Riding Into NIC With A Market Disconnect
With the 25th annual NIC Conference upon us, the public markets seem to be crashing, and Brookdale Senior Living will be topic number 1. If you can believe it, this will be my 25th straight NIC annual conference. Yes, every one of them since the first one in Washington, D.C. when there were maybe 500 attendees. I happened to be one of the plenary speakers, giving the state of the skilled nursing market report. The funny thing was, the NIC organizers had to send someone to “check me out” to see if I was legit. Well, I hope over the last 25 years I have been successful in establishing my legitimacy. But you never know. As we all arrive today in Washington, perhaps the biggest topic will be... Read More »Being Large In Seniors Housing
Size isn’t all its cracked up to be, and it does matter whether you own or operate the real estate. We always hear that size matters, but it can also work against you. While no one has claimed to be able to define the optimal size of a seniors housing company, I have yet to hear anyway say that they would be comfortable running a company with more than 500 properties. Most would say that 250 would be tops, with many of them even much smaller. I am talking about owning and operating, with the emphasis on operating. For REITs, I don’t know if there is a real number where their efficiencies get maxed out. They are not hiring the staff and serving the food. And they are not trying to... Read More »Seniors Housing And The Flu
This past flu season has been blamed for many of the current seniors housing occupancy problems, but it has been bad for three years. When looking at the decline in seniors housing occupancy over the first two quarters of this year, much was made of the unusually severe flu season. While we are sure some companies and individual communities were hit particularly hard by this past winter’s flu, Barclays came out with an industry report which included a very interesting graph. It depicted the percentage of visits for influenza-like illnesses reported by the U.S. Outpatient influenza-like illness Surveillance Network. Yeah, I had never heard of that one either. Anyway, it did show that there... Read More »Labor Costs and Senior Care
It seems that too many people are avoiding the discussion of what is going to happen to labor costs, and the future impact on cash flow. Unfortunately, most Labor Day weekends I am toiling away trying to finish the September issue of The SeniorCare Investor. Not this year. Labor Day was so late I was able to finish it up so you would have something to read for the weekend. Really. But then I got to thinking, about labor that is. I see all these acquisitions, and all these pro forma cash flows, and I wonder how labor is going to impact things in the next few years. It is the biggest line item, and the one that may see the most changes. I don’t profess to know how many employees in seniors... Read More »Seniors Housing And Dynamic Pricing
There may be a move to adopt the concept of dynamic pricing in seniors housing, but it comes with its own perils. I may be a bit of a contrarian on this one, but I have to admit I am not too wild about the concept of dynamic pricing for seniors housing. I know it works well with hotels, airlines and multifamily, but all three are very different from seniors housing. I am all for more transparency with pricing, such as posting prices online, but dynamic pricing with weekly price changes based on changing local dynamics doesn’t do it for me. Marketing the seniors housing product is a relationship sale over several months, not instantaneous like a plane ticket. This is a lifestyle decision... Read More »Schedule a demo
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