A recap of 2024 discussing occupancy and absorption rates, the impact from a new Administration, and economic factors such as interest rates and construction costs affecting the industry. Kyle Gardner, COO of NIC MAP, shares the current state of senior housing.

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NIC MAP is an exclusive sponsor of Bridge the Gap. 

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This podcast was recorded at the 2025 ASHA Annual Meeting. 

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Produced by Solinity Marketing

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‍Become a sponsor of Bridge the Gap.

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Listen to more episodes here

Intro

Welcome to season eight of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. The BTG network is powered by sponsors, Aline, NIC MAP, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, ServiceMaster, The Bridge Group Construction, and Solinty and produced by Solinity Marketing. Bridge the Gap in three, two.

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00:40 - 00:52

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas here in beautiful Arizona at the ASHA Winter membership meeting. We got a great returning guest and a great friend, Kyle Gardner of NIC MAP, welcome to the show.

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00:52 - 00:53

Kyle Gardner

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Great to be back.

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00:53 - 01:22

Lucas McCurdy

We are so glad that you're back. I really personally look forward to these podcasts with you and Arick. You know, this is some of the best content around data and stats in the industry. And so for our listeners, buckle up, because we are going to hit a ton of content and a ton of data in this conversation with Kyle. And, Kyle, for your clients as they open up their dashboards. Now, as they're listening to this, they're going to see a bit of a refresh.

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01:22 - 01:42

Kyle Gardner

Yeah, yeah. We've just launched our refreshed brand. We have returned to our roots in a way of renaming the company NIC MAP. So when you log into the portal and you connect with our data online, or in the physical reports that you get you'll see the new brand. And we're really excited about that. That was an organization wide effort to get that off the ground.

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01:42 - 02:04

Lucas McCurdy

I know that that was a heavy lift, but probably a lot of fun. And we got to see the graphics and the new look that you guys put out there, and it looks awesome. Looks very, very sharp. As we start off our conversation, let's take a look back on a wrap up of 2024. What were the significant trends that you want to talk about before we move into today and beyond?

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02:04 - 02:53

Kyle Gardner

‘24 had a lot going on, and there was a different energy, a different vibe throughout the year than we saw in ‘23 and ‘22. We had really kind of shaken off the Covidness, the Covid drag, if you will, and we started seeing transaction activity pick up, especially in the second half of the year.

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We started seeing participants come off the sidelines, and some wanted to just dip their toes in slowly or kind of do some window shopping. Some went headfirst and jumped right in to build out their portfolio. And I think that's going to carry through into ‘25 as well. We continued to see active adult really pick up speed and interest, especially from multifamily developers wanting to come up and kind of participate in the aging wave. So, that was really exciting and great to see.

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02:53 - 03:22

Josh Crisp

When you say active adult, I have to believe that so much of that interest now is not only, just people evaluating that next generation of senior housing and trying to capture the needs and the preferences of that demographic. But now, you guys are tracking so much data around it. So there's more intelligence that gives us information. Tell us a little bit about your emphasis on that, because that's relatively still new for our industry to have data that supports that kind of activity.

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03:22 - 04:03

Kyle Gardner

So we've been gathering inventory rate and occupancy data for active adult now for several years. We've got enough of a data set where we release a report on a quarterly basis with occupancy and rate data across the country. So you can see what markets have the most inventory, the most construction growth, and and generally the most activity. It's not quite as robust as our traditional seniors housing data is. So IL, AL, memory care and skilled. But it's getting there and we're prepared from a data standpoint, that as active adult as a product kind of grows and expands, will capture and record all of that. So investors and operators can make good decisions.

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04:03 - 04:49

Josh Crisp

So it sounds like, if I'm interpreting in layman's terms the end of the second half and that closing quarter of 2024, a lot of energy, excitement, people starting to, as you said, jump in all the way in, even starting to just kind of tiptoe and in back into activity. So what does that mean as we start looking into 2025?

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I mean, here we sit at ASHA. Obviously this is a closed membership meeting, but you guys are busy talking to the members here, providing information, education data points to give them what they need to make good decisions in 2025. So what is the current state of senior housing? As you see it right now, there's a lot going on. But from your eyes what do you see?

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04:49 - 06:29

Kyle Gardner

We have incredible market fundamentals right now. Operators are making money again. Margins are expanding. Demographics look incredible and they're only going to get better. We've had improved occupancy and rate growth across all care segments across our primary and secondary markets for almost four years now, and independent living is performing better than the hierarchy quality products.

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Not surprising, to some degree. But everyone, when I say everyone, every product has improvements and occupancies and rates. Absorption is incredibly strong at the moment. And when you look at our graphs, it's beautiful up and to the right. It's what every data nerd loves to see. It's just growing and improving. And that's really across all markets now there's a couple pockets of different areas that are a little bit slower. Some pockets are faster. But if you look on average we're in a great spot. One specific thing I'll call out, if you look at our occupancy numbers for fourth quarter of ‘24, they are back to where they were the quarter right before Covid came in. For primary and secondary markets. So a lot of the times when you see our press releases, we talk about just primary markets. Some of those are still recovering and getting better. But if you include the primary and secondary, so the 100 largest markets in the country, those are back from an occupancy standpoint to where they were pre-Covid, which is amazing. Like, we can put that behind us and we can focus on the baby boomers. We can focus on Gen X and kind of start thinking about the future there.

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06:29 - 06:46

Josh Crisp

Well, so you said across the board it's kind of an improvement. And back to the era, prior to Covid, which is so exciting. But do you see any hot pockets, that regionally, or in some sector of the country that is hotter than others and experiencing more growth?

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06:46 - 07:16

Kyle Gardner

Yeah, we're seeing a lot of activity around the East Coast and the Sunbelt, and I think that has to do primarily with where people moved during Covid. They kind of fled the big cities. They wanted the warmer weather. They wanted to be near the water or something of that nature. Some of the fastest growing cities in the country, whether it's Nashville or Raleigh or Austin, all fall in that area. And so it's not really surprising that the money followed the demographics in that way. But again, across the country, we're seeing improvements.

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07:16 - 08:31

Josh Crisp

I think the data that you guys are not only doing an amazing job at providing, but really in a lot of ways, I think you all have done such a great job at putting a positive spotlight. But really showcasing what the data says and what it means to those potential investors that need to be putting dollars into our industry.

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It's obviously generated a lot of excitement. I just heard from the main stage, this is the largest attended ASHA membership meeting in the history of ASHA. And then I have to believe that probably coming up, you know, we'll be at a conference together, an investment conference in San Diego soon. We'll look forward to talking to you again there.

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08:01 - 08:31

Josh Crisp

But I only imagine that coming into those kinds of first quarter meetings, the amount of investment dollars that are going to chase these data points. And this demographic is really exciting. Now, another thing that potentially I think we're all talking about here because there's so many partners to the industry is how technology is impacting our industry, and is there any way that you can tie data points to how that technology is impacting operators and investment?

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08:31 - 11:27

Kyle Gardner

As investors and participants are coming off the sideline and getting more involved in the space, paying more attention to it. We're also at a time in the industry, as we all know, where everyone's a lot more savvy with data, with technology, AI is a kitchen table conversation. So there's no more “Oh, I'm going to just kind of peek around and talk to some people.”

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No. Everyone wants deep research reports. They want to unlock information on benchmarks. They want to compare every market against their portfolio. They want to know every little detail possible. And that's table stakes now. And so I'm seeing firsthand with our clients, the press for AI powered automations to help, reduce costs, help make decision making easier. We're seeing customers come to us to help set up custom buy integrations so they can get data directly in the hands of their frontline staff in a way that's consumable.

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So your dining team might get a report every day of what your food costs are or what the menu's going to be, and how that might change. Maybe your operations team or your nursing team is getting a report on residents who haven't come to breakfast or come to lunch in a few days. They've been taking their meals in their room as a way to kind of check in and see who needs to be, who needs to be checked in on, who needs to be touched to make sure they're part of the community.

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But we're also seeing the investor side, the finance teams the underwriters use. I use reports to get to a no or a yes faster in their site selection process. And everyone wants more. Now, some of the firms are trying to be smart about how they adopt these technologies or data points for compliance and safety reasons, obviously. But more is the mandate at the moment.

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We're also seeing an increase in smaller operators or maybe smaller teams of investors who don't come from Wall Street or don't come from the large private equity world wanting to have this type of data available to them. And so we've been working to create offerings at NIC MAP that can serve a small operator who's got five properties, a small startup investment team who's only two people all the way up to the large publicly traded REITs.

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Later this year, NIC and NIC MAP are co-hosting an event called the Accelerating Senior Housing Growth Conference, which is designed to speak to operators who have as few as five communities, and they want to improve their NOI. They want to scale their portfolio. They want to make positive changes for their residents. And we're going to show them actionable insights on how to do that with data, with BI systems, with technologies that are available today and are affordable today. So we're trying to connect all the dots there. Really exciting.

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11:28 - 12:39

Josh Crisp

Well, it's very, very encouraging because I think for the majority of my last 20 years in the industry, I saw that a lot of, small, operators, regional operators, like you said, they were really, I think, feeling so much pressure to be squeezed out of the industry because they didn't have huge platforms to do all the data analytics and things like that to make on the fly decisions.

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But I also think if they are equipped with the right information, many of these operators that are smaller to regional have a capacity and an ability to reach some of these smaller markets more efficiently than some of the really big operators that are focused more on larger secondary or primary markets. And what we know is that there's demand across almost all markets that needs housing and services.

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And so through data and what you guys are doing and through this technology, I think it sort of evens the playing field. And I have to believe that it raises the bar for everyone in a quality standard. So whether you're in a rural community or a large community, probably a lot of your quality in technology and innovation in services, you can still have that even in a smaller community.

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12:39 - 14:00

Kyle Gardner

For those smaller communities, it's tough for them because they don't have the headcount. And so they have to be really intentional on what technology they're taking on. Who's going to be their end user. One of the common pieces of feedback I get is I don't have an analyst team, you know, the CEO or the CFO is the user.

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How do I take advantage of all this information? And when I've also got to run the business. And so that's on, NIC MAP and other technology providers to make it consumable, make it actionable. And we've spent the better part of three years now using AI to do just that. So, you know, 4 or 5 clicks of a button, you can get a full market study with written analysis, all the data you need just populated for you.

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We've got benchmarking tools for financial information. We've got tools to help with positioning and kind of marketing strategy. And we're working on some chat functionality as well to make it, you know, accessible from your phone. Just doing everything we can to simplify how you touch the data, because that's what the consumer wants. That's what  the prosumer wants at this point, they want access. They want an answer. They don't want to have to read the data and say, you know, one plus one is two. They just want to know I need two of these, or I need ten of these or so on and so forth.

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14:01 - 14:34

Josh Crisp

Talking strategically from a proactive approach. I like how you've said this in our conversations before, of okay, you've got the data, let's say fourth quarter data. You can learn so much from it. But how do you translate that into being more proactive and strategic and forward looking to use the data and the trends that you're learning about to make forward decisions so that you're not always reacting, but rather being proactive? What would you say to whether it's an investor or an operator that's getting your report? What's the approach that they should be looking at that through?

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14:34 - 17:34

Kyle Gardner

The answer there depends on what kind of problem they're trying to solve. If you're buying your first building, the answer is very different than if you're buying your hundredth or if you're building your hundredth. So kind of speaking from a more generic stance, let's say I've been in the space, but I'm coming off the sidelines after a few years.

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Well, the first thing you're going to do is look at the trend line of the market, look at the trend line of your portfolio. We've just talked about how occupancies have been improved for almost four years now across the board across markets. Are you seeing that in your portfolio? Are you performing better or are you improving better than the market? Are you behind the market and can you figure out the story? So when we look at the ‘24 data, we see that fourth quarter ‘24 for primary and secondary markets had higher occupancy and higher absorption than fourth quarter of ‘23. So we're actually getting better faster this year than we did last year. And we're so much farther away from Covid at this point that it can't be a Covid rebound.

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It has to be new customers coming into the industry. It has to be that, that bleeding edge of the silver tsunami entering our space and saying, I'm ready to be a resident. I need this service. I need this product, you know, come and help me. And so when you look at your portfolio, whether you're on the East Coast or West Coast, it's how are my fundamentals changing? Am I having more leads come in? Am I having more tours? Is that leading to move ins and acceleration? There from the investment side, underwriting is really tough right now. Partly. I think because there was so much uncertainty last year. Massive election cycle. Everyone talked about it. No one really knew which administration was going to win.

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And until now, we know Trump's taking over office. And there was a lot of, are we going to have more of the same, or are we going to have this radical change that's being talked about, and how is the Federal Reserve going to respond to that? Well, now we have a little bit more certainty. We know what Trump's going to do, at least what he talks about doing. We don't quite know how the Federal Reserve is going to respond from a fed policy standpoint. But if they keep lowering rates in a measurable way like they've communicated, that should help. But how does the tariff policy affect that? That's unknown. So it still lingers there. But all we can do is prepare for the scenarios in front of us. And the data is going to help us do that.

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17:17 - 17:34

Josh Crisp

So looking forward to 2025, I would daresay here in about a year, we're going to be sitting down at this meeting again, and there's going to be some theme that dominated 2025. If you can kind of look into your crystal ball. What do you think this year, those big trends and themes are going to be?

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17:34 - 19:45

Kyle Gardner

I will give my response with the caveat that I don't know when these are going to happen, but I think that these are things that will dominate conversation. So we'll take it from that perspective. One, the tariff policy of are we going to get massive tariffs across the board that will impact construction activity? Whether banks and lenders get stricter in their underwriting policies because they don't know how costs are going to change. And so they might require a borrower to bring more money to the table for that uncertainty. And that might make deals harder to pencil, which is unfortunate when we need so much development now in order to meet the coming boomers of ‘27 and ‘28. The other one is more of a continuation of conversation. And so AI, business intelligence, bringing that into businesses. So 3 or 4 years ago, only the largest teams who had tech savviness, who had data scientists, who had inherent curiosity built into it. We're talking about AI. We're thinking about how do I optimize my data for this?

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Companies like Sagora, companies like Arrow, and a few others who are kind of looking around and saying, how can I be smart with my data? Now you go and you meet an operator and they're all, they want to talk about six buildings. They just get so excited, like, look at these beautiful reports. I have liquid, look what I can do. And so I think that's going to continue to expand. And then the last thing is where are we going to end? Maybe end is the wrong word. Where are we going to be at the end of the year from a performance standpoint? We've had four years of occupancy and rate growth. We've had tremendous absorption. New construction starts are still at record lows. New inventory coming on board is still below what we need from a demand standpoint. So are we going to be in the low 90s, the mid 90s? Where are we going to be at the end of this year? And by the end of the decade? I think those are the three topics that will really dominate the conversation.

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19:45 - 19:54

Josh Crisp

Lucas, I feel like we're some of the luckiest dudes to be able to have front row seats to get into Kyle's mind, unpack what the NIC MAP team is doing right.

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19:55 - 20:26

Lucas McCurdy

It's so great, and what a privilege it is to bring this freely to the network here at Bridge the Gap and a huge thank you to you, Kyle and Arick and NIC MAP for really, focusing on supporting the industry in this way. We know that the level of work and time and energy that y'all have put into building this platform is monumental. This has been a great conversation and great information. Any final thoughts or final words?

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20:27 - 21:27

Kyle Gardner

Yeah, absolutely. So we did relaunch our brand and we're kind of reintroducing ourselves to the market. So I would highly encourage you to come check out our website NICMAP.com. It'll be familiar. It'll be new. It's sleek, and I hope it kind of paints the picture of where we're going with the future. We have some big announcements coming out later this year to really support the things we were just talking about. So we have new initiatives around artificial intelligence coming out that are broadly available to our partners. We're releasing multiple products this year that will bring transparency in this space like never before, things that have been requested of us for 20 years now around rates around financial performance, that we've worked with industry leaders to create a solution that everyone benefits from and is willing to support.

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And so you'll see big announcements from us in the next couple of months, with formal details. So I highly encourage you to come visit NICMAP.com, stay in touch with the Bridge the Gap guys. We'll be back. 

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21:27 - 21:42

Lucas McCurdy

That sounds good. Well, I know our listeners are going to want to connect to btgvoice.com, see this content and so much more. Reach out to Kyle and his team, get a demo, check it out. You're going to love it. And, you know, this is a great meeting here at ASHA. We're going to have some more podcasts coming up, and thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap.

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Outro

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.

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