Senior Housing Buyers Are Paying Up, But Sellers Still Need Convincing

Senior housing landlords are in the driver’s seat when it comes to pricing their assets on the sales market as the silver tsunami finally bears fruit on the industry’s fundamentals. 

But even with hungry investors and elevated prices, many senior housing owners are reluctant to part ways with properties because of how strong operating fundamentals have become, T7 Capital co-founders Ari Adlerstein and Josh Simpson told Bisnow. 

Investors spent $12.1B on senior housing during the first quarter, the most of any quarter in at least 20 years, according to MSCI data provided to Bisnow in June. Senior housing was the most active property asset class traded behind data centers over the past 12 months as buyers from the traditional multifamily sector swarmed to senior housing to chase better yield. Roughly 86% of institutional investors planned to increase their allocation to senior housing this year, according to a JLL survey. 

And yet that number could’ve been even higher if not for the hesitance of owners to let go of a good thing.

“It’s harder to convince sellers to sell their property, by far,” Adlerstein said.

That is despite the power to set their price. Second-quarter pricing per senior housing unit reached just shy of $185,000 in the second quarter, up from $182,800 in the first quarter and a more than 30% spike from the start of 2025, according to MMCG Investment.

Nursing home owners are especially reluctant to put properties up for sale, especially with long-term debt readily available, Adlerstein and Simpson said.

If there isn’t a compelling reason to have to sell the asset, owners would rather hold on to them since other commercial real estate alternatives lack the fundamental growth prospects as the oldest cohort of the baby boomers hits their 80s, ushering in the long-expected silver tsunami. 

“The good news is that it is here. And I think Covid really was a factor that is allowing senior housing to really, really boom,” Adlerstein said. “There’s not enough units coming online to meet up with demand, so our senior housing friends are sitting pretty.”

Rents for nursing care homes jumped 5.6% year-over-year in the second quarter as the supply of available beds dropped, according to senior housing industry analysis firm NIC Map. 

With that kind of income improvement and with aggressive lenders, many owners are simply transitioning to long-term U.S. Housing and Urban Development loans for 30 or more years and planning to sit tight.

“Most of our clients on the skilled nursing side are family offices without any sort of fund life. They’re buying for their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids,” Adlerstein said.

Adlerstein and Simpson are veteran senior housing investment sales brokers, representing investors and facility owners across the U.S. They founded T7 Capital last year after more than a decade as rainmakers at Meridian Capital.

The duo said the lack of new development, still stalled out from the coronavirus pandemic, will keep prices elevated for some time, which means finding prospective buyers of those properties that do go up for sale doesn’t need a wide net, Adlerstein said.

“Today, it’s a world of difference,” he said.

In one example, T7 brought a portfolio out to market two years ago with a target of achieving $175M. Back then, the landlord “couldn’t quite get there.”  

“Today, we’re under contract at just around $200M,” Adlerstein said.

But developers aren’t following the demand yet. New-unit growth in senior housing was less than half a percent nationwide in the second quarter, according to NIC Map. 

“We aren’t yet seeing new development pick up, and the bottleneck is largely on the capital side, not from lack of demand,” NIC Map Head of Research and Analytics Lisa McCracken said in a recent report. “With elevated costs for labor and materials, and property valuation dynamics, many groups simply aren’t ready to pull the trigger on projects just yet.”

The lack of new development pushed average occupancy to above 90% last year — the highest rate in the 20 years that NIC Map has tracked the data, according to PwC and Urban Land Institute’s 2026 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report, risking creating a shortage of senior housing and nursing facility units.

T7 was founded last year after a stint by both Adlerstein — a lawyer by training — and Simpson — a CPA — at Meridian Capital. After establishing the senior housing platform at Meridian, Adlerstein brought Simpson aboard, and the duo soon became top-ranking producers, The Real Deal reported. But a dispute arose between them and Meridian at the time of its $425M sale to NewPoint Capital, and Meridian fired Adlerstein and Simpson in December 2024. 

The duo got a court to vacate a noncompete clause, allowing them to form T7 Capital last year, Adlerstein said. And since then, business has boomed for the firm. Simpson said the influx of capital is helping the firm to achieve a projected $5B in transactions this year, up from $3B last year.

The firm helped investors complete a $280M acquisition of 22 senior housing properties in the Midwest. T7 also represented a joint venture between Range Equity Management, Sabal Investment Holdings, Ovation Group and Newland Real Estate Capital for a $35M Pinnacle Financial Partners loan to buy HarborChase of Boynton Beach, a 135-unit senior living facility in Palm Beach, Florida, in July from Lotis Group, the South Florida Business Journal reported. 

Simpson said HarborChase was indicative of the investor demand to acquire nursing and senior housing across the U.S.

“There’s just so much capital chasing limited product,” he said. 

Still, it takes cajoling to convince a landlord to part with a senior housing property. Adlerstein said those that wait too long could miss out on a big payday.

“The reason you sell is because you can get a big number per unit,” Adlerstein said.

“Alternatively, you can hang on, and then your asset in a few years from now is a little older, and maybe you’re not getting such a big number just because of its age. That’s a sales pitch, and I think it’s accurate.”