Another recent data set release from the National Investment Center (NIC) offers more good news on occupancy for majority independent living (IL) and majority assisted living (AL) providers. Occupancy continues to steadily improve in both of these settings, with an across sector improvement to 83.5% (+ 0.3 percentage points) since March 2023, and to 85.3% (+ 0.1 pps) for majority-IL and 81.7% (+ 0.5 pps) for majority AL since March 2023, respectively.

AL occupancy recovery continues to outpace IL occupancy recovery, despite AL inventory remaining at lower levels than IL; IL, however, has overall higher net occupancy than AL. Regionally, 11 out of 31 markets have had AL occupancy return to pre-pandemic levels: Dallas, Kansas City, Phoenix, Orlando, Denver, Detroit, Tampa, Cleveland, Atlanta, San Antonio, and Portland. In terms of IL occupancy, only four of the same 31 markets have returned to pre-pandemic levels, including San Antonio and Pittsburgh. All of the IL markets have retained occupancy of about 80% throughout the pandemic, indicating this segment remains “resilient and strong.”

Strong demand for all levels of senior housing led the authors to conclude that we will continue to see improvements in occupancy through 2023 and beyond.