August 19, 2026
9:20 pm

Nursing Home Costs in Ann Arbor, Michigan (2026)

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a semi-private nursing home room generally runs about $11,000 to $12,500 a month as of 2026, above the Michigan statewide median of roughly $10,000 to $11,000. Ann Arbor sits in Washtenaw County, and the county’s proximity to a major academic medical center concentrates skilled capacity here and prices it at the upper end of the state.

The question a family is actually asking is not what a month costs. It is how many months they have. That is a burn-rate problem, and most families get it wrong in the same two ways: they use the facility’s rate as the burn rate, when income offsets a large share of it, and they count the house as though it were cash, when it is neither liquid nor quick. What follows builds the ledger properly, names the four things that shorten every runway, and puts Medicaid in one section at the end where it belongs in the sequence.

In This Article

Net Burn, Not the Rate
Ann Arbor Prices Against the Michigan Median
Building the Ledger: Assets That Are Not as Liquid as They Look
Four Things That Shorten Every Runway
The House: Ann Arbor Equity Is Large and Slow
Where an In-Force Policy Extends the Runway
The Month the Runway Ends
Frequently Asked Questions

Nursing Home Costs in Ann Arbor, Michigan (2026)

Net Burn, Not the Rate

Start with the arithmetic that matters. Take the facility’s monthly rate. Subtract every dollar of income that keeps arriving during care: Social Security, a pension, an annuity payment, rental income, a long-term care insurance benefit if one exists. The remainder is the net burn, and it is the only number the runway calculation should use.

Concretely: an Ann Arbor semi-private room at $11,750 a month against $4,200 of combined Social Security and pension is a net burn of $7,550, not $11,750. That difference is enormous over time. Applied to $300,000 of liquid assets, the naive number gives 25 months and the correct number gives 39. Families who use the gross rate panic early and make bad decisions with the house; families who use it in the other direction, ignoring escalation, run out sooner than they planned.

Then adjust for two things. Withdrawals from a traditional IRA or 401(k) generate taxable income, so $100,000 in a retirement account is not $100,000 of care; depending on the household’s bracket it may be $75,000 to $85,000 of usable money. And long-term care pricing has generally risen faster than general inflation. Assume four to five percent annual escalation and a runway that looked like 39 months is closer to 35. Our private-pay runway guide works the general model in more depth.

Ann Arbor Prices Against the Michigan Median

As of 2026, cost-of-care survey ranges for the Ann Arbor market look roughly like this. Skilled nursing, semi-private room: $11,000 to $12,500 per month, with a private room typically $800 to $2,000 higher. Assisted living: $5,500 to $6,800 per month for a one-bedroom with a moderate care package. Memory care generally adds $1,000 to $2,000 to the assisted living rate. Home health aide services run roughly $30 to $37 an hour in this market.

Michigan as a whole runs lower. The statewide median for a semi-private nursing room sits near $10,000 to $11,000 and assisted living near $4,800 to $5,500. Ann Arbor therefore carries roughly a ten percent premium on skilled nursing and a larger one on assisted living, where the local inventory skews toward newer, higher-service communities.

Two clarifications before you budget from those numbers. Assisted living quotes are almost always a base rate plus a care-level fee assessed after a clinical evaluation, and the level fee commonly adds $600 to $1,800 a month and is re-evaluated periodically. And a skilled nursing daily rate covers room, board, and routine care; certain therapies, medications, and personal supplies may be billed separately, and the list varies by building. Ask for the care-level schedule and the schedule of additional charges in writing before you sign anything.

Building the Ledger: Assets That Are Not as Liquid as They Look

The numerator of the runway calculation is not net worth. It is money that can reach a facility in the month it is needed, net of what it costs to get there.

Checking, savings, money market: count at face. This is the only category that is genuinely immediate.
Brokerage accounts: count at face, minus capital gains tax on whatever must be sold. A long-held position with a low basis is worth less than the statement says.
Traditional IRA and 401(k): count at 75 to 85 percent, depending on bracket, because withdrawals are ordinary income.
Annuities: read the contract. Surrender charges and market value adjustments can be substantial, and some contracts cannot be liquidated at all without a penalty that changes the analysis.
Certificates of deposit: count at face, less any early withdrawal penalty.
Life insurance: cash surrender value is one figure and the policy’s value to a third party may be another. This gets its own section below.
The house: not in the ledger until it closes. See below.

Write the ledger down with dates and dollar amounts, because the same exercise becomes the backbone of a Medicaid application later if one is needed, and doing it once saves doing it twice under pressure.

Liquid assets in the ledger	Months at $11,750 skilled nursing (net burn $7,550)	Months at $6,100 assisted living (net burn $1,900)
$75,000	About 10 months	About 39 months
$150,000	About 20 months	Beyond 6 years
$300,000	About 39 months	Beyond 13 years
$450,000 (typical Ann Arbor home equity)	About 59 months, only after a sale that takes 4 to 8 months	Beyond 19 years
Add $60,000 of net policy proceeds	About 8 additional months	Beyond 2 additional years

Building the Ledger: Assets That Are Not as Liquid as They Look

Four Things That Shorten Every Runway

A runway calculated in month one is almost always optimistic. Four forces move it, and all four move it the same direction.

Escalation. Communities raise rates annually. Four to five percent compounding on an $11,750 base is roughly $500 to $600 a month by year two.

Level-of-care creep. In assisted living, needs rise and the care-level fee rises with them. In skilled nursing, the rate is more stable but ancillary charges grow. Families who budget the day-one number consistently under-forecast by ten to twenty percent by month twelve.

The second move. Roughly speaking, every additional move costs a deposit, a month of double payment, and a period of adjustment. A family that places a parent in independent living or a low-service community to save money often pays for the savings twice when the placement fails.

The house that does not sell on schedule. This is the most common and most damaging one, and it deserves its own section.

The defensive move is simple and unpopular: run the arithmetic at the level of care you expect to need in eighteen months, not the one you need today, and treat the resulting number as the plan.

The House: Ann Arbor Equity Is Large and Slow

Ann Arbor home values are the highest of any large Michigan city, with medians well above $400,000 as of 2026, roughly double the Michigan statewide figure. For a long-tenured Ann Arbor homeowner, the house frequently holds more value than every other asset combined, and that is genuinely good news for a private-pay runway.

It is also slow money. Preparing, listing, marketing, and closing a house that has been lived in for thirty years commonly takes four to eight months in a normal market, and longer if it needs work before it will show well. During that window the facility bills monthly and the house costs money: taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance continue whether anyone lives there or not. A family that has committed to a placement on the strength of an expected sale needs a bridge, and the bridge is either liquid savings, a family loan, or a lending product with its own costs.

There is also a decision embedded in the timing. Selling converts protected home equity into countable cash, which matters enormously if Medicaid is likely within a few years, and it forecloses the possibility of a spouse or a disabled child remaining in the home. Not selling preserves those options and leaves the runway shorter. Neither is automatically right. Our comparison of home equity against a life settlement lays out how the two funding sources differ in speed, cost, and consequence, and this decision is worth an hour with your own elder law attorney before you list.

Where an In-Force Policy Extends the Runway

An old permanent life insurance policy is the asset families most often leave out of the ledger. Four things can be done with it, and they produce very different amounts of runway.

Keep paying. Preserves the death benefit, increases the monthly burn. At an Ann Arbor burn rate, a $400 monthly premium costs roughly two weeks of care a year.
Surrender. Fast and certain, and generally the lowest available value, because cash surrender value reflects the carrier’s obligation rather than the contract’s worth to a third party.
Reduced paid-up election. Converts to a smaller fully paid death benefit with no further premiums. Stops the premium drain without producing cash.
Life settlement. A licensed institutional buyer purchases the policy from its owner. Where the insured’s health has meaningfully declined, this can exceed surrender value, sometimes considerably. Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase policies; we provide education and a free policy review so a family sees what its contract holds before choosing.

Translate any proceeds into months rather than dollars, because dollars flatter and months do not. At an Ann Arbor net burn of about $7,550 a month, $60,000 of net proceeds buys roughly eight months of skilled nursing. At an assisted living net burn closer to $1,900 for the same household, it buys well over two years. Which rung you are on determines whether the same money is decisive or marginal.

Be clear on when a policy does not help: a small face amount attracts no competitive interest; a relatively healthy insured will be priced poorly because settlement value follows life expectancy; and a policy a surviving spouse depends on for income should generally stay in force. Proceeds also have tax consequences worth understanding before, not after; see Michigan life settlement taxes and life settlements in Ann Arbor.

The Month the Runway Ends

When private funds are exhausted, Michigan Medicaid is the payer of last resort. Applications from an Ann Arbor address go to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services office serving Washtenaw County, or online through MI Bridges; MDHHS is a state agency with county offices, so this is not filed with county government. For care planning, the Area Agency on Aging 1-B serves Washtenaw County and is the right first call, including for the MI Choice waiver that funds services at home or in a licensed setting. Free, unbiased Medicare and Medicaid counseling comes from MMAP, the Michigan Medicare/Medicaid Assistance Program. Insurance contracts are regulated by the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services.

As of 2026 the countable asset limit for a single long-term care applicant is $2,000; confirm the current figure with MDHHS. Michigan applies the federal 60-month look-back to transfers made for less than fair market value, and MDHHS operates a Medicaid Estate Recovery Program reaching the probate estate of recipients who were 55 or older when they received long-term care services. In a city with Ann Arbor’s home values, that recovery exposure is larger than in most of Michigan, which is a reason to have the conversation early rather than after a placement.

One point that connects the two halves of this page: the cash surrender value of a permanent policy above the exclusion threshold becomes a countable asset once Medicaid is in view, so the policy decision made during private pay has eligibility consequences later. See how life insurance counts as a Medicaid asset, our Ann Arbor Medicaid spend-down page, and Michigan asset and income limits. Nothing here is legal, tax, or eligibility advice; work with your own elder law attorney and confirm figures with MDHHS.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a nursing home cost in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2026?

Survey ranges put a semi-private room at roughly $11,000 to $12,500 a month as of 2026, with a private room $800 to $2,000 higher. That is above the Michigan statewide median of about $10,000 to $11,000 for a semi-private room. Assisted living in Ann Arbor generally runs $5,500 to $6,800. Confirm against a specific facility’s current rate sheet and its schedule of additional charges.

How do I calculate how long our money will last?

Subtract the income that keeps arriving during care, including Social Security, pension and annuity payments, from the facility’s monthly rate. That remainder is the net burn. Divide usable liquid assets by the net burn, then reduce the result by roughly ten percent to account for four to five percent annual rate escalation. Do not count the house until it actually closes, and discount retirement accounts for the tax on withdrawals.

Should we sell the house to pay for care?

It depends on more than the arithmetic. Selling converts protected home equity into countable cash, which matters if Medicaid is likely within a few years, and it forecloses a spouse or disabled child remaining in the home. Not selling leaves a shorter runway. In Ann Arbor a sale commonly takes four to eight months while the facility bills monthly, so a family committing on the strength of an expected sale needs a bridge.

Why is Ann Arbor more expensive than the rest of Michigan?

Washtenaw County’s post-acute market is shaped by proximity to a major academic medical center, which concentrates skilled capacity in the area and supports higher pricing, and the local assisted living inventory skews toward newer, higher-service communities. Ann Arbor home values, the highest of any large Michigan city as of 2026, also reflect and reinforce a higher local cost structure across housing and labor.

How many months of care does a life settlement actually buy here?

Translate proceeds into months rather than dollars. At an Ann Arbor skilled nursing net burn of roughly $7,550 a month, $60,000 of net proceeds buys about eight months. At an assisted living net burn closer to $1,900 for the same household, the same money buys well over two years. It is a runway extender, not a solution, and it is the wrong move for small policies or a relatively healthy insured.

Where does a Washtenaw County family apply when the money runs out?

With the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services office serving Washtenaw County, or online through MI Bridges. MDHHS is a state agency operating county offices, so this is not filed with county government. For care planning and the MI Choice waiver, the Area Agency on Aging 1-B serves Washtenaw County. As of 2026 the countable asset limit for a single applicant is $2,000; confirm the current figure.

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