As assisted-living communities reported an unexpected increase in occupancy in the second half of the year, operators large and small indicated plans to increase their investments in both existing senior centers and possibly new ones in the Fairfield County area to accommodate demand.
Since taking over the former Homesteads at Newtown facility from bankrupt Sunwest Management Inc., Westport-based Hunter Gregory Corp. has increased occupancy 20 percent at the newly christened Maplewood at Newtown, according to principal Gregory Smith.
With a second Maplewood facility in Danbury near full occupancy and another nearing completion in Norwalk, Smith said his company has not ruled out additional purchases in southwest Connecticut. Currently, Fairfield County has nearly 25 such facilities according to the Connecticut Assisted Living Association based in Old Lyme.
“Senior housing has been the best performing asset in real estate,” Smith said. “It”™s not that it”™s recession proof ”“ but it almost is.”
State encourages home-based care
The base rate for assisted living is $5,160 on average in the Stamford area, according to the MetLife Mature Market Institute, a Westport-based subsidiary of MetLife. Nationally, assisted-living base rates increased 5.2 percent on average between 2009 and 2010.
Nearly one in five nursing homes today has an associated assisted-living wing, MMI found. That is nearly identical to the percentage of caregivers nationally who care for someone with Alzheimer”™s disease, according to a survey published in October by the Families and Work Institute.
In September, Connecticut became one of 22 states to receive funding for community-based Alzheimer”™s disease care from the U.S. Administration on Aging, with the Connecticut Department of Social Services getting $300,000 of some $10 million disbursed nationally. The state offers myriad programs intended to encourage home-based care and intervention, including the Statewide Respite Care Program, which pays for substitutes for caregivers for those with Alzheimer”™s disease; a federally funded Money Follows the Person program that permits states to move people out of nursing homes into community-based settings; and a private assisted-living pilot program that helps pay for services for people in private assisted-living facilities who have used up their own resources, though not room and board.
”˜Very attractive investments”™
The average occupancy rate for senior-housing properties in the third quarter was 87.7 percent, unchanged from the second quarter according to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry (NIC) of Annapolis, Md.
What”™s more, the assisted-living occupancy rate was 88.7 percent in this quarter, up from 84.7 percent in the second quarter. NIC does not break out its data at the regional or state level.
“While independent-living occupancy rates are continuing to establish new cyclical lows, assisted-living occupancy rates are recovering from recent lows,” said Chuck Harry, NIC research director, in a prepared statement.
In October, Chicago-based Ventas Inc. committed $3.1 billion to acquiring nearly 120 communities from Atria Senior Living Group Inc. of Louisville, Ky., which Ventas says will make it the largest owner of senior living communities in the nation.
Atria has two homes in Stamford and another in Darien, as well as Westchester County facilities in Ardsley, Briarcliff Manor, Ossining and Rye Brook.
“I think there is some additional upside in those (Atria) assets through redevelopment, and we”™ve had some discussions with our tenants about ways that we can work together ”¦ for us to provide capital to them to redevelop some of those assets as Alzheimer”™s wings,” said Ray Lewis, chief investment officer of Ventas, in a conference call with investment analysts this month.
“Those are very attractive investments because you get to leverage all the fixed costs in the building and ”¦ the returns tend to be pretty high.”
