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Help For Operators of Assisted Living Facilities

• Assisted Living Real Estate Investment Brokerage
• Acquisition and Permanent Financing
• Business and Real Estate Valuation
• Marketing Assistance For Adult Family Home Operators

Investment Property Update

Last modified on 2010-09-15 21:23:22 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

The Remaining Growth Market in the Real Estate Investment Sector

Care Professionals and Investors Meet Up To Fulfill Rapidly Growing Demand In Assisted Living

Americans Over 65 To Grow By 35% between 2015 and 2025

Sarah's Place, a Successful Adult Family Home in Port Orchard

The metrics for the housing industry are pretty bleak. Recent statistics form the National Association of Realtors indicate that nationally homes sales declined 27% from a year ago in July. The July total closings for Kitsap County in 2009 were 284 units and only 204 in July of 2010,  a decline of about 28%. The number of pending sales in July 2010 totaled 376, a decline of 70 from 346 in July of 2010 or 20%.

This is of course great news for home buyers and to a lesser extent for real estate investors. The number of families that have lost their homes due to foreclosure has risen, a lot. Because most of them cannot qualify for a new home loan they are forced back into the rental market creating more demand for rental housing. This trend should continue to play out over the next 2-3 years but the growth in demand for rental housing will also be constrained by the continuing loss of incomes through job losses and business failures.

The untold good news for the real estate market in the coming decades concerns the aging of the population. In a recent economic report by First Research, a unit of Wells Fargo Bank, they indicated that the number of Americans over 65 will grow between 2015 and 2025 by 35%. The age at which these seniors enter into assisted living facilities will likely stretch out as the average life span increases but eventually aging baby boom generation will need various forms of assisted living options including in home care, adult family homes, skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes.

Institutional care facilities will be constrained by their funding model which depends largely on Medicare and Medicaid payments. Given the current fiscal crisis with state and federal governments revenues from these sources are more likely to decline that increase in the next decade or more. Most states have resorted to creating less costly, neighborhood based, small care facilities also know as adult family homes to close the care gap and give non-profit and for-profit entities a longer leash to solve the problem.

Recent investigative news reports in Washington have uncovered some concerns about the operation of a segment of these homes such as regulatory non-compliance. Although licensing standards and operations are rather strict and enforcement is constant the shear size of the current and coming demand has encouraged some operators to rush into the market with sub-standard living units and a lack of management and marketing skills needed to attain economic sustainability and the highest standards of quality care. However, the laws of supply and demand will prevail and individuals may have the best opportunity ever in today’s low cost environment to position themselves to be leaders in quality of care and provide themselves with  long term sustainable income.

Jim Freeman, a managing Broker, and Ellie Renne, associate broker with Coldwell Banker Park Shore Real Estate in Port Orchard, WA have launched a service to help current future owners of adult family homes and assisted living facilities to start, acquire, sell or improve adult family home businesses. For more information please visit www.AssistedLivingAssistant.com.