On 9 September 2026, experts from JLL, Pecuria and ORIZN made statements on the current situation on the nursing home market at an online press conference. Here are excerpts from these statements:
Peter Tölzel, Senior Director Healthcare Investment at JLL
“We expect the healthcare investment market to end up above its long-term average of around two billion euros in transaction volume again in 2026. Nevertheless, we cannot yet speak of a complete return of the market: individual major transactions distort the picture considerably.”
“The nursing home market does not have a demand problem, but a profitability problem. In order for construction to resume on a larger scale, at least one of three levers must be effective: lower construction costs, higher refinanceable rents or effective tax incentives.”
“The construction of new nursing homes has not come to a standstill, it is just running on a smaller scale. In 2026, new buildings were also sold to institutional investors from Germany. This is far from enough to meet demand – but it shows that the market is still working in principle.”
Pascal Kleine, Managing Director Pecuria
“The nursing home industry is not waiting. Specialists are creating new projects even under today’s difficult conditions. Rather, the problem is that many classic property developers and broad-based investors have withdrawn from the segment. Without specialization and in-depth expertise, care property development is hardly feasible today.”
“When it comes to the supply gap, we must not only look at the lack of new buildings. At the same time, older nursing homes are disappearing from the market because they are no longer technically or economically viable. How great this additional replacement demand actually is remains a black box.”
“Private investors currently have a decisive advantage over institutional investors in nursing homes: they can take advantage of tax incentives and depreciation options that are not available to institutional capital. This means that even under today’s difficult conditions, new construction projects can be presented economically that currently hardly work for institutional investors.”
Berthold Becker, Managing Partner ORIZN Investment
“At the institutional level, the construction of new nursing homes is currently practically non-existent. High construction costs, expensive debt capital and comparatively low sales factors prevent feasibility from being given and risks and returns from matching. Individual projects that have been implemented do not change the fact that we cannot meet the foreseeable demand in this way.”
“In nursing care alone, we see a need for investment of around 100 billion euros by 2040 according to the upcoming need for care. Around 40 billion euros of this is attributable to the adaptation of the existing real estate portfolio. So we not only have to create additional capacity, but at the same time make a significant part of the portfolio fit for the future.”
“We discuss a lot about additional nursing staff – and too little about how we can use existing resources more efficiently. Digitization and AI can free up considerable resources and increase productivity, especially in administration, documentation and reporting. This lever has so far been criminally neglected in nursing – not least at the political and regulatory level due to a lack of refinancing.”
