60ish Seconds with Steve Monroe: The Coming Seniors Housing Shortage?
The Wall Street Journal just came out with a story about the coming seniors housing shortage. Unfortunately, it started with misinformation, when it stated that “seniors housing has been one of the biggest disappointments for commercial real estate investors.” In some periods yes, but in other periods not at all, when it has had outsized returns and beat the other sectors. It is all about context, and the writer should have known better. The story may, however, generate some investment interest. We are glad that occupancy has reached pre-pandemic levels, but we really need to get to 2017 levels to be happy. Remember, back in October 2020 we did the analysis and concluded it would take at... Read More »
Omega Healthcare Investors Continues Improvement
It has been a slog for owners of nursing homes, but Omega Healthcare Investors continues to improve from the COVID messes it encountered. Major tenant LaVie, which entered into bankruptcy protection last June, paid its full monthly rent of $3.0 million from June 2014 through January 2025. And Maplewood, which ran into some serious problems, paid $4.5 million in rent in January and $12.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The REIT is also growing, having completed $340 million in new investments in the fourth quarter, and $939 million for the full year. The fourth quarter investments included $179 million in real estate acquisitions and $162 million in new loans. The new loans... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Rising Treasuries and Senior Care M&A
Momentum in the M&A market has continued into 2025, and there is general optimism that the new Administration that descended on Washington this week will be good for the business environment. Although there is some uncertainty around what, if any, tariffs are enacted and whether their effect on prices would potentially be blunted by falling energy costs and efficiency efforts, assuming “drill baby drill” and “DOGE” have a near-immediate effect. And we don’t know about the scale of the deportations and its impact on wages. However, if M&A activity started to take off last year due to the expectation of lower interest rates, then what effect will the 10-Year Treasury rate shooting... Read More »
Seniors Housing Occupancy Hits New Post-Pandemic High
NIC released its latest seniors housing occupancy update for the 31 NIC Map Primary Markets, and fourth quarter 2024 census has hit another post-pandemic occupancy high. Overall seniors housing occupancy rose to 87.2%, up 70 basis points from 86.5% in the third quarter. Separated out by property type, majority-independent living properties were 88.6% occupied in Q4, and majority-assisted living properties were 85.7% occupied. While the Primary markets averaged 87.2%, the 99 Primary and Secondary markets combined averaged 87.7% and the remaining 41 markets to round out the 140 total markets that NIC tracks averaged 88.5%. Overall, occupancy was 87.8% for all 140 markets. The last time... Read More »
Brookdale’s December 2024 Occupancy Drops
As we are now in full swing of the flu (and COVID) season, it is normal to expect that occupancy levels nationwide would decline slightly even though the seniors housing industry continues on its operational upswing. This is exactly what happened at Brookdale Senior Living. Consolidated weighted average occupancy in December declined sequentially by 20 basis points to 79.3%. This compares with 79.2% in September. In slightly better news, occupancy at the end of December was 80.5%, up 10 basis points from November, but still down 30 basis points from October and matching September’s level. However, Brookdale has now posted five straight months of month-end census above 80%, and barring any... Read More »Schedule a demo
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