• Ziegler Handles Unique Operator Transition

    A high-end seniors housing community that caters to the Japanese-American population in the San Francisco, California, area completed a delicate operational transfer, with the help of Ziegler. Kokoro Assisted Living is located in the heart of San Francisco’s historic Japantown and is known for providing culturally sensitive care and an... Read More »
  • Brookdale’s Occupancy Keeps Improving

    It is a shame that Brookdale Senior Living did not do two years ago what it has been doing for the past nine months or so. Weighted average occupancy in August 2025 was 81.8%, up 70 basis points sequentially. This was the seventh month in a row the company posted an increase. Month-end occupancy in August was 83.2%, up 60 basis points... Read More »
  • Blueprint Closes Two Texas Portfolio Transactions

    During the NIC Fall conference in Austin, Blueprint announced a couple of portfolio transactions in Texas. First, Amy Sitzman and Giancarlo Riso facilitated the sale of five skilled nursing facilities located throughout the Texas Hill Country and Houston. All five facilities are within four hours of each other, offering scale and operational... Read More »
  • SLIB Handles Minnesota Receivership Sale

    A senior care campus in Pine Island, Minnesota, with some operational issues in the past has found a new owner thanks to Jake Anderson, Dan Geraghty and Ryan Saul of Senior Living Investment Brokerage. Set on 6.8 acres, the campus includes Pine Haven with 70 skilled nursing beds and Evergreen featuring 24 assisted living units. Pine Haven was... Read More »
  • PACS CFO Resigns

    PACS Group saw another potential setback to its public image, announcing that its CFO Derick Apt resigned on September 2 after it was determined that he had accepted a series of high-value items from individuals associated with a group of related entities with which PACS does business. The company was in the middle of its previously disclosed... Read More »
Second Quarter Occupancy Results

Second Quarter Occupancy Results

NIC MAP just released its second-quarter occupancy trends results, and unfortunately, it was not what the industry had hoped for. For the overall seniors housing industry, average occupancy remained flat at 78.7% from the first quarter to the second quarter.   Given the reports of bottoming out by March for several of the large operators and the REITs with large operating portfolios, and strong census increases in April and May, we were a bit surprised that the quarter-to-quarter change was stagnant. We figured maybe at least a 50-basis point increase or higher. The one thing this tells us is that the early spring momentum did not carry over into June. Or possibly it was the... Read More »
M&A in May Falls Flat

M&A in May Falls Flat

Despite the positive occupancy news coming out of seemingly every earnings announcement in May, buyers held back this month, announcing just 26 transactions. To be fair, that total beat’s February’s 25 publicly announced transactions (albeit being a 28-day month), and tied January. But it was off of March’s 29-deal tally and April, when a “whopping” 32 deals were announced.   We know that plenty of both buyers and sellers are waiting for a three- to six-month period of sustained occupancy and NOI growth before either risking the purchase or getting the desired price. But with a surge of deals closed at the end of April, we also thought a certain barrier had been broken and... Read More »
CCRCs Still Leading In Occupancy

CCRCs Still Leading In Occupancy

Ziegler just came out with its quarterly analysis of occupancy trends for CCRC (LPCs) in conjunction with the NIC MAP data, and while census is still slipping, the sub-sector has fared better than the other components of the senior living spectrum. The data set used includes 1,134 CCRCs in both primary and secondary markets, as defined by NIC MAP. It is not clear how the other 800 or so CCRCs have performed.  All CCRCs posted an average occupancy rate of 84.3% in the first quarter 2021, a drop of 720 basis points from the first quarter of 2020. While somewhat shocking, that performance is better than assisted living and skilled nursing. And, starting from an average... Read More »
Senior Care M&A Tanks In Q1

Senior Care M&A Tanks In Q1

After a strong fourth quarter, senior care M&A activity cooled off this winter. We thought that after 59 seniors housing and care M&A transactions were announced in December 2020, a monthly record, we had returned to some kind of “normal” in terms of dealmaking. Well that just didn’t happen in the first quarter of 2021, when despite widespread vaccination of the senior care population investor activity cooled to just 77 publicly announced deals. That is just a preliminary total but is well off Q4’s total of 127 deals. M&A in the skilled nursing sector especially slowed down, accounting for just 32% of the deals announced during the quarter. But it makes sense. If various... Read More »
Bifurcation Between Stabilized and Non-Stabilized SNFs Grew in 2020

Bifurcation Between Stabilized and Non-Stabilized SNFs Grew in 2020

In some ways, the pandemic only rubbed salt in the wound in terms of occupancy across skilled nursing facilities nationwide. Average census across the skilled nursing industry was already languishing between the mid- to low- 80% range before the pandemic temporarily shut the doors to many facilities, paused elective surgeries and sent more post-acute patients home to recover. These problems adversely affected the older, mostly-Medicaid facilities and were only made worse in 2020.   That means digging out from the pandemic will be a tougher assignment, and buyers paid accordingly in 2020, averaging $55,300 per bed for non-stabilized facilities reporting occupancy lower... Read More »
Senior Care Leading Indicators

Senior Care Leading Indicators

There has not been a lot of good news, but given some leading indicators, the next development boom may be a bit further out than we had expected four months ago. Our focus for the past 12 months has been on the coronavirus pandemic and what it has done to seniors housing and care occupancy rates. We are also on record as stating that getting back to pre-pandemic census levels may take up to four years, partly because we expect development to ramp up again when developers eye the post-2025 demographics. But something else has been happening that may keep some builders away. First, the 10-year treasury rate has more than doubled in the past seven months. Yes, 1.36% is still attractive, but... Read More »