Last week team Meridian attended the GlobeSt. Healthcare Real Estate conference, hosted at the beautiful Andaz Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. The theme of this year’s conference was, “Navigating Change – Adapting for Success”. As developers we were particularly excited to dive into this topic, as 2023 has proven to be a challenging year across the board. Meridian CFO and Manager Director, John Pollock, provides his key takeaways from the State of the Industry panel in today’s post.
2023 Year in Review
This year was marked with labor shortages, wage pressure, unemployment, bank failures and inflation. All words that we don’t want to hear and that can put a sense of fear and anxiety into all of us. But, if you dig deeper into what really happened in 2023, there is good reason to stay positive:
- The healthcare sector is growing faster than most of every other part of economy.
- While we still have a labor shortage in healthcare, the worst of the issues appear to be in the past.
- Wage pressure in healthcare is currently down. It was over 7% at the height of the pandemic and has slowed to 4%.
- Unemployment is at a very reasonable rate at 3.7%.
- Retail sales are up, but on an inflation adjusted basis it is flat, which is good and what the Fed is aiming for.
- While there were four significant bank failures, none failed because of real estate.
- Flat rates could help bankers loosen their purse strings, and as of this week’s Fed meeting most investors expect rates will remain flat with Fed cuts in mid-to-late 2024.
- Currently, 10,000 people turn 65 years old every day, and as we know older folks use more healthcare which is great for our industry. Spending on healthcare continues and is expected to be up and to the right.
A year ago, the consensus forecasted that we would be in a full-on recession right now. And while the current state of the economy is far from perfect, it is much better than expected. Consumer sentiment is trending up and just today [12/12] inflation was reported to be down to 3.1% (from 3.2%) with the Feds working hard to get down to 2%.
Looking ahead to 2024
The question on everyone’s mind is – will the economy experience a soft landing in 2024? It’s a tough question to answer. Traditionally, there has never been a soft landing, so to say it’s going to happen is a stretch. 2024 will be slow, by design, as the Fed tries to hit a stall without going negative. Luckily, retail and consumption should be flat as the Fed tries to navigate the soft landing. Absorption is expected to continue to be positive as we move into the new year, and only time will tell what all the numbers will look like. We can say though that for healthcare, things are definitely moving in the right direction.
If you’re interested in learning more about this conference, visit GlobeSt. Healthcare Real Estate 2023.
Author: John Pollock