Why and Where Is Senior Housing Investment Growing?
While New York City's the top market, naming the top region took a photo finish.
Propelled by strong tailwinds and benefiting from stable fundamentals—including rising occupancy levels—U.S. senior housing investment continues to grow.
The sale volume for 2025 is on pace to exceed last year’s total, according to NIC MAP’s latest report on senior housing investment. In fact, “when we compare 2025 to 2022, the beginning of the market recovery, transaction volume has doubled,” Arick Morton, CEO of NIC MAP, told Multi-Housing News.
During the first three quarters, senior housing transactions totaled $10.3 billion. This marked a 36 percent increase over the same period of 2024, Morton added. Six consecutive quarters of valuation increases led to an average price of nearly $175,000 per unit during the third quarter. That’s a solid 43 percent increase compared to last year, as well as a sizeable 14 percent rise compared to the previous quarter.
What’s more, transactions kept closing into late fall, with an entity-level deal shaking the leaderboard. Sonida Senior Living became the eighth-largest U.S. owner in the sector after agreeing, In November, to pay $1.8 billion for CNL Healthcare’s 69 assets totaling 7,535 units.
Southeast leads senior housing investment charts
At a regional level, the Southeast registered the largest investment activity, with a volume of more than $1.7 billion and 128 assets changing hands year-to-date as of September. However, units were slightly cheaper than the national average, selling for $120,945. The Southeast edged ahead of the Northeast by just $50.3 million, yet the latter scored a much higher per-unit price.
The volumes for the Southeast and the Southwest added up to roughly $3 billion during the first nine months of 2025. This is reflective of the steady demand witnessed across Sun Belt states, including Florida and Georgia, where demographic trends aid the senior housing market.
One of the most notable markets within the region is Miami, which made it into the top three U.S. metros by deal figure ($440.8 million), below Phoenix ($530.3 million) and New York City ($767 million).
The whole Sunshine State was a magnet for investment in fact, with some of the largest multifamily owners expanding their senior housing holdings in Florida. AEW Capital is one such player, acquiring 416 senior apartments in metro Orlando, Fla., and 283 units in Greater Miami.
Fewer, yet larger Mountain West deals lead to priciest senior housing units
The Mountain states encompass the region with the highest average price per unit during the first three quarters of 2025, with the figure at $204,800, above the Northeast ($188,780 per unit) and the Pacific states ($164,398 per unit).
“The properties that have been sold in the Mountain region tend to be newer, built in the last 20 years, and a few properties have a significant price per unit above $300,000,” Morton told MHN.
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“The Mountain region has the fewest properties sold compared to others, so the region’s performance is based on a small set of high-quality assets,” he continued. Indeed, the region witnessed the sale of just 61 assets for a combined investment volume of $1.2 billion.
This trend continued into the fourth quarter, with Morgan Stanley and MorningStar Senior Living paying $305 million for three communities comprising 436 units in Denver. This particular deal equated to a price per unit of nearly $700,000, almost four times the U.S. average.
The Northeast: A solid second in senior housing sales
The Northeast, while not a leader for any metric, was almost on par with the Southeast for investment volume, coming in at just a little under $1.7 billion. And with a $188,780 price per unit, it was also closely behind the Mountain states ($204,800).
Yet, the region gave the top market by volume, with New York City’s $767 million leading the U.S. Not surprisingly, the metro area also scored the largest price per unit across NIC MAP’s top 10 markets.
Investors are eager to pay top dollar for well-located, large-scale assets across Greater NYC. One deal reflective of the area’s competitivity closed in August, when Ventas paid $600 million for a five-property senior housing portfolio sold by Harrison Street and B2K Development. This 760-apartment deal commanded a whopping $789,473 per unit.
