Around 1,900 seniors housing operators, investors, brokers, lenders, appraisers and other service providers met in San Diego last week for the Spring NIC Conference, and we wondered before what the mood would be in the room. In our scores of conversations with those in the nitty gritty of dealmaking and operations, we’d say it was a little bit of a downer. Most people are working on half the number of transactions but spending double the time on each one, which isn’t as fun a combination. But everyone is doing their best under the circumstances, and pipelines are still looking reasonably healthy.
Operators continue to slog through a myriad of issues, including agency staffing, which is still out there, and margin compression. We always hear about the great rent increases most were able to push through last year, but fewer communities will be able to achieve similar increases this year, and their costs are still going up. That’s why we particularly enjoyed this one panel called “Keepin’ it Real – Let’s Talk Margin…” where some hard truths and data were brought up about just how long it will take and how difficult it will be for many operators to reach “pre-pandemic margin” or ideally better than that. The conversation was refreshing, to say the least, albeit not what everyone wants to hear.
