entering senior housing is over 80, Green Street said in an April report. The estimated number of people age 80 to 84 was 5.8 million in 2012, and is projected to climb to 13.5 million by 2040, the Census Bureau said.

‘Inexorably Increasing’

Health-care real estate executives say concerns about an oversupply of senior housing supply are overblown. Large REITs such as Ventas are better able to withstand issues in certain markets and lines of business because of their size and geographic diversity.

“Demand is inexorably increasing,” said Debra Cafaro, Ventas’s chairman and chief executive officer. “From a long- term standpoint, it’s a great asset class because the demand is there.”