Is Senior Assisted Living an Interesting Asset Class? What Makes for a Good Operator?

Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z

Why is senior assisted living an interesting asset class? What makes for a good operator? What are the challenges in this space? AdaPia d'Errico, principal and VP of strategy at Alpha Investing, shares her insights.

You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3vZkDjq

As the firm that is fundraising and looking for an operator and a really good property. What do you look for in the operator to partner up with?

What we're looking for in an operator is a lot of experience. The operator that we are currently working with is a national company, they have the reach, they have the operational capabilities they have in house management. Vertically integrated is really important. Not just a sponsor that wants to purchase the building, because they think it's great cash flow, or they're going to flip it at a profit later, the management of the operations is really important. So we like sponsors that are also operating, because that vertical integration is really important to fully realize the value that's in the transaction. Because it's not just the real estate, and yes, there's cash flows, but you can really add value, and you can maximize those cash flows through a reduction of expenses, through making sure that occupancy is stable and steady, which is one of the biggest challenges in this space, occupancy, in addition to labor.

There has to be an understanding of how to operate it, of the local area as well, because although you might think that you can just apply one big giant national brand, to something like senior living, the truth is that you actually can't and that's just proven out, it's very localized. There needs to be an understanding of that local market, how it operates, who's there. A lot of research needs to go into that.

What are some of the biggest challenges in the space?

Some of them have really been highlighted because of COVID. Some of the challenges arise from maintaining the expenses within range. And COVID really exacerbated expenses in multiple ways. Just PP alone, was a much bigger expense, like all the extra safety and medical equipment that was required. Labor is a big thing. There are some some facilities that really were unable to keep it all together because they couldn't keep staff for various reasons. And although COVID was a very acute thing to happen to the industry, it did highlight some weakness there and the importance of labor, the importance of the staff and their safety. You have your nurses and your people walking away because they don't feel safe. Your residents are not getting care. This is a people business at the end of the day. We're investors and everything like that. But you need to place a primary focus on the quality of life of the residents. And that's something that we know our operator does. And it's really important to us when we invest with somebody, because that piece is what's forgotten, is the people that are there. And that's not okay.

It sounds like an asset class with a ton of moving parts. And also at the same time, it sounds like a great time to get into it, from what I'm gathering.

Historically, Senior Living has some of the strongest performance relative to other asset classes. Senior living has actually outperformed every other asset class over the past 10 years, except for industrial. Industrial has actually generated higher returns in a one, three, and five year period. But senior living has outperformed everything over the past 10 years.

AdaPia d'Errico

www.alphai.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/adapia

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