Senior Housing Market Feasibility Case Studies

Haven Senior Investments (HSI) develops market feasibility reports that have proven to be very beneficial to owners, operators, investors and developers of senior living communities. Check out these results:

Case 1 – Georgia Assisted Living Owner

HSI was recently contracted to conduct a Market Analysis for an Assisted Living owner in Georgia.  The community has been open for several years but has never been able to fill.  

HSI began the analysis by determining the Primary Market Area (PMA). With the intense competition in the area, it was determined that residents and family members would not likely travel more than 5 miles from the site, resulting in setting the PMA as a 5-mile radius.

The PMA demographics showed that there was a high number of income and frailty qualified individuals within the 5-mile radius, as well as a high number of Adult Children of potential residents.  The PMA also showed a 25% growth rate of individuals age 65+ and a 27% growth rate of individuals age 75+ within that market area.

The Unmet demand was calculated, and not only should the Assisted Living be full, but there was sufficient demand to build another community of the same size.  Most Market Analyses would have stopped at his point with the determination “The community should be full”.

The HSI team was able to use decades of experience in senior living operations, sales, and marketing to dig deeper to isolate the issue.  The community and each of the competitors were secret shopped by an executive level sales and marketing expert to determine the strengths and weakness of each community.  The areas explored were the marketing strategies, brand positioning, search engine optimization, and sales strategies of each community in the market.

It was found that there had been eleven new communities built within ten miles of the site within the most recent five years, containing 623 Assisted Living beds and 276 Memory Care beds. Seven of these communities are within the Primary Market Area 5-mile radius. At first glance it would appear that there had been too much growth in the market for the communities to fill, which would remedy itself as time goes by.

Looking at the competitive online presence, the subject community had done well with search engine optimization and was on the first page of search engine results. Two of the competitors were running Google Ad campaigns, which the community was not, and online review results for the community were scarce.

It would seem that the community needs to spend more money in marketing including online advertising to increase their digital presence, but this was not the case. The owner would have spent tens of thousands of dollars in marketing with no results had he not invested in a Haven Senior Investments Market Study. The real issue of filling the community was uncovered in the secret shopping that the HSI team conducted. Competitors had very few vacancies and typically have a wait list. One of the competitors had 26 people to call before she would know if the one vacancy would be available.

The results of the subject community secret shop…

Day one: Requested information online with no response.

Day two: Phone call to community. No answer, so left a voicemail.

Day three: Phone was answered, and the receptionist was told that we had been trying for days to get information with no response. The call was put through to an associate who took the call on speaker phone making the conversation hard to understand.

HSI was not only able to uncover that the issue was with the sales team but was able to recommend local senior living sales associates that would make a great addition to the team.

If you would like more information about how Haven Senior Investments could help you, please let us know.  We are here to serve you.