Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Why it Would be Wonderful to be a Seniors’ Housing Market Analyst in the USA

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

I have made this point before several times (about the vastly superior information on the US seniors housing industry) but I was struck anew by the disparities between our two countries earlier this week. The wonderful National Investment Center is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It also has a new Research Director. In a recent newsletter, the Research Director talked about some of the directions he wants to pursue over the next few years. Here are some of the things he said:

Given the ever-increasing interest in our sector, we’re working to stay ahead of the curve, so to speak, by anticipating the research needs of our industry’s participants and prospective participants. Therefore, our top research priority remains the product enhancements associated with NIC MAP. That includes not only a forthcoming tool for portfolio benchmarking but also thereafter reports providing local trends analyses. In addition, NIC MAP reports soon will incorporate detailed sales transactions metrics, and we look forward to regularly reporting market effective rents, which incorporate any leasing promotional discounts. Later this year, in our ongoing effort to disseminate insightful and timely industry research, we’ll publish the inaugural edition of the NIC Investment Guide 2010 that will serve as a primer on our property sector and has been proclaimed by a number of the draft document’s reviewers as an unprecedented comprehensive overview of our industry.

[NIC Map is a quarterly data and analysis service that collects and disseminates a broad range of information on the seniors housing industry in the top 100 metro areas in the US.]

From a Canadian perspective, that is just an incredible goal. We are so far behind the curve we have no idea if it even exists or if we are in danger of driving off the road.

Here’s what I mean. Over the last few weeks it has become apparent that one of the sub-regional markets we track in the metro Vancouver area is very soft—much softer than any of the operators will admit to and much softer than the CMHC Seniors’ Housing Report indicates. The CMHC report indicates that the vacancy rate in this area is well under 10%. Legitimate people (ie real people, not mystery shoppers) seeking accommodation in this area have been led to believe that there are very few vacant units available and that anyone wanting a unit needs to act fast. If we were mystery shopping the area we would be told the same thing, although we are a lot more sceptical about what marketing people tell us.  We look for other signs confirming the official story but often it is very hard to tell what the true vacancy situation is.

Rather disconcertingly, reliable information indicates a vacancy rate in this area that is approaching 20%. I can understand the motivation of the marketers: telling people you have a vacancy rate of 15% can be discouraging to prospective residents.

But the enormous difficulty of trying to truly understand the market means the signals to operators, developers, lenders, and analysts are confusing or contradictory or both. Not to mentions disingenuous to the consumer.

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Sun City Arizona is 50 Years Old

Friday, August 20th, 2010

That seems almost impossible to believe.  Not so much its age per se, but the fact that it was built when the median age in the US was 29.5 and the oldest baby boomer was 14. Today the median age is 36.7 and the oldest boomer is 64. Del Webb died in 1974. I don’t know if anyone has written a biography of him but it would certainly be interesting to ask him how he came up with the vision of enormous retirement communities when the US was comparatively so youthful. Wikipedia notes his many accomplishments, but doesn’t touch on this subject. The entry does note though that on opening day, 100,000 people came to check out Sun City–so many that Del Webb had to survey the scene via helicopter.

In 2010, more than 40,000 people, 98% of them white, live in Sun City, which contains seven recreation centres,  eight golf courses, three country clubs, two bowling centres, an amphitheatre and a lake—the largest concentration of year-round recreational facilities in the United States. According to the 2000 census, 80% of the population of Sun City was over the age of 65. The median age is 75, twice the national median of 36.7.

These are staggering statistics. The oldest mid-sized urban area in Canada is Parksville, BC, on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island. Compared to Sun City, Parksville is positively youthful—only 34% of the population is over 65. Perhaps because of this comparative youthfulness, not many developers of golf course communities have been drawn to the Parksville area, notwithstanding its assumed appeal for retirees and seniors. The closest golf course community is Fairwinds, which offers “1,350 acres of living” consisting of one golf course, one marina, a community centre and 400 residential units. Arbutus Ridge is further south and a little bigger, with 600 residential units. The 830-acre Crown Isle Resort is an hour north of Fairwinds. And that’s basically it for active-adult type of communities in what is usually considered the epicentre of retirement living in Canada.

I wonder what Del Webb would make of that.

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Help Required: Title for Book on Seniors’ Housing

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

As regular readings of this blog know, I am writing a book that will be published shortly (meaning in the next couple of months). It is currently titled The Future of Seniors’ Housing: Planning, Building and Operating Successful Seniors’ Housing Projects.

That is quite a dull title I admit. A book designer suggested I come up with a more exciting title and use the existing title as a sub-title. That is a great idea but the problem is I can’t think of a catchier title. If it were 2005 and not 2010 Silver Tsunami would be perfect but unfortunately about a million other people have used that phrase over the last several years. I tried a few variations on the golden theme but lots of people think “golden” should not be used in any context dealing with people over the age of 55. My personal favourite on the golden front is nursing homes that are called “Golden Door”. I think that’s hilarious although I probably wouldn’t be quite so amused if I were about to move into a Golden Door Nursing Home. You would have to work hard to avoid the implications.

And speaking of nursing homes I visited a friend of my mother’s yesterday who recently moved into a nursing home on account of a very weak heart. His heart may be weak but his sense of humour certainly isn’t. The monthly activity calendar on his wall listed “zucchini races” every Wednesday morning at 10:30. “What”, I asked, “are zucchini races?” Without missing a beat he said”I don’t know but it doesn’t matter anyway because I don’t think my zucchini is up to it.”

I am still chuckling about that. However the point of this post is not to share witticisms but to ask for your help in coming up with a catchy title for my book. If I use your idea I will certainly acknowledge your help in the book. Please try to avoid any metallic references.

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Sarah Palin School of Public Policy: Stephen Harper, Tony Clement and the 2011 Census

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

The furor over the 2011 Census reminds me of Sarah Palin claiming she understood international relations because she could see Russia from her front door. That is how all of us will have to operate in the future—without benefit of actual facts guiding our decisions.

I have noted in past posts how we rely on data from the long form to analyze seniors’ housing markets, including data on income and housing. I haven’t noted though how often we rely on mobility data to understand demographic patterns affecting markets and communities. Data from the long form tells us how many people of various age groups lived at the same address five years earlier, how many lived in another community in the same province, and how many lived in another province.

Well that is just downright intrusive, Tony Clement and Stephen Harper would no doubt say. But of course it isn’t intrusive and the data helps us to avoid mistakes. In my forthcoming book I mention the case of a former client of ours who was planning to build a big seniors’ housing project in the interior of British Columba. He was sure that people from all over Canada would flock to the community, partly because his site was in BC, an assumed magnet for seniors, and partly because it was a good site, right behind the Tim Horton’s. We were able to show him, based on long form data, that his assumption was mistaken and that the prospects for his site were not good.

Normally it is a delicate matter to tell someone that their plan isn’t a sound one but this client was far from perturbed. “You have saved me millions of dollars”, he said, and that is true.

The lack of long form data in so many areas of the Canadian economy and Canadian society is going to be an extremely costly, as well as a futile, exercise.

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What a Difference Four Years Makes

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

This week I am working in Stony Plain, a community of about 12,000 people 20 minutes west of the West Edmonton Mall, as these things are always described in the Edmonton area. It’s not where you are relative to downtown Edmonton, it’s where you are relative to the West Edmonton Mall.

On my way here I stopped off in Devon, a town of about 6,000 people midway between Stony Plain and the Edmonton International Airport. There are only 275 people over the age of 75 in Devon and yet there is a 61 unit supportive senior’s housing project (Discovery Place, The Heights) that has only one vacant unit. It is situations like this that keep market analysts humble.

But getting back to the topic of this blog, the current issue of the Edmonton Condo Guide includes a handy chart comparing year-to-date statistics for the four year period between April 2006 and April 2010. In terms of the sales-to-listing ratio, the trough over that period was in 2008, when the ratio was 37% compared to an astonishing 91% in 2006. Things have improved since 2008, but in the first four months of 2010 there were 12,365 listings on the Edmonton MLS compared to 5,645 sales. That’s a long way from the heady days of 2006—7,779 listings; 7,100 sales.

You can see the evidence of the hangover everywhere in Stony Plain. “Immediately available condos”, “condo units for rent”, “move in now”—signs like this are common. It’s nothing like Phoenix, but it is a bit unsettling all the same.

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Kitchens in Independent Living Communities

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

I am in Phoenix at the ALFA conference. It takes a long time to get to Phoenix from Vancouver in spite of the fact that the two cities are in the same time zone (in the summer—Phoenix operates on standard time all year long). I spent part of the travel time reading Jim Moore’s latest book, Independent Living and CCRCs.  Chapter 11 discusses high impact design features for independent living communities. Number one on the list is full-function kitchens, even in places serving three meals per day.

Yesterday I toured three life care communities in the area and I will be posting more about these three over the next few weeks, along with highlights from the conference itself. All three had full-function kitchens in their independent living units. My tour guides were shocked when I told them that full-function kitchens in Canadian independent living communities were rare. One of the three is upgrading its units—it is 20 years old—and the new fridges are the two door type with ice and water dispensers on one of the doors. The contrast with Danby bar fridges could hardly be starker. The upgraded stoves are full size with burners that are flush with the surface.

American operators include full-function kitchens more for the impression they create than for their actual utility. Consumers associate the lack of full kitchens with nursing homes and they don’t want to go there!

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The Future of Senior Housing: Planning, Building, and Operating Successful Senior Housing Projects – new book by Kate Mancer, out soon

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

When I say “soon” I mean June or July (2010!). We sold copies of the book at the pre-publication price of $25 (including tax and shipping) at the 3d Canadian Seniors Housing Forum held in Toronto  in March. (The conference was organized by inSIGHT—a Western Canadian conference is planned for November 2010.)

The pre-publication price will be in effect for a little while longer. One of the attendees at the Toronto  inSIGHT conference  suggested that it would make a great Christmas present, and it would!

Here’s what the book is about—this is the back cover:

9,000,000 seniors in 2031: How you can benefit from the coming boom in senior housing

Statistics show that 25% of the 65+ population moves between one census year and the next. In 2013 that will mean 2,225,000 movers! Where will they all live? This book will help you tap that market, whether you are a for-profit or not-for-profit developer, an architect, a lender, a builder, an owner, or an operator.

You will learn:

  • Who moves, who doesn’t, and why.
  • How large a market area you can reasonably expect to appeal to.
  • What consumers in your market area can afford to pay for housing.
  • How a good market study can save you millions of dollars.
  • What marketing techniques have the most impact.
  • What unit types and amenities consumers prefer.
  • How you can fill your project up fast and reduce turnover.
  • How you can make sure you don’t just have satisfied residents, but very satisfied ones instead—research shows that they are the only ones who will recommend your project to their friends.

Kate Mancer, M.A., is one of Canada’s foremost market analysts in the seniors’ housing and health care field. Her company, Lumina Services, has conducted hundreds of market studies and needs assessments for all kinds of seniors’ housing projects—active adult, supportive housing, assisted living, and long term care. She is a frequent presenter at industry events.

Don’t miss out on pre-publication pricing (and don’t forget Christmas).

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Lowering the Average Age of Entry into Supportive Housing (Reprise)

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

If I start getting boring on this subject please let me know! I had lunch with my 85 year old mystery shopper, Edna, today. Edna is well-suited to mystery shopping—she worked on the Enigma project in London during the Second World War. In an interesting twist, so did her father but because of the enormous secrecy shrouding the Enigma project, neither one of them knew about the other’s work until years later.

Edna lives independently and is in great health, although she had a scare a few months ago. Often we in the industry like to say that a scare is just the thing to drive people into the arms of the supportive housing industry, but not Edna! She’s got a pacemaker now and feels better than she has in years.

I asked her if she would consider moving into a project like the one we were touring if she had buckets of money but she said no. She said she was not interested in giving up anything she has now to move to “God’s waiting room”. By the way Edna highly recommends a British TV show of the same name.

That’s the problem in a nutshell—people don’t think of retirement housing as a wonderful carefree way to spend their golden years; they think of it as the last stop before death.

Can we change this view, even a little? Here’s Edna’s suggestion for an appealing tag line: “Have the freedom to do whatever you like. Join us for an endless series of adventures.” That sounds good doesn’t it?

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Bad Ads

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

I have a few favorite ads I like to point to as bad examples of marketing to the older senior crowd (75+). One shows a 60 something very buff man in a bathing suit standing beside his surf board. The project in question is not an active adult golf community on the west coast of Vancouver Island where the picture might just be barely plausible (although the buff man would have to be wearing a wetsuit to withstand the cold water) — it is a supportive housing project where people get two meals a day, weekly laundry, housekeeping, and an emergency response system. No one remotely resembling this man lives in the project, or will ever live in the project. Another of my favorites pictures is of a youngish couple (65-70 I’d guess) in full Mexican regalia, clearly ready to party. Those ads won’t appeal to the real target market (generally 80 year old widows), and if by chance a surfer should show up at the door he will know instantly that he is in the wrong place.  Active, independent seniors do not generally want to live in places where many residents are frailer than they are. Confusing or misleading ads serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

Sometimes ads feature the wrong people with the best of intentions. For example, a non-profit project I know included pictures of visible minorities in their ads for a while, trying to convey the message that they were an inclusive and welcoming project. Obviously that is a laudable goal, but the fact that there were almost no visible minorities in that particular community meant running the risk of not appealing to the true target market.

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