Seniors housing entering new phase after recovery in 2025
Transaction activity set to rebound on strong fundamentals
Howard Chai, Feb 12, 2026
There’s always optimism at the start of a new year, but those in the seniors housing sector are feeling particularly bullish as a result of market trends and a set of core fundamentals.
“Seniors housing has been one of the top-performing commercial real estate sub-asset classes, but it has not taken a linear path here,” said Sean McCrorie, vice-chair and practice leader for Cushman & Wakefield Ltd.’s seniors housing and health care team in Canada. “Because of government-enforced leasing restrictions during the pandemic, a lot of operators saw their occupancies decline during those initial 12 to 18 months of the COVID pandemic.”
McCrorie said the national seniors housing occupancy rate was at 92 per cent at the end of 2019 and then fell precipitously to the low to mid 70s by the first quarter of 2021. Today, that occupancy rate has fully recovered and even eclipsed pre-pandemic levels, closing 2025 at 93 per cent, with expectations of 95 per cent by the end of 2026.
“We’ve gotten back to where we were in occupancy, rent growth, margins, investment appetite,” said McCrorie. “We’ve moved into a new phase of growth.”
Those fundamentals are simple to understand. Ten years ago, the age 80-plus population was growing at a rate of 2 per cent annually. Today, that growth rate is closer to 4 per cent. That strong demand is fueling rent growth, which is no longer a given for conventional multi-family rental projects in many major markets.
British Columbia and Alberta are two markets that remain of interest to seniors housing investors, particularly metropolitan areas such as Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. The former two have more demand, while the latter two have more developable land.
“Almost invariably, if you’re a national seniors housing investor, you’re gonna want exposure to B.C. and Alberta,” said McCrorie. “We’ve seen some of our strong clients that started off with regional portfolios in Ontario slowly expand west, add exposure to Alberta, and, over the last five years on an opportunity-driven-basis, add coveted Lower Mainland exposure to their portfolios. That is a fairly typical playbook. Maybe the capital originates in Ontario, but it certainly has designs to grow and add exposure in Western Canada.”
Being able to achieve critical mass within a region is key.
“If I’m based in Toronto, I may not want to go to Alberta until I’m sure that I can grow a regional portfolio to five properties — to really have the operating efficiencies and the operational scale to do it right. For provinces like British Columbia and Alberta, that’s possible,” he explained. “In Saskatchewan, you can certainly string together a portfolio, but there might just not be as many opportunities to build scale.”
Markets like Vancouver Island and the Okanagan Valley rank high for investors because they draw seniors. McCrorie notes that demand in Victoria has been growing “at an outsized rate” and drawn significant interest from Chartwell Retirement Residences, the largest owner-operator of seniors housing in Canada.
There’s a reason seniors housing is still niche, however: its complexity. Seniors housing has components of multi-family, hospitality and even health care in some cases. It’s not for everyone, with even the stalwart Vancouver-based developer Concert Properties completely divesting its Tapestry seniors housing portfolio last year.
Lenders have traditionally viewed seniors housing as risky and are often set on developers being paired up with an experienced operator from the get-go, as operators often need to be involved in designing the buildings.
“What I have seen over the past 10 years, and specifically the last two years, is that that spread or view of risk between seniors housing and apartments has been narrowing,” said McCrorie. “The managers of seniors housing businesses have become much more sophisticated, governance has improved, reporting has improved. They’ve de-risked the asset class, in the sense that they’ve improved the predictability and stability of returns you can generate.”
The big question for seniors housing in 2026 and beyond is how much-needed new development can be spurred. Nonetheless, optimism abounds.
“We think 2026 is going to be a big year,” McCrorie concluded. “It’s probably gonna be a record-setting year for new transaction activity.”
www.westerninvestor.com/british-columbia/seniors-housing-entering-new-phase-after-recovery-in-2025-11817159
