Retirement Residence Operation
The industry — Community care facilities for the elderly
Base industry report for 6233 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 3,493
- Under 10 employeesA
- 22%
Of 3,493 Canadian establishments with employees, 22% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Structure decidesThe binding constraint is not executional. Being better than the incumbent does not, by itself, get you in — this one is cleared with capital, an asset, or a permission.
Come with the asset, or buy the business that owns it. Plant, fleet, land or quota decide this market before any operating skill does. Operators here are bought, not started.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 5
The binding constraint — capital intensity
Private-pay retirement living is the part of elder care where the operator, not a ministry, sets the price — and demand is as certain as demography gets. The 623110 record screens the funded long-term-care acquisition; this is the other side of the building, and the numbers explain both why it attracts capital and why it is not an ordinary entrant's market. Chartwell, one of the largest Canadian operators at about 25,000 residents in four provinces, reported 2025 property revenue of $1,079.0M, up 34.9%, with same-property occupancy of 95.2% at year-end and a same-property adjusted operating margin of 41.7% [A]. That margin is earned on a real-estate base: Chartwell completed or announced more than $1.7B of acquisitions in the year [A], which is the price of growing in this industry. The business count says the same thing in another way — only 22% of the 3,493 Canadian establishments have fewer than ten employees, and 300 employ a hundred or more [A]. A residence is a purpose-built, licensed building staffed around the clock; it is financed like an apartment tower and operated like a hotel with a care obligation. The cut is the building. A small operator can lease or manage, but then the landlord holds the asset the margin is earned on.
A retirement residence draws from the surrounding community: the decision is usually made by family who want to visit, so a building competes with the handful of others within the same drive, and occupancy is won or lost locally.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 2 of 6 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 6 named · 2 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chartwell Retirement ResidencesTSX: CSH.UNA | $1.1B | — | FY2025 property revenue, up 34.9% |
| Sienna Senior LivingTSX: SIAA | $1.0B | — | FY2025 total revenue, up 15.0%; includes long-term care as well as retirement |
| ExtendicareTSX: EXEC | not disclosed | — | Listed and Canadian, but weighted to long-term care and home health rather than private-pay retirement; its results were not opened for this record. |
| Revera and AmicaC | not disclosed | — | Pension-fund-owned (PSP and BCI respectively); no public revenue disclosure. |
| Le Groupe Maurice, COGIR, Groupe SélectionC | not disclosed | — | The Quebec operators, where 40% of Canadian establishments sit. Privately held or held inside larger real-estate vehicles; no revenue published and none was sought for this record. |
| The single-building independentsB | not disclosed | — | Around 780 of the 3,493 Canadian establishments employ fewer than ten people — one building, usually family-owned. This is the competitive structure an entrant actually joins, and the one with no disclosure at all. |
Evidence
Evidence. Chartwell's figures were read in its fourth-quarter and year-end 2025 results release of 26 February 2026 [A]: property revenue $1,079.0M (+$279.1M, 34.9%), same-property weighted average occupancy 92.8% for the year and 95.2% at 31 December 2025, same-property adjusted NOI +18.4% at a 41.7% adjusted operating margin (+330 bps), FFO $278.0M (+40.8%), and over $1.7B of completed and announced acquisitions. The release calls Chartwell "one of the largest operators in Canada", not the largest, and the record follows that wording. The establishment count is Statistics Canada, December 2023 [A]. Chartwell is a large, acquisitive, listed trust — its margin and occupancy describe the top of the market in a strong year and are not what a single independent residence should expect. The 623110 record draws on the same release for the funded side, so the two records share this anchor; they differ in what they screen. No figure for the cost of building or buying one residence was sourced, so the capital cut is argued from the scale of Chartwell's acquisition spending rather than from a per-suite price, and that inference is the analyst's. The competitive field added in the completion pass draws on a second results release. Sienna Senior Living's fourth-quarter and year-end 2025 release of 19 February 2026 [A] gives revenue of $1,035.6M (up $135.2M, 15.0%, from $900.4M), same-property retirement occupancy of 94.7% in the fourth quarter rising to 95.2% in January 2026, same-property NOI excluding one-time items of $47.4M (+10.1%), and $802.7M of 2025 portfolio expansion split $594.7M acquisitions over eight properties and $208.0M development on three projects of 467 beds and suites. Sienna's revenue spans long-term care as well as retirement and is not a like-for-like comparison with Chartwell's property revenue; both are quoted as reported. The other operators named — Extendicare, Revera, Amica, Le Groupe Maurice, COGIR, Groupe Sélection — carry no figures because none was opened, and they are tiered C accordingly.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Blocked automated access (Cloudflare). Search results show a live site with a 2026 events slate; it is the association for Ontario's licensed retirement homes.
Home page says its membership is nearly 600 long-term care, assisted living, independent living, home health and commercial members.
US senior living operator association, with owner/operator and industry partner membership tiers.
Executive-level body for seniors housing owners and operators; publishes the ASHA 50 list.
Runs the Spring and Fall conferences where seniors housing operators meet capital, and publishes occupancy data.
Trade title covering independent living, assisted living and seniors housing finance; front page dated September 2026.
There is no national private-pay retirement association in Canada; ORCA (Ontario) and BC Care Providers are the working provincial bodies.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.