The Ugly Truth about Your Senior Housing Investment—Getting the Facts on Poor Revenue Growth | Bild & Co
Senior housing investors anticipate portfolio growth according to Senior Housing News, which cites a CBRE U.S. Seniors Housing & Care Investor Survey.
But that’s only part of the senior housing investment picture.
The report also states that 38% of investors say increased construction activity is a top concern for their industry…and maybe you can relate to their unease.
When it comes to placing hard-earned capital in senior living properties, escalating competition makes it difficult to improve your occupancy and ROI.
But here’s the reality.
If your senior housing investment suffers from poor profitability, misinformation about what it takes to increase occupancy is more dangerous than increased competition.
If your top-line revenue isn’t improving, here are three ugly truths you need to face so you can finally net up and grow occupancy in your portfolio.
Filtered Data Isn’t Your Friend
When occupancy is low, your first step is pulling data to diagnose your problem. It’s your logical next step—after all, it’s impossible to implement a strategy to fix your problems unless you have accurate information.
However, if you’re turning to your management company for data, here’s the ugly truth you need to realize.
The data you receive may be filtered.
When senior living management companies receive critical information on their communities, that information has been sifted and interpreted by other leaders in the organization, many of whom have an emotional attachment to the data.
Here’s what can happen:
- Upper senior living management experiences guilt, fear, and a host of other emotions for disappointing numbers. To protect their role, these individuals feed you biased or filtered information.
- Based on their communication, there’s an incomplete picture of your senior housing investment.
- By the time you receive the information, data has passed through several, less-than-objective hands.
If you want to avoid playing telephone tag with your top-line revenue, you’ll need the hard facts on what’s happening at your communities.
Executive Director Burnout Doesn’t Drive Long-Term Growth
Without a doubt, fixing poor occupancy begins with your executive directors. As site-level leaders, your EDs are directly responsible for driving growth.
But here’s another ugly truth you need to face.
Cutting the individuals who help your EDs generate revenue is a recipe for burnout—not long-term growth.
It may be tempting to improve the bottom line of your senior housing investment by reducing unnecessary positions and expenditures. But make sure you don’t reduce the budget for income-producing activities—meaning…don’t cut your community sales director employee.
If you do, you’ll place extra responsibilities on your already-stressed directors and ultimately harm your future success.
You Need an Infrastructure for Long-Term Growth
Improving the profitability of your senior housing investment isn’t about increasing executive director responsibilities or overhauling your communities.
The ugly truth is, moving the needle on occupancy is less complicated than you think.
Whether you’re a large REIT or a small investment group, the key to sustainable growth is simply establishing a revenue-driving infrastructure in each of your communities. This means…
- Putting in place systems proven to increase occupancy and drive move-ins.
- Unifying how your communities drive revenue across locations.
- Ensuring accountability and accurate information gathering so you make data-based decisions.
For years, Bild & Company has empowered senior living organizations as well as REITs and private senior living investors with its proprietary systems for revenue growth.
We’ll get the hard facts on your investment’s top-line revenue, and we’ll pinpoint the infrastructure you need to improve the profitability of your portfolio.
To partner with Bild & Company, contact us online, or give us a call at 1-800-640-0688. Ask for Liz Simpson, and we’ll set up a time so you can speak with Traci Bild about your growth goals and the steps you need to take to achieve them.
