Discover how NIC MAP Vision’s newest AI data launch will be a help to operators in a variety of different ways, including creating offering memorandums, screening job candidates, rent roll analysis, and more with Kyle Gardner, COO of NIC Map Vision.

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This episode was recorded at the NIC Spring Conference.

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Produced by Solinity Marketing.

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Become a BTG sponsor.

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Welcome to season seven of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by Sponsors Accushield Aline, NIC MAP Vision, ProCare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, ServiceMaster, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity, and produced by Solinity Marketing.

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Lucas 00:56:

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior Living podcast with Josh and Lucas here in my home city, Dallas, Texas at the spring. NIC Conference with one of our best supporters. We want to thank NIC MAP Vision for being a great supporter of Bridge the Gap, bringing you this content. We want to welcome Kyle Gardner back to the program. Welcome Kyle.

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Kyle 01:14:

Hello, hello, hello. Good to see you guys.

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Lucas 01:16:

So good to see you too. Our listeners that follow us and for new listeners, uh, we're continuing to roll out a quarterly data episode sponsored by NIC MAP Vision. And this is the most cutting edge up to date data and trends in the industry. We've got some great announcements today, of course, we're going to be talking about data and we're also going to be talking about AI. AI has been a huge focus for so many people over the past couple of years and it's really an emerging technology and it's making its way into how data is formulated and used in the senior living industry. And Kyle's going to break that down to us, but before we get into ai, Kyle from a high level, walk us through some up-to-date data trends for senior living.

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Kyle 01:57:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, good to see everybody and be back on the pod. I've really enjoyed the last couple episodes we've done. Uh, and I'm excited to share the latest NIC MAP Vision fourth quarter 2023 data with you guys. So this is stuff we released just a few months ago. Clients have access to it and I'm happy to bring you here to the Bridge the Gap family, high level positive news across the board. I'm happy to come with some positive news. So in our primary markets, like we talked about on the last pod, those are the kind of 31 largest metros in the US if you kind of sort them by population. So New York and Pennsylvania and the Dallas of the world, things like that. Occupancy is up for senior housing communities, so IL and AL and memory care about 80 basis points quarter over quarter. So we're sitting now in aggregate around 85.1% occupancy, uh, and continuing to trend positively. So really excited about that. Additionally, when we look at total occupied units, so putting the rate aside and we talked about this last time just looking at occupied stock, we set another record high this quarter. So we're seeing demand come and absorb new supply. We're seeing demand absorb existing supply and it's a nice feeling given all the kind of stress we felt during the Covid days.

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Josh 03:10:

Well, Kyle, so that's, uh, very encouraging to all of our listeners, uh, to us as well. You talked about the primary markets. Is the secondary markets trending in the same way or there some unique nuances related to secondary in the smaller markets that is a little different than the primary?

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Kyle 03:27:

For the listeners at home, the secondary markets is kind of metro 32 to 99. So again, just sorted by population size and the, the story's positive there as well. It's actually moving faster. So things are getting better there faster than the primary markets. And I think that's probably because of the size, right? So there's less number of units or total stock to absorb, uh, but still positive demand trends. But in the secondary markets, they've already recovered to their pre pandemic occupancy levels. So in aggregate, we're seeing the industry improve. We're seeing market fundamentals improve in the direction that we want the, uh, rally in both primary and secondary markets as being led by majority assisted living. So that's campuses that have assisted living as the, the largest number of units on site. That doesn't mean they don't have IL or they don't have skills, it just means like AL is the major part of that property and they're leading the rally maybe unsurprisingly so compared to a majority independent living property because of that needs basis. So reminding us of what we, what we kind of know, but it's good that the data's confirming that, you know?

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Josh 04:35:

Yes. Kyle, how much, uh, are the slower construction numbers aiding to the increase in occupancy? Because obviously we have much slower construction than prior to pandemic, so you've got a lot of product out there that was lower on occupancy, but obviously people are still aging. Obviously all the restrictions of covid have started getting more lax, so people maybe are more apt psychologically to make the move to senior living. But are you seeing anything in particular that's like, oh, that is like the number one reason why we're seeing occupancy up all across the board? Or what are the trends telling you?

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Kyle 05:12:

For both primary and secondary markets we're seeing on a percentage basis near not at but near record low construction over inventory growth. So if you look at the number of units currently under construction shovel in the ground relative to the existing inventory in the market on a percentage basis, we're near record low. So in the fourth quarter, I think the number was around 1.4%, uh, in the primary markets. So 1.4% construction relative to existing inventory. Those are levels not yet seen since 2012.

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Josh 05:46:

Wow.

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Kyle 05:46:

And so I think converting that from a percentage to a number 30,000 ish units are under development, which is exciting. Like we need more. But if you, if you compare where we are today and the demographic, the demand side of the equation, there's so much demand coming into the market from people, like you said, the psychological barriers coming down, people reentering that process or finally the baby boomers are aging into this industry as a real consumer now, and we're feeling kind of the front end of, of that wave of demand.

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Kyle 06:21:

If you go back to last decade, the opposite story was kind of true. Capital's so cheap, construction's happening, people were using the opportunity in front of them as they should have to build out their portfolios, but the demand was relatively flat and in some metros even shrinking. And now we're kind of pivoting now, and now it's like demand is insane. The construction isn't there yet. And one factor that is kind of going without being said is like capital markets are a little frozen. It's not surprising that we're waiting on the fed and interest rates to find some equilibrium or, or find kind of a known path forward. We've, they rose rapidly, we've been high for a little bit of time. They keep saying we might, we're going to drop at some point, but not giving clear indication of when kind of consensus thought is second half of 24, we'll get maybe one or two, hopefully three, but only only the FOMC knows that. And so we're kind of at their mercy right now On the construction pipeline deals that are getting done at NIC MAP.

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Josh 07:18:

Are you able to kind of see the trends of the type of product, the type of deal that seems to be getting through and being developed right now? Is that more on the active adult independent or are you seeing more of your traditional assisted living memory care? Can we track it to that level?

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Kyle 07:38:

So there's kind of two parts of that. There's like pipeline, which is kind of, you're going to get your approvals and your permits and maybe you don't have all your funding, maybe you do. And then there's shovels in the dirt for stuff that's under construction right now. I'd say it's still relatively diverse. You know, there is active adult in there, there's age restricted apartments, there's a lot of IL and al I'd say that's probably the, the core of it on the pipeline piece. It's hard to answer that because we're tracking pipeline data from kind of ideation all the way until shovels in the dirt and then we call it construction after that point. And with the pipeline piece, there's so many factors that go into that that even the developers might have to pivot midstream. So hey, they're reporting a mixed campus and then that evolves into maybe a more of a focus campus or maybe a mixed use project depending on what the city is going to let them do. So I don't have analytics offhand on that, but on the construction side, the, the deliveries that have been coming, we're seeing a blended mix across the care spectrum. Sure.

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Josh 08:39:

Well, it's really exciting just to hear the positive things. Right Lucas, we've been waiting for a while to, to hear and talk about this, to, to actually see the data spelling that out for us and to, and to start hearing these quarterly updates. It, it kind of makes us all feel better.

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Lucas 08:54:

It's going to be fun to track this actually all throughout this year as we continue to release these data episodes quarterly throughout this year with NIC MAP vision. Okay. Perfect transition point from data to AI. Tell us about this new launch with NIC MAP vision and AI.

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Kyle 09:11:

I'm so excited about this. I've been nerding out over it for months internally with the team. We've spent the last 12 to 18 months getting smart on all the different AI applications out there. And it's something our CTO has been following for much longer than that. Where we are right now with NIC MAP Vision AI, that suite of products that we're bringing to operators and investors, our goal is how do we take the rich data that we have? How do we take the data that operators and investors are using every day, their rent rolls, their income statements, their offering memorandums, things of that nature, and help them use that data faster, use that data more efficiently and in a really simple, approachable way. And so we've looked at AI as a tool for workflow enhancement, not people replacement. I like to describe it to my customers and my partners as like, these workflow automations are powered by ai, they're powered by senior housing specific data and they're going to make your analysts and you look like a boss, uh, what used to take a couple days might only take a couple hours.

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Kyle 10:13:

You can drop an offering memorandum into our system, just put the PDF and just say, is this a good deal? Go and make a cup of coffee. And when you get back, you have a memo drafted. Now you need to vet the memo. It's AI, it's not perfect, but it's going to give you the lion's share of the effort in assessing the underlying documentation and pulling data from the NIC MAP Vision system in answering the questions you've posed to it and kind of tie it all together for you to go from, you know, V one draft to investment committee deck or something of that nature.

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Lucas 10:47:

So more of a speed to help you get to the final conclusion, AI mixed with the human touch of understanding the nuances of the marketplace. Is there going to be some training that's going to be involved? My, I have very little experience personally with ai. Some of the little bit I know is that it's important to ask the right questions. What are your thoughts there?

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Kyle 11:08:

Most people at this time are familiar with ChatGPT and maybe Google's Gemini or, or Microsoft copilot the kind of consumer facing large language models. And those are very broad use. So if you ask the wrong question, you might get a weird answer. It's in the same way if you go and search something on Google or Bing, if you put in the wrong search terms, you're not going to find the resources you need. We've taken that component out of the equation by leveraging our industry knowledge, leveraging our customer's knowledge, and really understanding like what does the day-to-day life of an operator look like. If you're in FP&A, if you're in sales and marketing, if you're an investor, if you're an asset manager, we spend so much time with you, we feel like we can kind of get ahead of the questions you want to ask the AI and build that into our workflows.

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Kyle 11:58:

So some of our automations like our offering memorandum analysis or our rent roll analysis, you drop one file and you ask one question and in the background, we're doing a hundred steps or we've created a hundred prompts. That's touching the AI models kind of going from the document or question you submitted back to the ai. So simplicity is at the core of what we built. There's no code needed to get onboarded or get started. If you've ever used our tool and you're, you feel comfortable running a site analysis, which thousands of people do every month, you can use this just as easy. That was a main part of our product mission is like, make this thing approachable. AI is kind of a scary topic and we wanted to really reduce the perception of that because it's so powerful with code, you predetermine what you're going to do. I I'm going to give you a b, c code's, going to turn it into X, Y, z. With AI, it's more of I'm going to give you a b, C data, I want you to read it like a human would and give me your opinion like a human would. So we've put some guardrails in place so that the AI's only focusing on the most important part of that process and it's not going, you know, all over the place.

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Josh 13:12:

Kyle, it seems like this could be like a real evening of the, I guess the playing field for a lot of groups. I'm just thinking about the smaller regional operators that don't have, you know, huge teams for sizing up deals and sizing up transactions like maybe some of the more sophisticated large shops. But it sounds like with this tool, just by being a subscriber, literally things that might have taken a small office the better part of a week or two weeks to try to put this together. Some implications that, I mean, do this in a very short a time period with less people and uh, to be able to kind of keep up with transaction volume, especially when the market starts turning and you know, volume starts getting way back up high. I know for small operators, I hear it all the time that it's like, oh my gosh, by the time I am able to look at this deal and fully vet the transaction, I've already missed the opportunity. So it seems like this could help e even the plan fill and really get the IQ up for a lot of smaller shops. Do you agree?

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Kyle 14:09:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's not just the investment use case either, right? In that, that operator example, your COO or your CFO might be the only one looking at deals. And they also might be one of three people that's doing corporate strategy on like policies internally or growth or maybe your COO is touching investments and sales and marketing. There's a, a trade that they have to make. And with AI we can cut that trade down and say like, look, in 20 minutes you can get a first draft on an income statement and an offering memorandum that a broker gave you. And then in another 20 minutes I can take your rent rolls for your current buildings. I can take your, uh, labor reports from your HR systems and I can give you summaries on how those are performing. And in less than an hour I've, you know, given you a little bit of time back in both of your worlds.

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Kyle 15:02:

And that's just kind of the tip of the spear in what we're doing because every part of the operator business, every part of the investor business, there's a workflow that AI can support them in. And what we've built under NIC MAP Vision AI is the platform. And I mean that word in its, uh, literal sense to build on top of. We're kind of coming to market with what we call these pillar skills that are going to serve the operator space, the investor space developers really get into the weeds for the asset management. So if you're hiring eds, we've got some, um, automations to help in screening candidates. If you're trying to look at your labor turnover and costs, we've got some workflows that can shorten the amount of time it takes to analyze that data as well as the investment stuff we've, we've touched on so far.

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Josh 15:47:

Wow. If I'm not mistaken, this is all available right now. It's official.

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Kyle 15:51:

It's official.

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Josh 15:51:

Cat's out of the bag. 

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Kyle 15:55:

Yeah. 

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Josh 15:56:

Uh, any subscriber can take advantage of these AI tools today.

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Kyle 15:56:

Yeah. 

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Josh 15:58:

Wow. Okay. So tell our listeners exactly how they access this if they're hearing about this for the first time.

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Kyle 16:03:

If you want to learn more about this and the NIC MAP vision platform at large, just go to nicmapvision.com/ai that will take you to a landing page that gives you all the details on the pillar skills we talked about the use cases we're trying to solve, the problems we're seeing in the market that we think AI can help take you to the next level. And that'll also give you a way to connect with our product experts and kind of create a custom solution for you.

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Josh 16:26:

Wow. So valuable resources from our friends at NIC MAP and NIC MAP Vision is a quarterly podcast now that people are looking forward to. We're already getting comments like, when's the next data drop coming? So good job all your team appreciate all you guys are doing for the industry and for Bridge the Gap.

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Kyle 16:43:

Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here and appreciate your partnership as well.

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Lucas 16:47:

All of this information's going to be in links in the show notes and on our website. Make sure you're subscribing to our email newsletter. You're going to see that this information there. Just one last question before we move on. I know, um, NIC MAP Vision has probably dozens, maybe hundreds of meetings here in Dallas to get to this, uh, new approach to data and ai. I think for most people it's not just something that they're going to get in five seconds.

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Kyle 17:13:

Mm-Hmm.

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Lucas 17:13:

Is there a way for people to just schedule a demo and your team kinda walk them through some of these steps to help them understand better how they could use this in their operations?

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Kyle 17:22:

On the nicmapvision.com/ai website, there's a link that we'll take you call, talk to a product expert. You can meet with anyone from our team to get a customized demo for you. We'll show you the different skills. We'll we'll kind of outline like how our approach to AI is different from say just using ChatGPT widely available to everyone and most people are kind of experimenting here and there. We've got the team ready whether you have five minutes or you have an hour to do a deep dive, kind of there to answer your questions and support you along the way. And then for anyone who does sign up, you'll have a customer success, uh, member with you from start to finish. So they're there on day one, kind of getting you set up with your accounts and getting the automations running. And if you want to powwow with them for a couple hours, they're there to do that too.

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Lucas 18:08:

Excellent.

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Josh 18:08:

Exciting stuff

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Lucas 18:09:

Great information. So excited to get this information out. Kyle, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it.

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Kyle 18:14:

Thank you.

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Lucas 18:15:

And to our listeners, go to btgvoice.com, check out the show notes, check out our sponsors and these links, and get a demo from NIC MAP Vision. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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18:27:

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.