Seniors Housing & Healthcare Trends

MELBOURNE: A new interactive tool will help senior living providers estimate how long residents and prospective residents will be able to afford their offering, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.

The NIC Senior Housing Affordability Calculator, with an initial focus on assisted living, estimates how long older adults can sustain paying private-pay rates. The tool, designed to expand how senior living affordability is evaluated, uses a defined set of assumptions, incorporating factors such as someone’s income and assets as well as senior living community’s rent levels and projected rent growth rates.

The calculator was developed to provide operators, investors, lenders, researchers and policy stakeholders a more complete view of long-term assisted living affordability across markets, according to NIC.

“Assisted living affordability is not just about whether older adults can manage costs at move-in, but also how long those resources can support care and housing,” Lisa McCracken, NIC head of research and analytics, said in a statement. “This senior housing affordability calculator helps the industry better understand what older adults can afford and how it varies across markets.”

McCracken shared NIC’s plans to introduce the tool at this year’s NIC Spring Conference.

A NIC-funded study published in Health Affairs in 2019, which McCracken said NIC plans to update, estimated that 54% of the 14.4 million middle-income older adults in the United States in 2029 would lack the financial resources to pay for senior living and care.

Those adults are part of what has been termed the “forgotten middle,” and the researchers described them as “generally too wealthy to qualify for public means-tested programs, yet not wealthy enough to pay the costs at many seniors housing communities for a sustained period of time.”

Other research has identified rate as a factor in senior living occupancy. Consumers participating in a recent American Seniors Housing Association/ProMatura survey, for instance, identified affordability as the top barrier to moving into assisted living, due to uncertainty about future expenses and the ability to sustain housing and care costs over time.

Other recent NIC research, however, found that assisted living’s market penetration is as varied as the setting, suggesting that income alone does not shape affordability but that it also is affected by assets, confidence in long-term affordability and visibility into future costs.

The affordability calculator uses a time-based framework to model affordability over multiple years, allowing users to explore how long an older adult household can sustain assisted living costs. The tool tests how results change under various assumptions and scenarios.

“The calculator helps senior housing providers better understand the financial capacity of older adult households in a market, not just whether they can afford assisted living today, but how long they may be able to sustain it,” NIC Senior Principal Omar Zahraoui told McKnight’s Senior Living. “This provides a time-based view of affordability. This calls attention to financial longevity on the part of the customer, as well as an understanding of product positioning in a market.”

Using average monthly rent, median income and net worth for older adult households, the calculator models showed that the 2025 median affordability duration was approximately eight years and fourth months across the 99 NIC MAP markets. Results, however, vary widely by market based on differences in household finances and assisted living rates.

“The calculator helps senior housing providers test different pricing and market scenarios,” Zahraoui said. “They can use these insights alongside specific market conditions, demographics and occupancy to make informed operational, development and investment decisions.”

The tool, he said, is intended to support a broader conversation about senior housing access — including middle-market access — rate transparency and long-term planning for assisted living.