Occupancy in Senior Housing Down 8.7% YOY
April 9, 2021
Occupancy in senior housing facilities dropped to a record low of 78.8% in the first quarter despite increasing vaccination rates and declining coronavirus infections, a potential concern for investors in the industry’s debt, Bloomberg News reported, citing a poll of for-profit and non-profit managers by the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care. The figure was down 1.8 percentage points from the previous quarter and 8.7 percentage points year over year.
Although senior housing residents have largely been vaccinated against Covid-19, there’s a “natural lag” between when someone inquires about entering a facility and when they actually move in, the group’s chief economist, Beth Burnham Mace, said in a news release Thursday. More than 29 million people aged 65 and older are fully vaccinated in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Census Bureau pegged the number of people in that age group at more than 54 million as of July 1, 2019.
“Data from the next two quarters will signal whether consumers have moved beyond the pandemic and are again considering senior housing properties,” said Mace.
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence
