Leaders with the National Investment for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) put the spotlight on the middle market opportunity and the rise of active adult housing, as the organization’s fall conference got underway in Chicago on Wednesday.
In addition, a new data sharing partnership with PointClickCare will bring added firepower to NIC’s actual rates initiative.
A new software partner
NIC announced a new software partner in its efforts to increase data transparency for determining seniors housing actual rates — the monthly rates residents pay when living in a senior housing community, as compared to the property’s asking rates.
PointClickCare joins Yardi and MatrixCare as NIC Actual Rates Software Partners. The certification is awarded to software providers who have developed reports that meet NIC’s actual rates standard format and who have had two or more operators provide at least six months of data using the standard report. As more providers are certified, it will facilitate operator participation and create actual rate reports on a national and, ultimately, local levels.
PointClickCare serves 10,000 senior housing communities, Vice President and General Manager of Senior Living Travis Palmquist said Wednesday at a press briefing.
Chuck Sudo Chuck Sudo
Actual rates data are aggregated across operators and allow investors and operators to understand the relationship between “asking rate” or “rate card” pricing and the actual rate being paid by residents, and are comparable to data available in other real estate asset classes.
“There’s tremendous power in the data. Having the opportunity to work more closely with NIC and make it easier for our customers to submit timely and accurate data is exciting,” Palmquist said.
Middle-market follow-up
NIC’s fall conference, which runs through Friday, Sept. 13, will serve as a launching point for the next steps in the group’s push for solutions to address future demand for middle-market senior housing — seniors who have too many resources to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford mark-rate senior housing.
NIC’s landmark middle-market study, released last April, was driven in part by operators who wanted to understand the size of the demographic and its growth trends over the next decade, Chief Economist Beth Burnham Mace said at the briefing.
NIC has set up panel discussions during the conference to discuss the opportunities for investors in middle-market senior housing, as well as a “hackathon” where attendees brainstorm solutions to cutting operating expenses and opening the industry to the middle-market cohort.
So far, no capital providers are knocking down the door to invest in middle-market senior housing, but NIC is in the midst of a push to educate them on the opportunity, with targets including pension funds in particular. No concrete answers will be expected to come out of the conference, but Mace hopes the dialogue that starts in Chicago will continue beyond this week.
“Our hope is that, in 10 years time, we’ll come back and have another piece of this conference dedicated to middle-market and how it’s being served,” she said.
Defining active adult
Active adult senior housing trails only independent living as a preferred product type among investors, and it threatens to disrupt the industry’s established norms if it continues.
NIC Chief of Research & Analytics Chuck Harry believes the term “active adult” has become muddied with the rising investor interest, and the group will enlist its Future Leaders Council to determine a concrete definition of what constitutes active adult senior housing. As it stands, active adult constitutes both rentals and sales. Having a streamlined definition will make it clear to investors what the product type actually is, giving them the proper information to make the right investment decisions.
Harry traced the muddied state of active adult to existing definitions from different sources that do not align, so they are looking to solidify that with NIC’s data and analytics committee to give clarity around an appropriate definition, as the active adult space has evolved.
“In order to track it, we need to be clear on what comprises active adult,” Harry said.
The post NIC Seeks Active Adult Definition, Announces PointClickCare Partnership appeared first on Senior Housing News.
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