If you’re underwriting a senior housing deal, the starting question is what the resident actually pays per month, so I pulled the national numbers.

CareScout’s 2025 Cost of Care Survey (data collected July to November 2025) puts the national median for assisted living at $6,200 a month. For nursing homes it reports daily rates: $315 a day for a semi-private room and $355 for a private one. That works out to roughly $9,600 and $10,800 a month, which is my own math from the survey’s annual figures. So the gap between assisted living and a semi-private nursing home bed is around $3,400 a month per resident.

Two cautions if you use these numbers. First, these are medians across facilities of every size, so a small residential home in your market could price above or below them. Second, assisted living usually bills a base rate plus add-ons for higher care levels, so the headline rate often isn’t the final bill.

On the demand side, the Census Bureau’s 2018 projections have older adults outnumbering children in the US by 2034, which is why this segment keeps drawing attention from investors.

I work on the education side at RAL Roadmap, and rate questions come up with almost every person we talk to who’s evaluating a first home. The most useful check we know is calling a handful of local competitors and asking for the full fee schedule in writing.

If you operate or invest in this space, what base rate are you seeing in your market, and how much of a typical bill comes from add-ons?