Continuing care retirement / life plan community occupancy continued to inch upward in the second quarter, with independent living once again achieving the highest levels of occupancy, according to a report released Wednesday by specialty investment bank Ziegler.
Ziegler partnered with the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care to summarize second-quarter occupancy growth and other key indicators for CCRCs in comparison with non-CCRC senior living communities in an article by Lisa McCracken, NIC head of research and analytics, in the latest Ziegler Senior Living Finance Z-News newsletter.
According to data from NIC MAP, CCRCs overall reported second-quarter occupancy of 89.3%, up 0.2 percentage points from the first quarter. Entrance-free communities reported no overall occupancy gains quarter over quarter, whereas rental CCRC communities saw a 0.6 percentage point increase from the first quarter.
Occupancy for independent living in CCRCs rose to 91.1%, the highest occupancy rate among all types of senior living and care settings (independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing). But the independent living segment in CCRCs — which had a 0.1 percentage point occupancy increase from the first quarter, continued to show slower overall growth compared with the assisted living and memory care segments in CCRCs.
The memory care segment in CCRCs reported occupancy of 89.7%, followed by assisted living in CCRCs, at 89.5% — and occupancy in both of those segments in CCRCs was up by a full percentage point from the first quarter. Skilled nursing within CCRCs, at 85.1% occupancy for the second quarter, remained flat compared with occupancy in the first quarter.
The data showed that CCRC occupancy exceeded non-CCRC community occupancy across all segments, with the greatest gap in independent living, where CCRC independent living occupancy was 5.3% higher than non-CCRC independent living settings.
McCracken said the data represent a national snapshot and emphasized that regional differences exist. She recommended that providers stay abreast of occupancy benchmarks in the geographic regions in which they operate.
Ziegler and NIC also looked at annual growth of monthly rents.
Compared with a year ago, the memory care (4.6%) and assisted living (4.2%) segments experienced the greater year-over-year increases in monthly rent. Independent living annual monthly rent growth was slightly lower, at 3.7%. McCracken noted that those numbers are down from prior record highs, when inflation, wage escalation and increasing costs significantly affected CCRCs.
NIC MAP, powered by NIC MAP Vision, collects primary data on occupancy, asking rents, demand, inventory and construction for 16,200 independent living communities, assisted living communities, memory care communities, CCRCs and skilled nursing facilities across 140 US metropolitan markets.
