LOS ANGELES — The advice offered by the Development Outlook panel at InterFace Conference Group’s Seniors Housing West, held Feb. 2 at the Omni Los Angeles, mirrors the advice many would give to their senior residents. Namely, “stay active and stay creative.” But these verbs take on a slightly different meaning when you’re talking about the smartest plays for seniors housing developers in a time when everything is changing. “The smarter operators and developers have been developing a pipeline,” said panelist Paul Mullin, principal at Flatiron Development Group. “The key is momentum. …
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LOS ANGELES — Seniors housing has been an ever-changing industry since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. “I look back a few years ago and we were seeing curveballs coming at us I never thought we would be pitched,” said David Eskenazy, CEO, Cogir Management USA. “Now the smoke is clearing a little bit and we can look inside the organizations and see how we can run our businesses in this new environment. I think we’re going to get used to what this new environment is going to look like.” …
InterFace Panel: Land Prices, Borrowing Costs Push Owners to Renovate Rather Than Build New
PHILADELPHIA — New construction of seniors housing communities has been noticeably slow in recent years, at first due to the COVID-19 pandemic stopping projects in their tracks, and then by high interest rates and land costs. Fewer than 11,000 units were added within the NIC MAP 31 Primary Markets last year, the weakest inventory growth since 2014, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC). Construction starts were relatively weak at 3,013 units in the fourth quarter, continuing the slower pace seen in the third quarter. …
CHICAGO — Despite pricing uncertainties limiting capital markets activity, interest in seniors housing remains strong as investors seek higher yields from alternative asset classes, according to JLL’s Valuation Advisory group’s sixth annual Seniors Housing Investor Survey and Outlook. Of the investors surveyed by the Chicago-based valuation group, 44 percent indicated they would increase their exposure to seniors housing in 2023, and 44 percent said they would make no change to their current investments. Only 12 percent of investors surveyed responded that they would decrease their exposure in 2023. Investors are …
PHILADELPHIA — As the dust settles from the COVID-19 pandemic, and complications such as inflation and higher interest rates continue to hurt the economy, now is the time for seniors housing owners and operators to focus on their fundamentals. “We have to get back to business. That’s really our focus in 2023,” said Wendy Nowokunski, president of owner-operator Northbridge Cos. “Not that we ever lost sight of it, nor will we lose sight of the fact that our associates are our most important investment, but we really need to make …
PHILADELPHIA — It is common to hear operators proudly profess that it’s their culture that allows them to be top employers in the seniors housing industry, helping to face the massive labor shortage within the sector. However, “culture” can be a nebulous word, and employee surveys show that what employees say makes for a good culture is far different from what the employers believe, according to Charles Turner, CEO of shift-filling software platform KARE. Turner, a former president of two operators in previous positions, didn’t pull punches regarding the overuse …
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The national occupancy rate for private-pay seniors housing increased 90 basis points from 82.1 percent in the third quarter of 2022 to 83 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to data from NIC MAP Vision. The occupancy rate has increased 520 basis points from a pandemic low of 77.8 percent in the second quarter of 2021. NIC MAP Vision is a product of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC), an Annapolis-based nonprofit firm that tracks industry data gathered from 31 primary …
Seniors Housing Investors Should Look for Opportunities Amid Today’s Challenges, Says Webinar Panel
It has undoubtedly been a very difficult time for seniors housing owners, operators and investors. The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread shutdowns that forced communities to turn away visitors and prospective new residents for months, which in turn caused occupancy rates to crater. Then, just as the industry started to come back, labor challenges, inflation and rising interest rates put the brakes on that recovery. “We’ve been through the most unusual period ever for our industry,” said JP LoMonaco, president of Valuation & Information Group. LoMonaco made those comments while …
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Twenty-four percent of U.S. adults age 50 and above say they or a loved one needed long-term care in the past year, according to a national survey commissioned by Nexus Insights, an Annapolis-based think tank focused on older adults. NORC at the University of Chicago conducted the research. The poll was conducted in November and included 1,014 interviews with a nationally representative sample of adults age 50 and older. Despite that high need, most older adults said the process of selecting long-term care caused anxiety (53 percent) …
Addressing Labor Shortage Issue Remains Top Priority for Executives at InterFace Conference
Ask senior living CEOs and operators to name their top issue and the answer is the same as it’s been for the last two years: the workforce. Despite a slight easing in the overall employment environment, along with some high-profile tech layoffs, the labor market is still tight. Top executives are laser focused on the task to recruit and retain good workers for a simple reason: They can’t run a highly service-oriented business without help. Seniors aren’t going to move into an understaffed community. “Employees are my number one priority,” …