Assisted living communities saw the largest decrease in interest from 2023 to 2024 of all property types included in the 2024 CBRE US Healthcare Capital Markets’ Investor & Developer Survey.
Interest decreased 6% among respondents, according to the small survey.
Overall, 9% of participants said that assisted living communities met their criteria for acquiring healthcare assets.
The only two property types that respondents said were less appealing were long-term care acute hospitals (6% of respondents expressed interest) and “other” (2%).
The property type garnering the most interest was medical outpatient building (95%), followed by ambulatory survey center (79%), medical conversion (44%), life sciences (32%), inpatient rehabilitation hospital (28%), behavioral health (26%), freestanding emergency department (16%) and wellness center (11%).
The survey was distributed to approximately 500 real estate investment trusts, institutional healthcare investors, private capital investors and developers throughout the United States. The response rate was approximately 20%, according to CBRE, and the company said it “removed duplicate responses from the same firm as a measure to not exaggerate or inflate results for specific questions.”
Overall, responses also indicate that more capital is being allocated to healthcare real estate in 2024 compared with 2023, according to CBRE. “We attribute the increased allocation to healthcare real estate’s stability in times of volatility and shifts away from other property types experiencing challenges, such as traditional office,” wrote the report authors.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they plan to be net buyers of healthcare properties in 2024, and 14% expect to be net sellers, the latter a year-over-year increase of 6% in respondents who answered the same way. The gain may be due to loan maturity, the need for more liquidity or the completion of construction projects, the report authors said.
Interest rate increases though mid-2023 “heavily” affected commercial real estate markets, CBRE said.
