Fortress Investment plans to raise about $1bn for a China fund that would invest in housing for China’s burgeoning population of elderly residents.

The US-based hedge fund and buy-out group, which operates the largest senior independent living facilities in the US and Canada, plans to take the template to China and is currently in talks with potential partners on the mainland. Wes Edens, Fortress’s founder, was in China at the end of January meeting with government officials and corporate executives.

Fortress is planning to take advantage of demographic trends that are a legacy of China’s one-child policy, referred to colloquially as the 4-2-1 problem of four grandparents, two parents and one child. Today, 155m of China’s 1.3bn people are over 65, and the number is expected to swell to about 260m by 2020.