Market’s complex financial and social challenges surface as opportunity for builders in the right place, product, and price-point.

Slightly less than one of every two of us who’s employed these days is “concerned, anxious or fearful about their current financial well-being,” according to this study from MetLife

that explores the role of our work-lives and everyday well-being.Far too many households–almost half–live one surprise financial emergency north of being unable to cope with a normal onslaught of monthly bills.

These data points, of course, apply to few if any of the people who’d likely consider themselves to be prospective home buyers of new homes these days. MarketWatch economics correspondent Quentin Fottrell writes:

“Over a quarter of Americans in the HomeServe USA survey said they had $8,000 or more set aside for unexpected emergency expenses, and respondents aged 65 and over are likely to have the most money set aside for unplanned expenses, with nearly half (48%) of Americans within the age group reporting having $8,000 or more in emergency funds (versus just 20% of those aged 18 to 64). Around half of those surveyed said they most expected a big medical or car expense within the next 12 months.”

But what the data can be helpful for as a reminder is that population universes are always more challenging than they seem to be.

What the data also affirms is that, more times than it may appear, a new home is more than a dream come true for the household. It’s a solution to a complex array of financial and life goals, and in important respects, the array is getting more complex every year.

The calculus involved in predicting, designing, developing, pricing, and building for 55+ households in particular gets more complicated every month that goes by.

First, there’s the financial complexity. The New York Federal Reserve notes that older Americans have been taking on more debt than they had been wont to do in eras past. MarketWatch’s Maria LaMagna writes:

Those ages 60 and older held 22.5% of total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2016, compared with 15.9% in 2008 and 12.6% in 2003. Although much of that debt is likely due to mortgages, it’s also possible they are shouldering more student loan debt than in the past, for their children and grandchildren. There were nearly 2 million borrowers between the ages of 50 and 64 who took on “Parent PLUS” loans, the loans the government offers parents, in 2015, up from about 1 million in 2005. Another 200,000 borrowers over the age of 65 also have them.

Credit card debt and auto loan debt balances for people ages 60 and older have also risen since 2008, whereas credit card debt for those 59 and younger has fallen.

Then, there’s increasing complexity in household compositions themselves. Not long ago, a 55+ household was a 55+ household was a 55+ household. In other words, a married couple, formerly with children, had reached that stage in their lives, where retirement, entitlement, and the urge to gravitate toward warmer, more naturally amenable climes converged.

Clearly, those years are bygone. It doesn’t work that way, and among the challenges for those who’re developing 55+ products, projects, and communities, are developing for less-than-traditional combos in the household composition area.

Pew Research’s Renee Stepler writes:

An increasing number of Americans ages 50 and older are in cohabiting relationships, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the Current Population Survey. In fact, cohabiters ages 50 and older represented about a quarter (23%) of all cohabiting adults in 2016.

Since 2007, the number of cohabiting adults ages 50 and older grew by 75%. This increase is faster than that of other age groups during this time period and is driven in part by the aging of Baby Boomers. In 2016, 4 million adults ages 50 and older were cohabiting – up from 2.3 million in 2007. By comparison, 8.9 million adults ages 18 to 34 were cohabiting last year, up from 7.2 million.

The good news here is that an absolute decline in the number of conventional 55+ households from a household composition standpoint does not necessarily have to mean a drop in demand for 55+ communities. It does mean that builders, developers, designers, and marketers need to be thinking of 55+ new homes and neighborhoods as solutions to this complex set of challenges–financial, social, familial, logistical, etc., rather than simply as “that house you’ve always wanted, recently deserved, and now can have.”