NIC to Report Actual Senior Housing Rents

Several of the country’s largest health care real estate investment trusts (REITs) and major lenders have offered their support for a new initiative to track and report seniors housing actual rents, the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) announced Wednesday.

The initiative makes NIC the first to collect and report such data, according to a news release. It is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2016, providing NIC Map Data subscribers with actual rents, or the in-place and move-in rents, which can vary from the asking rents traditionally tracked by NIC.

“This expanded reporting shows the increasing professionalism and sophistication of the seniors housing operators who are able and ready to report the data in a standard file format with standard field definitions,” John Cobb, executive vice president and chief investment officer of Ventas, Inc. (NYSE: VTR), said in a prepared statement.

Others REITs that have endorsed the initiative include: HCP, Inc. (NYSE: HCP); LTC Properties (NYSE: LTC); Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI); Sabra Health Care REIT (Nasdaq: SBRA); Senior Housing Properties Trust (NYSE: SNH); and Welltower Inc. (NYSE: HCN). Lenders include: Capital One Healthcare, KeyBank Real Estate Capital, PNC Real Estate and Wells Fargo Senior Housing Finance.

The data initiative has also garnered support from the board of directors for Argentum (formerly ALFA) and software provider MatrixCare, which plans to make software changes that allow clients to generate reports in the NIC format. NIC is also working with other software providers to incorporate its reporting format, as well, according to the release.

Currently, 27 rental operators supply actual rent and leasing data on over 3,000 properties. NIC collects data from operators with five or more properties.

“Providing this level of data increases transparency into seniors housing and care, which should attract more capital, thereby lowering the cost of capital,” Scott Estes, executive vice president and CFO for Welltower, said in the news release. “We hope more operators will join NIC in this initiative so we can put the right information in the hands of decision makers.”

Written by Kourtney Liepelt