Housing slump makes it harder for Oregon seniors to move to retirement homes

Greg Stiles

Jul. 8, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- When prospective residents tour Royal Oak Retirement Center, facility manager Jeffrey Eschweiler hears a recurring theme.

"They have to sell their homes and they are having a hard time selling their homes," Eschweiler says. "Older individuals are leery about selling their homes right now."

The housing slump has spilled over into the senior housing industry, shrinking waiting lists at some Southern Oregon retirement centers and delaying the entry of new residents at others. New retirement centers being built for the coming onslaught of baby boomers are making competition tougher than ever.

Some retirement centers have marketed themselves aggressively even when they're full.

"If you're full, you want to build the waiting list," says Bob Bolling, general manager of Anna Maria Creekside in southeast Medford. "We always send out invitations for tours whether we're full or not because we don't want to get caught behind the curve.

"The housing market has put a damper on a lot of stuff, but we're doing fine," Bolling says.

The upscale retirement community is full, but Bolling wants to make sure a declining waiting list doesn't lead to future vacancies. He discerns a psychological element to some seniors' decision to delay entering a retirement community.

"If somebody bought their house a long time ago for $35,000 or $40,000, then all the sudden a few years ago it was worth $400,000 and now it is worth perhaps $300,000, they feel like they're losing $100,000," he says, "so they don't want to sell right now; but they'd still be making a lot of money."

Cassandra Halvorson, general manager at Horton Plaza, says marketing strategy has changed in recent years as the number of retirement living options increased in the Rogue Valley.

"There's been such a saturation of the market in Southern Oregon that you have to get creative in your advertising and marketing tactics," Halvorson says. "You have to tell people why this is the place for them."

When state officials put a moratorium on new licensed senior-care facilities earlier this decade, more developers opted to go with independent-living communities.

"We used to have the idea that aging would all happen in one place," Halvorson says. "It's something Oregon was pushing forever and ever, the idea you could move into a facility and they would take care of you for the rest of your days. A lot of people found that wasn't working for them."

The Rogue Valley's reputation for attracting retirees also attracted builders, says Pamela Pearson of Veranda Park, a new retirement center that opened Feb. 28. Already 24 of Veranda's 28 cottages are occupied, and the main apartment complex is 25 percent filled, putting the property ahead of its projected two-year fill rate.

"As each new property comes online, it makes the other ones aware that they're not the only kids on the block anymore," she says.

Today's retirees are more savvy than previous generations, Pearson observes.

"People are scaling down by choice," she says. "What I'm finding in this age group is that they've pretty much planned for their retirement. For a lot of them, credit cards are a foreign thing. They've never lived on credit, and they invested well in a time when it paid off well."

The trend isn't an issue just for upscale and market-rate rent retirement facilities, where incoming residents often target a retirement center months or years in advance. Waiting lists are highly important to residents when it comes to getting into government-subsidized housing, too.

Even so, Wendie Nicovich, facility manager at Pacific Retirement Center's Larson Creek Retirement Center, says a waiting list that once had 80 names on its has fallen to 38 -- a decline of more than 50 percent during the past six months.

Applicants can place their names on five HUD lists, but even that path to retirement living has its challenges.

"Within our rental assistance program you can still have assets -- real estate, CDs (certificates of deposit) or something else," Nicovich says. "A lot of people who want to move in can't sell their mobile homes. They can't afford to pay rent and space rent (at a mobile home park) too. They can turn down an offer three times before they have to reapply."

In an effort to get just the right place, she says some people are willing to move into one center while they wait for the place they really want to come open.

"Others are staying with relatives," she says, "waiting to get in."

Newstex ID: KRTB-0122-26573399