Posts Tagged ‘snow birds’

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Future, Marketing, Seniors' Housing | No Comments »

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Future, News, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off

Americans Moving to Canada in Search of More Affordable Seniors’ Housing and Health Care?

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

I read a comment about this recently. The writer was hypothesizing that as costs for seniors’ housing and health care rise in the US, Americans might move to Canada or Mexico in search of more affordable alternatives.

In both cases (i.e. Canada and Mexico) the fly in the ointment for Americans actually contemplating such a move would be health care and immigration policies, but aside from that, are costs really cheaper in Canada? My first reaction was scepticism but upon re-reading a few brochures I picked up at the recent ALFA conference in Phoenix, I thought: “well, maybe it IS cheaper in Canada, at least for some types of housing and health care”.

For example, at the Forum at Desert Harbor, the daily rate for a private room in the long term care component of the campus is $280, which is to say just over $100,000 per year. There aren’t many private pay long term care facilities in Canada that are charging $280 per day.

But at the same time, the rate at the Forum for a two bedroom 922 square foot independent living apartment is only $2,868 per month (the meal package includes breakfast and one other meal). The Forum is an upscale project with lots of amenities including a lakefront location, a pool, and a grapefruit tree, to say nothing of that desert climate.

Americans would have a tough time finding a similar value in Canada. The trick at the Forum is obviously to stay out of long term care!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Future, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off

Migrating Seniors (reprise)

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

My last post discussed the surprising fact that Alberta attracts and retains more interprovincial migrants over the age of 65 than BC. Those migrating seniors are part of the 20% of the 65+ age group that moved between the last two censuses. Not all moved interprovincially of course—in fact, many more moved within the same province. To take BC as an example, for every 100 people over the age of 65 who moved between 2001 and 2006:

  • 49 moved within the same city or town;
  • 36 moved within BC;
  • 10 moved from a different province;
  • 5 moved from another country.

The proportions were almost exactly the same for younger BC seniors (55 to 64), which is interesting because that group contains many leading edge boomers. The expectation among many industry observers is that baby boomers will behave differently from older generations, but that expectation has yet to materialize in mobility patterns.

Generally speaking, the older people get the more likely they are to stay close to home. More people over the age of 75 move within the same city or town than other age groups, and fewer move between provinces. We might expect then that younger seniors would be more inclined than older seniors to move from province to province, but that’s not what happened, between 2001 and 2006.

One of the reasons for this is probably the snowbird phenomenon—people don’t move from province to province because they go away for six months every year. A far greater proportion of American seniors move from state to state: they’ve got all kinds of warm places to move to. Canadians have South Western British Columbia, milder than the rest of the country to be sure, but it’s not Arizona!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Future, Senior Housing | Comments Off