Archive for the ‘Senior Housing’ Category

My Book: A Few Steps Closer to Publication

Monday, July 26th, 2010

I have posted a couple of times about my forthcoming book currently titled The Future of Seniors Housing: Planning, Building, and Operating Successful Seniors Housing Projects. The original goal was to publish mid-year but now it’s looking more like fall. However great progress has been made over the last few months and I am feeling much less anxious than I have for a long time. There are now seven chapters in the book plus the introduction.

I have said many times that the book has practically killed me and that if I had known yada yada yada. I don’t know if that is entirely true though. I might have written it even if I had fully realized how much work it would be.  Because, as all of you who read this blog know, seniors housing is an endlessly fascinating field. It is such a cliché to describe things as labours of love, but that’s how things get to be clichés in the first place—because they are true!

So, coming soon!

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2011 Census (Reprise)

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

As the government is still persisting in its wrong-headed plans to ruin the 2011 Census, I thought it would be useful to explain in a little more depth why the Census information is so critical for seniors’ housing analysis.

Here is an example of a table we always use when we are doing a market study or a community housing needs assessment.  Here are just a few of the things this table tells us:

  • 83% of the 55+ households in this community are homeowners.
  • The average income of the renters is $38,509 compared to $73,094 for the owners.
  • Single (non-family) renters over the age of 85 have the lowest average incomes.
  • Although not shown in the table, the detailed data indicate that there are 565 renter households aged 65+ in this community with an income lower than $14,999. These are the households facing serious challenges in terms of meeting their housing needs.

Owners

Renters

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Family Hshlds

Non-Family

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

Total

Avg Inc

55-64

4,880

$101,729

1,030

$47,153

600

$61,629

510

$30,613

65-74

2,450

$67,633

815

$36,961

220

$41,969

405

$28,178

75-84

1,140

$63,158

1,030

$32,375

125

$35,366

265

$26,375

85+

200

$50,621

255

$24,358

60

$47,584

235

$24,220

Sadly, we will never have this level of knowledge about seniors’ housing markets in future years because all of this information comes from the long form.

For-profit and not-for-profit developers, communities, governments, market analysts—we will all be forced to guess what is going on. Tragic.

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Lowest and Highest Incomes in Canada for 65+ Households

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Note that this is the last time we will be able to discuss this issue, thanks to the Conservatives’ completely bone-headed and inexplicable decision to gut the 2011 Census. No other country in the world runs its Census the way Canada does, or will in 2011. It is a tragic mistake that will take years to correct. I have written to Tony Clement, the Minister who decided to gut the Census, Stephen Harper, my MP, the Globe and Mail, and all of my colleagues who rely on Census data to make sense of our world and I encourage you to do the same. I am surprised the outcry hasn’t been louder. It’s not just the seniors’ housing field that will be severely impacted of course. Please do what you can.

So for the last time for a long time, here are average incomes and rates of homeownership for 65+ households across the country. The lowest incomes are in Newfoundland and Labrador and the highest in Ontario. The proportion of homeowners is fairly similar throughout the country except for Quebec, which has a much higher incidence of renting across all age groups compared to other provinces. It’s interesting that Manitoba is the only other province with a homeownership ratio in the 60s, although average incomes are higher than the national average and house prices are comparatively affordable. Why would that be so? The only thing I can think of is that the incidence of life lease is relatively high in Manitoba. Unlike all other provinces, life lease residents are considered renters in Manitoba so that might explain the lower incidence of homeownership.

65+ Owner Household Incomes - 2

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US Occupancy Rates have Declined in 11 of 12 Quarters Since 2007

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

As we have often commented in this blog, the US is light years away from Canada in terms of the quantity and quality of available research on the seniors’ housing and health care industry. The mission of the wonderful National Investment Center (NIC) is: “To advance the quality of seniors housing and care by facilitating informed investment decisions through best-in-class data, research, networking events and professional education” and they do a great job of that.

One of the many useful things they do is track occupancy data by quarter for five categories of housing and health care—freestanding IL, combined IL, freestanding AL, combined AL, and CCRC. (Remember that AL in the US is almost exclusively private pay).

A recent NIC Newsflash points out that occupancy rates for all five categories have declined more or less continuously since the first quarter of 2007, when they reached a cyclical peak of 92.3% (on average). First quarter 2010 data indicates an average occupancy rate of 88.0%.

Assisted living performed best over the period (decline of 2.7%) and freestanding IL the worst (decline of 6.2%). CCRCs ended up in the middle with a decline of 4.1%.

This is not remotely surprising. The US housing market has been hammered over the last few years. People more able to postpone a move into service-enriched housing (i.e. potential IL residents) have done exactly that.

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Are disability rates improving? And if they are, why?

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Many people (myself included) share the view that disability rates among the seniors’ population have been declining. For example, here’s a headline from a National Association of Aging document dated May, 2001: Dramatic Decline in Disability Continues for Older Americans. And what’s the evidence? Between 1994 and 1999, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 with disabilities declined by 2.6% per year.

In answer to the obvious question: “why”?, the article suggests several possible reasons—improvements in maternal health early in the 20th Century;  better control of infectious childhood diseases; behavioural changes such as declines in the incidence of smoking; better management of diseases such as hypertension;  better drugs; and even increases in education levels.

But a recent article in Public Policy and Aging Report suggests that declines in disability rates are due not to medical science, but to “disability-friendly” environmental changes including curb cuts, disabled access ramps and elevators, and transportation services. Improvements in assistive devices (walkers, wheelchairs, scooters) have also enabled people with mobility impairments to get around better on their own.

The Public Policy and Aging Report article is focused mostly on physical impairments that impede a person’s ability to interact with the built and social environment but it also refers briefly to the positive impact of higher education levels on rates of cognitive impairment.

It is interesting to think about this. Disability is not defined as an impairment per se, but as a “social construct insofar as it reflects the ease or difficulty that individuals with physical impairments experience interacting with the built and social environment.”

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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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Fine Dining in Long Term Care: A Contradiction in Terms?

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Not in Phoenix! Or indeed all over the USA where fine dining in long term care is a definite trend. I toured a state-of-the-art not-for-profit skilled nursing facility in nearby Tempe AZ on Monday. I was profoundly impressed. The goal of the owner of the facility, Friendship Village, was to retain the ambience of a residential environment and avoid any feel of the institutional. Without question they achieved the goal. The hallways are gorgeous—no other word will do although it seems odd to describe a hallway as gorgeous. Unlike every other hallway I have seen in a care facility, they undulate. They are also carpeted, painted in beautiful colors, and highlighted with artwork and furniture at appropriate intervals.  Doorways are recessed. The contrast with many independent living communities I am familiar with could not be starker.

The dining rooms blew me away too— linen tablecloths and napkins! And menu choices! And open eating hours! I don’t like to overdo the exclamation marks but the facility was really unlike anything I have ever seen.

“Ah but what does all this cost?” you are no doubt thinking. Friendship Village is a life care community—residents buy in at the independent living stage and whatever care they need beyond that stage is provided at the same monthly cost. For example, a one bedroom unit may cost $160,000 (assuming no return of capital) plus monthly fees of $2,300 (meals, housekeeping, laundry etc). If someone buying in at this level were ever to require skilled nursing care, they would continue to pay the same monthly fee they paid in independent living (adjusted for inflationary increases).

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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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Good Market Studies for Seniors’ Housing Projects can Save you Millions of Dollars; Bad ones can Cost you Millions of Dollars

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Since one of Lumina’s business lines is market studies, it may sound self-serving for me to say that it is false economy of the worst kind to launch a real estate development project of any kind without doing a market study first. But very often, developers have great difficulty grasping the fundamental truth of this observation, partly because of personality. Lack of confidence is not a trait shared by many developers but it is easy to tip over the line from confidence to hubris. Even granting a solid understanding of a market on the part of a developer, a third party study is invaluable in terms of reducing risk and maximizing profitability. Lenders know this, which is why they are usually more likely to require a market study than a developer.

To make the matter more complicated, there are numerous ways for market studies to go off the rails, many of them not especially obvious to casual or uninformed observers, OR, it must be said, to unethical market analysts who write “market studies to order”.  Firms like this certainly exist and in most cases, knowledgeable industry participants know exactly who these companies are.

In future posts (interrupted by posts from Phoenix, where I am headed to the ALFA conference on Sunday) I will address some of the ways market studies can go off the rails and what you should watch for. This is assuming of course, that you are interested in a market study that tells you the truth.

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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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