Buy or Sell Sober Living and Recovery Housing

Sober living economics are per-bed, not per-facility

Recovery housing is a different business from treatment. Revenue is largely private pay and per-bed, staffing is lighter, and the asset is often a portfolio of leased properties rather than a single licensed facility. That structure creates both opportunity and risk — and it makes the lease position the center of most transactions.

What buyers work through:

• Occupancy and bed-level economics. Rent per bed, occupancy trends, and how sensitive the model is to referral flow from treatment programs.
• Certification and standards. Whether properties are certified or aligned with recognized recovery-housing standards, and what that means for referral relationships.
• Lease exposure. A portfolio spread across many leased properties means many landlords, many renewal dates, and many ways for a transaction to get complicated.
• Referral dependency. How much of the census comes from one treatment partner, and what happens to occupancy if that relationship changes hands.
• Compliance posture. House rules, resident agreements, and how the operation is documented — the part of recovery housing that receives the least attention and the most diligence.

Where a sale-leaseback fits

Recovery housing portfolios are a natural candidate for sale-leaseback and multi-property structuring, because the real estate and the operation can be separated cleanly. We have transacted a 100-bed sober living program with PHP/IOP services across ten separate properties, structured as a sale-leaseback that preserved operational continuity for the buyer — one transaction, ten properties, and the program never stopped running. More on that structure in our piece on sale-leasebacks.

What we do

Selling: assembling the portfolio into one coherent acquisition story, positioning the occupancy and referral base honestly, and negotiating the lease or sale-leaseback treatment property by property. Buying: sourcing recovery-housing portfolios that are not publicly listed and screening for lease exposure and referral concentration before you commit.