Occupancy, Rent Gains Spell ‘renewed Growth’ For Senior Living Industry In Canada

Gains in occupancy and resident rates are bolstering the fortunes of senior living operators in Canada, mirroring conditions that boosted the country’s industrial sector about a decade ago.

In recent years, REITs such as Welltower (NYSE: WELL) and Ventas (NYSE: VTR) have made sizable portfolio plays in Canada, deploying billions of dollars representing as much as 20% of the transaction volume there. A new report released this week from Cushman & Wakefield illustrates why. 

According to the report, senior living operators in the country have rebounded from a roughly 78% average occupancy rate in the second quarter of 2021 to an average occupancy rate of almost 92% in the second quarter of 2025, according to the report. The vast majority of the markets that Cushman & Wakefield’s researchers surveyed – 16 out of 17 – have notched positive net occupancy absorption since 2021.

The latest report, part of a series published twice a year, shows that the Canadian senior living market has “turned the page on recovery,” and is now in “growth mode,” according to Sean McCrorie, Cushman & Wakefield’s vice chair and practice leader for senior housing and healthcare in Canada.

“We’ve been telegraphing a lot of these trends and talking about the same themes for quite some time,” McCrorie told Senior Housing News. “This data is another point of validation that we’re trending in the right direction.”

According to the report, certain markets with higher recent levels of construction have lower net occupancy absorption. For example, the Durham region and Ontario have seen a significant number of new senior living entrants. Durham specifically has gained 40% more senior living units since 2021 thanks to the addition of eight communities with more than 1,400 units in total.

Although that will only mean a steeper climb ahead for senior living operators in that market, “encouragingly, many communities in Durham are now performing well, with new developments steadily leasing up—pointing to a more positive outlook ahead,” the researchers wrote.

They added that Canada’s Hamilton and Okanagan regions have “troughed out” at 85% and 88% average occupancy, respectively, meaning “they did not have as much ground to make up relative to markets like Durham, which dropped as low as 78% occupancy.”

Given those conditions, the researchers expect the senior living industry in Canada to see “upward momentum, with national occupancy forecast to reach 95% by year-end 2026.”

At the same time, rent growth in those markets is outpacing historical levels. This year, Canadian senior living companies have notched rate increases between 3% and 6% with “declining vacancy rates and a structural imbalance between the stagnant rate of new supply growth and the growing demand base, echoing patterns seen across the broader Canadian housing market,” the researchers wrote.

As in the U.S., senior living operators in Canada face challenges recruiting and retaining workers given the influx of demand ahead. In particular, Canada’s York and Halton regions have the highest ratio of adults 75 or older to care workers. Other Canadian regions such as Calgary, Edmonton, and Hamilton “demonstrate potentially more favorable conditions,” the researchers wrote.

The surge of demand for senior living in Canada mirrors the country’s industrial sector, which Cushman & Wakefield’s researchers called among “the most sought-after asset classes by commercial real estate investors.” In particular, the senior living industry in Canada resembles the industrial sector there in 2016 and 2017.

Before that period, industrial net asking rents in the Toronto metro area had stagnated for “well over a decade” while “rates of user demand and new supply growth were both low, and as a result, rents did not move much.” But the “Amazon effect,” coupled with more demand linked to online retail sales, accelerated occupancy and rent growth for the sector in the years that followed.

“Despite a pullback in industrial occupancy and rents since 2023 and more recently negative impacts on leasing velocity from tariff related concerns, the industrial sector has had a phenomenal run over the past decade, which was driven by exponential growth in user demand and a supply side that was initially slow to catch-up,” the researchers wrote. “Sounds a lot like seniors housing today.”

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