Assisted Living Investing Q&A!

[Charlie Cameron]

What’s up bigger pockets fam! I wanted to briefly re-introduce myself (I’m committing to get more active in BP again!) and offer up question and answer support for anyone interested in investing in residential assisted living, actively, passively, or somewhere in between.

Over my real estate journey I’ve tried a lot of different asset classes and finally landed on residential assisted living as my favorite real estate niche and perhaps the most incredible growth opportunity for the next few decades due to demographics and how that will drive demand to keep outpacing supply.

My partners and I own a portfolio of residential assisted living homes that we commercially lease to the business operators. This affords us excellent cash flow and lower maintenance on a 3-5 year commercial lease.

Recently, we created the first (as far as we are aware) residential assisted living focused fund and have successfully raised for multiple homes, giving our investors and us exposure to the cash flow, and equity upside that comes from owning the real estate and the business.

We also run a residential assisted living mastermind to help entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. We never imagined we’d be having to much fun growing together in a mastermind format and helping other succeed.

Residential assisted living is so interesting on so many ways, like:

• There are different levels of active to passive to invest.
• There are so many ways to approach this model, from buying existing, to retrofitting homes, to building new. You also have the option of only owning the real estate or the business as well.
• I can’t think of a more fulfilling and pride of ownership opportunity in real estate than owning really incredible homes providing better care than big box facilities. Seniors literally have better health outcomes.
• The data is undeniable that there’s so much existing and future need for more capacity. So much so that it would be difficult to make even a dent in the need by opening thousands of homes.
• When done right, these are high cash flowing homes. I don’t know of any other opportunity where you can net $10-20K (in some cases even higher) per month on a single residential property.
• There’s usually plenty of room to bring investors in and everyone involved still win, even in todays higher interest rate environment.
• Financially, residential assisted living is usually a more cost effective option for families than alternatives.
• We are quickly approaching the Silver Tsunami of the boomer generation aging into needing assisted living. This is the biggest need in history for the wealthiest generation in history.
• Assisted living has historically outperformed most other real estate classes, have maintained incredible occupancy rates (despite the COVID blip), and continue strong rent growth.

Anyway, I’m still a student in many ways, but I’m studying, investing in, and educating on residential assisted living full time. If you have any questions that I can answer, fire away!

[Charlie Cameron]

Quote from @Ron Dancy:

@Charlie Cameron Excellent post! My question would be becoming a qualified assisted living operator and the certifications / licensing per your state (For me Texas) to get your property up to code? Thanks

Hey Ron! You would want to look at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission website. I believe it is about a 40 hour training. But alternatively, you can hire a manager if the home is big enough to support their salary. The latter is what I'd recommend planning on!