Seniors housing operators and investors will want to look beyond what is occurring nationally to what is happening in local markets, Beth Mace, National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care chief economist and director of capital markets research, shared with members of the press Jan. 8.

“There’s a lot of variation in the market, and that’s a function of the supply in the market as well as the demand fundamentals for each individual market,” she said.

For example, Mace said, overall seniors housing occupancy for the fourth quarter of 2015 was 90.1%, but “there’s some wide variation,” she said.

The markets with the strongest occupancy rates for seniors housing in the fourth quarter of 2015:

  1. San Jose, 94.6%
  2. Portland, 93.7%
  3. Washington, D.C., 93.3%
  4. Pittsburgh, 93.1%
  5. Baltimore, 93.1%

The markets with the lowest occupancy rates for seniors housing in fourth quarter of 2015:

  1. San Antonio, 82.4%
  2. Houston, 85.5%
  3. Las Vegas, 86.9%
  4. Dallas, 87.0%
  5. Riverside, CA, 87.0%

NIC released national statistics related to seniors housing occupancy, absorption, construction, inventory growth and rent growth in the fourth quarter of 2015 on Jan. 6, as McKnight’s Senior Living previously reported. The organization has posted regional key metric tables online.