Many people thought it would take senior living years and years to recover from the COVID-19 virus. But this May, Varsity’s Sales & Marketing Roundtable participants were feeling resounding optimism! Their positive experiences with leads and move-ins are echoed in communities across the country, as we found through a presentation by Lana Peck of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) in our last roundtable of the month, where she shared statistics about the  state of senior living.

Here are 10 takeaways from this month’s roundtable:

1. Momentum is positive. Leads and move-ins are on the upswing. One participant in New Jersey said, “We have a small memory care wait list, which we haven’t seen since the pandemic started!” Another participant in Arkansas said, “Tours are way up. Leads are coming in strong.” From Pennsylvania, the news was, “IL is booming. Our small carriage home project is going well with 15 of 16 reserved.” And from Washington state: “We’re also super busy moving in people. There’s so much going on, our sales team can’t even keep up with it.”
2. Staffing issues are still challenging. One participant said, “We are definitely having challenges. We used to struggle with nursing positions, but now it’s across all departments. We’ve been offering between $2,000 and $5,000 [as a] signing bonus. Another community shared a tip: “We held our Drive-In Career Fair yesterday and had 27 candidates show up.”
3. The hot housing market helps. “The housing market is really hot and there are not enough houses, removing the challenge of selling your home,” said one participant from Illinois.
4. People are “Zoomed out.” But that’s OK, since in-person events, especially outdoors, are back! “The turnout for in-person events has been strong and there’s a lot of interest,” said one participant.
5. Mask updates are confusing. “Some of our campus is under one set of guidelines and some is under another set of guidelines,” said one attendee in Washington state. “It’s really confusing. We’re developing bullets to outline what our residents can and can’t do, depending on what buildings they are going in and out of.”
6. Communities have to get used to holding in-person events again. “We had our first in-person event yesterday after a year and three months,” said one marketer. “It went OK — you forget things like putting pens and pads on tables — it’s been a long time! It was very well received. We just had some minor hiccups and need to remind ourselves of how to do in-person events again.”
7. More team members are getting vaccinated. “Our staff is showing more interest in getting vaccinated and we’re at 66% right now. We think they are feeling more comfortable now that they’ve seen [that] others haven’t had negative reactions,” said one participant. Other communities are providing cash incentives and not requiring weekly tests if employees are vaccinated. One community even created videos of staff members explaining why it’s a good idea to get the vaccine. “It helped get us over 70%,” the participant said.
8. There’s a lot of buzz around mandating the vaccine. There’s a desire to mandate the vaccine, and some communities have started to do this, but our prediction is that we’ll be hearing much more about this, especially the legal implications.
9. It’s a struggle to re-engage residents. As discussed on a call with LeadingAge D.C., there’s a current struggle in getting Memory Care residents to re-engage because they’ve been in their rooms for 14 months.
10. Move-ins are trending higher. Findings presented by Lana Peck of NIC back up participant experiences: Across all three levels of care, move-ins are up, move-outs are down, and traffic and leads are strong. Details below.

NIC Executive Survey Insights with Lana Peck

• Lana Peck, Senior Principal from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC), attended the roundtable and shared insights from the latest wave of NIC’s Executive Survey.
  • A few high points:
    • Nursing care occupancy fell more than IL and AL — 12.5 points vs. 8.7 points. Senior housing declined 8.7 points over the course of the pandemic; that includes IL and AL. Nursing care fell the most, by 12.5 points. So, COVID-19 hit nursing properties especially hard.
    • Vaccinations have fallen off — right now, they are at 90% for residents and about 65% for employees.
    • A smaller share of properties have 90% or more occupancy — only 24% in the first quarter of 2021 versus 54% in the first quarter of 2020.
  • On the bright side:
    • An acceleration in the pace of move-ins is clearly trending, and the pace of move-outs is either staying the same or decelerating.
    • In March, we may have reached an inflection point in occupancy.
    • In IL, 56% of communities said they have seen an increase in occupancy.
    • Lead volume is increasing. Encouragingly, we’re seeing a growing number of organizations reaching lead volumes at pre-pandemic levels.
    • Rent discounts, free rent and rent freezes have been increasingly used as incentives to boost occupancy. Most of the C-suite operators and owners who were questioned believe that occupancy will reach pre-pandemic levels in a year or two.

See more details of Wave 28 of the NIC survey here.

We hope that move-ins, reopenings and vaccination rates continue to rise in June. Look for the next monthly recap of our roundtable discussions in your inbox.

Until then, please be sure to join our weekly Sales & Marketing Roundtable on Thursdays at noon ET and 11 a.m. CT.

For login information, email DDunham@varsitybranding.com.