More than 71% of investors expect rising interest rates and other pressures to push capitalization rates up over the next 12 months. That’s according to respondents in the ninth annual Wealth Management Real Estate / National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care Seniors Housing survey.

Eleven percent of investors anticipate no change, and 18% believe cap rates could decrease in that time frame. The expected rise in cap rates among the majority of investors is driven by record inflation and expense pressure on net operating income, the survey found.

The 2022 results are based on responses from 208 participants in an online survey in June. The majority of respondents represent a cross-section of different roles in the senior housing sector, including investors, lenders, developers, brokers and owner/operators.

Beth Burhnam Mace, chief economist at NIC, said during a related webinar Tuesday that senior housing investors are more bullish on long-term investing than they are on the short term. The ability to boost occupancy in the short term, for example, is a concern for them.

“Investors are stretching out their investment period and looking to other metrics than where cash flows are today at a static cap rate,” Ben Firestone, CEO and co-founder of Chicago-based Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, told Wealth Management Real Estate.

One reason investors are less bullish on the short term, according to Mace, is lingering concerns over occupancy. Mace said that 80% of the survey respondents indicated that they believe occupancy rates will improve by approximately 2.5 percentage points before the end of the year.

According to the economist, less than a third of the respondents believe that senior living is in a recovery phase. This amount is down from half of respondents who thought so last year. She said that 26% of the respondents believe that senior housing is in a recession phase.