At The Grand at Spokane in eastern Washington, residents meet around fire pits, work out in fitness studios and mingle at hotel-style lounges within a senior housing complex that often feels more like a resort than a nursing home.
For the property’s new owner, Clarion Partners, the assisted living complex reflects an attempt to tap into a broader shift underway across commercial real estate: Billions of investment dollars are moving toward healthcare properties as America’s aging population reshapes the industry, from hospital design to apartment construction.
While many real estate investors are branching into data centers and other alternatives, New York City-based Clarion is instead leaning into this healthcare segment. It’s not pulling back from industrial — the property type that it's known for — but adding another growth strategy aimed at diversifying its portfolio.
The company has invested more than $1 billion in healthcare real estate across the United States in recent months, expanding into senior housing, outpatient medical facilities and inpatient rehabilitation centers.
“People focus on the growth of the 85-plus population, but there’s another layer to the story: Wealthier boomers and Gen X families are helping fuel demand for better healthcare and senior living communities,” Clarion Head of Healthcare Julie Robinson told CoStar News.
Clarion is far from alone in chasing the trend. Publicly traded healthcare landlords such as Ventas, Welltower and Healthpeak Properties have spent years building out large healthcare portfolios, while private equity firms and institutional investors have accelerated acquisitions even as new construction slows.
Transaction volume in the seniors housing and care sector exceeded $24 billion over the most recent four quarters ending in late 2025 — the highest level in a decade, according to JLL. And it's not just the U.S.; Canada’s senior population outstripped the number of children in the country in 2023, helping send the country's senior housing segment to record levels of demand in 2025, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Capital shifts toward healthcare
Even so, Clarion stands out as an industrial developer that controls more than $4.6 billion in healthcare-related assets, including roughly 2,000 senior housing units, 133,000 square feet of medical real estate and about 2.5 million square feet of life sciences properties.
That fits within the company's total 321 million-square-foot portfolio, 65% of which is made up of industrial properties. Still, Clarion’s recent expansion into the sector underscores a growing view among investors that healthcare real estate can provide a complementary source of durable, long-term demand alongside traditional office or logistics assets.
Institutional owners took a much larger share of medical office building purchases in 2025 than at any time in the previous decade, driven by the sector’s “limited new supply, rising occupancy and growing asking rents,” said a statement from John Chun, senior managing director and medical properties group leader of capital markets at JLL.
The appeal is rooted in demographics. Americans over 65 already account for a disproportionate share of medical visits, imaging appointments and rehabilitation stays, and that demand is expected to grow for years. At the same time, investors are increasingly seeking sectors tied less to office occupancy or global trade and more to long-term population trends.
The U.S. population age 80 and older is projected to grow about 36.6% over the next decade — far outpacing overall population growth — according to JLL. Each day, more than 10,000 Americans turn 65.
That's also providing a boost to the senior living industry, where demand is already colliding with a lack of new supply. Senior living occupancy has now risen for 20 consecutive quarters, hitting about 90% at the end of 2025 — its highest level in years — even as construction has slowed to a crawl.
Fewer than 6,000 units opened last year, far short of what’s needed to keep up with aging demographics, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Building out its healthcare platform
Clarion’s healthcare strategy marks an evolution for a firm historically known for industrial, logistics and traditional commercial real estate investments, adding to — rather than replacing — those core businesses.
The company built a major life sciences portfolio through partnerships with Alexandria Real Estate Equities and is now expanding into seniors housing and post-acute care facilities.
Clarion's broader healthcare portfolio already includes major life sciences properties in leading hubs such as Cambridge, Massachusetts, South San Francisco and San Diego, leased to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies under long-term agreements.
Robinson joined Clarion roughly a year and a half ago after nearly 13 years at Ventas — the Chicago-based real estate investment trust focused on healthcare and senior housing properties — with a goal of broadening Clarion's exposure across healthcare property types.
Her mandate: Build on Clarion’s life sciences foundation while expanding into sectors with different risk and return characteristics as part of a broader diversification strategy, including seniors housing, outpatient medical and rehabilitation properties.
“We wanted to replicate the success we’ve had in life sciences to seniors housing and outpatient medical and inpatient rehab,” Robinson said.
Clarion’s recent investments include partnerships with operators such as Experience Senior Living, MorningStar Senior Living, Stellar Living, Vitality Living, Clearwater Living and MBK Senior Living. The firm has also invested alongside operators including PAM Health and Baylor Scott & White Health in medical office and rehabilitation facilities.
Rather than betting heavily on a single segment, the strategy centers on diversification across healthcare property types while maintaining exposure to its other core sectors.
“We’re really looking to build out diversified exposure where it makes the most sense,” Robinson said.
Medical care moves closer to home
One of the biggest drivers of investor interest is a structural shift in how healthcare is delivered.
Across fast-growing suburbs — particularly in Sun Belt markets — patients are increasingly visiting standalone clinics for imaging, lab work, physical therapy and follow-up appointments that once required trips to major hospital campuses.
“One of the biggest drivers is the shift health systems have toward outpatient care and really moving as much as they can into a lower-cost and more convenient setting,” Robinson said.
That shift is boosting demand for outpatient medical buildings and rehabilitation facilities closer to where patients live.
In Houston, one of the country’s fastest-growing healthcare markets, outpatient visits are projected to rise roughly 16% over the next several years — yet new construction accounts for less than 1% of existing inventory, according to JLL. Many medical office buildings are already nearly full, and most new projects are largely preleased before opening.
Eight of the 10 fastest-growing healthcare service lines are outpatient-focused, according to JLL, led by specialties such as endocrinology, psychiatry and rehabilitation.
Similar supply constraints are playing out across Sun Belt markets, where aging populations and rapid population growth are driving demand for neighborhood-based clinics even as high construction costs and tenant requirements limit new development.
Senior housing supply
That same supply-demand imbalance is also drawing many investors into the seniors housing segment.
Rising construction costs, expensive financing and lingering development challenges have made it difficult to build new complexes at the pace many investors expect will ultimately be needed.
New construction has slowed dramatically, with starts down roughly 77% in primary markets, according to JLL, even as demand continues to build. At the same time, the "silver tsunami" of aging Americans is creating sustained pressure for new housing and care facilities.
The imbalance is already translating into stronger operating performance in a way that’s drawing more institutional capital back to the sector. With demand rising faster than expenses, senior housing operators are seeing disproportionately strong income growth. It's a dynamic that Robinson said can turn modest rent gains into significantly higher increases at the property level.
“There’s a benefit in investing at this point in the cycle with so much demand,” she said.
At properties like The Grand at Spokane, that dynamic is already playing out in real time, as steady demand meets limited new supply. For Clarion, Robinson said, the goal is to build a portfolio that can capture that momentum over the long term, without overexposure in any one part of the healthcare landscape.