Posts Tagged ‘Age of entry’

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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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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Lowering the Average Age of Entry into Service-Enriched Housing

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

As mentioned in one of my recent posts, I’ve just spent a considerable amount of time in Alberta. At one of the retirement communities in Calgary (retirement community Alberta-style, meaning quite a lot of personal care services are delivered on site), the average age of entry is currently 87! They recently had a 98 year old move in! Forgive the excessive use of exclamation marks but in light of one of the industry’s holy grails—reducing the average age of entry into service-enriched housing—these are discouraging trends. Part of this phenomenon is undoubtedly due to the recession.  Our industry is less need-driven than we thought, at least it is when house prices and the value of investment portfolios fall at the same time.  But what will happen when the recession, or more importantly, people’s memories of the recession, end? Will we have a flock of 80 year olds clamouring to move in?

Maybe not. I used to think we really could reduce the average age of entry by focusing on fitness and wellness, including full kitchens and washer/dryers in units, doing away with assigned seating and defined meal times, letting people choose whether they wanted to eat one, two, or three meals in the dining room or the bistro, running a full slate of educational events on-site and off-site, hiring concierges…the list goes on.

Now I am not so sure but stay tuned! It is a subject we will often return to in coming posts.

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