Brookdale, Atria, Sonida, Other Senior Living Operators Adapt To Industry’s Supply-demand Imbalance

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Senior living operators have entered a new era of little growth and narrowing capacity. Some companies are rethinking their operational strategies as a result.

High demand for senior living but difficulties getting new development projects in the ground has led to tighter conditions in certain markets. Where senior living operators could once count on occupancy growth to propel them forward, increasingly senior living communities are filling up. That means that senior living operators must pull other levers than census growth, like cutting costs or boosting efficiency, to grow revenue and margins.

Frontline operations and sales and marketing workers within communities “must function as one team” to compete in these new conditions, Brookdale (NYSE: BKD) CEO Nick Stengle told Senior Housing News.

“Operations must then deliver on that promise every day,” Stengle told SHN. “When these functions are fully aligned, communities create trust, improve resident satisfaction and retention, generate referrals and provide the energy prospective residents can feel when they visit.”

Leaders at Brookdale, the second largest senior living operator in the country with 532 communities, have reorganized the company’s portfolio, added C-suite bench strength and made targeted capital improvements to prepare the Brentwood, Tennessee-based provider for incoming demand. 

While Brookdale faces “strong” competition from other operators, current supply and demand dynamics are “creating room for disciplined operators to perform well,” Stengle said. In markets where occupancy is increasing, providers have maintained resident rate discipline without the need for discounts or incentives.

But the competition factor is one that extends beyond operators competing with one another. While operators have always competed with older adults staying home, narrowing capacity in communities means that more older adults might age in place due to the fact that there simply aren’t enough communities to live in one.

“The question has to become: Why would someone actually choose to live here before they absolutely have to?” Distinctive Living CEO Joe Jedlowski said. “The operators who can answer that question are going to own the next decade.”

Jedlowski also believes the industry’s current upswing in demand carries an important distinction in that needs-based demand for senior living is inherent, as older adults 80 and over weigh tough decisions in transitioning to services like assisted living and memory care based on need.

“Need is not demand,” Jedlowski added. “Consumers have to choose us, and tomorrow’s customer is going to be much harder to impress.”

With that in mind, providers must adapt operations to offer hospitality, quality culinary options and wellness offerings. Thet also must have back-end platforms capable of personalizing and creating flexibility for older adults to make a lifestyle-driven choice and not a needs-based one, Jedlowski said.

Distinctive Living is pursuing multiple new developments to cater to this next generation of senior living customers. This year, Distinctive Living announced plans for LiveWell Cottages at Vineland, a pocket neighborhood concept featuring private cottages that can be integrated with home care in a 25-acre development with multiple neighborhoods totaling 130 cottage homes for adults 65 and older.

In partnership with Melillo Equities and PointsFive, Distinctive Living is launching an adaptive reuse project in Somerset County, New Jersey. Known as CopperWood Senior Living, the development will transform a former corporate campus into a luxury senior living community featuring 214 residences and a full continuum of services.

Senior living providers including Brookdale and Distinctive Living, along with Atria Senior Living, Sonida Senior Living (NYSE: SNDA), Trilogy Health Services and 12 Oaks Senior Living, are all adapting operations to meet this moment of strong demand.

From generating demand to managing it

The year 2026 is the first one “we’ve really started to feel the impact” of the baby boomer demographic entering senior living, according to Atria Senior Living Chief Marketing Officer Sanela Graziose. Boomers have “different expectations” and have done their research, making building connections with prospective residents and families more important.

This has shifted the focus of senior living operations from generating demand to managing it properly, Graziose said. As average occupancy rates increase industrywide, providers must adapt to anticipate upcoming vacancies, engage prospects earlier and efficiently turn over apartment to bring new residents in. With demand strong, managing waitlists and collaborating across departments at a community help create stability and consistency that ultimately lead to satisfied residents and families, Graziose said.

“Every market has its own unique circumstances, including its mix of competitors and the specific strengths and weaknesses within the community team,” Graziose said.

In some communities, that means a focus on waitlist management, while in others it could mean focusing more closely on improving high occupancy to full occupancy, Graziose added.

The strong demand is palpable for all senior living providers. 12 Oaks Senior Living reported that leads are up 30% in 2026 compared to last year, and new tour inquiries are up 37% compared to 2025. New move-ins for the Dallas-based senior living provider have increased 4% in 2026, for a total growth in new move-ins of 10% including last year, according to Chief Revenue Officer Aaron Catoe.

However, the “barrier is still the same” for older adults considering senior living, and those obstacles include the tough emotional decision to transition to senior living, affordability and past perceptions of senior living, Catoe said. To respond, 12 Oaks is shifting how it approaches leads. Instead of prioritizing leads as “hot, warm or cold,” Catoe said 12 Oaks is shifting sales roles toward a “leasing counselor mindset” to nurture existing leads rather than chase new ones.

In comparing the average time from inquiry to move-in since 2020, 12 Oaks found that, over that six-year window, the process took about 120 days, but in the last six months, that timeline has stretched to 145 days. This longer buying timeline reinforces that effective demand management centers on conversion quality and not solely on overall lead volume, Catoe said.

Those valuable conversions depend on frontline teams being trained to address anxiety, provide comfort and answer questions about the transition process, helping prospects “metabolize the emotional barriers” ahead of a move-in.

High occupancy ‘the new standard’

In the second quarter of this year, national average occupancy reached 89.9% across NIC MAP primary markets, marking 20 consecutive quarters of census growth.

With strong occupancy becoming “the new standard” for portfolios and communities nationwide, it creates an opportunity for providers to be “even more pinpointed” in their growth, according to Trilogy Health Services Chief Growth and Experience Officer Staci Woods.

Through full-continuum, campus-style communities with integrated services, Trilogy Health Services is taking a multi-pronged approach to capturing strong senior living demand through expansions, capital improvements and adding or changing services offered across its growing portfolio of communities.

“Now we’re looking at the service lines within a campus, within a division, and finding areas where we need to grow,” Woods said.

In 2026, two-thirds of Trilogy’s 150 communities have nearly full occupancy with “one or two” openings at a given time, Woods said. This demand is causing Trilogy communities to rethink aspects of sales, touring and lead generation efforts, especially for communities that are full or operate with waiting lists. That means shifting emphasis from tour-to-move-in conversion rates toward tour-to-deposit performance and more sophisticated waitlist management, Woods noted. 

“This forces us to focus on data reporting, agility and how we adapt, essentially turning over the little pebbles now,” Woods added. “This demand is making it more about the fine print because before we worked with a broad brush, but that is not the tool we need for the future.”

A guiding factor in this year’s story on occupancy is the “mismatch” between demand and supply. For operators who spoke with Senior Housing News, this has led to an increase in overall occupancy.

Leaders with Dallas-based Sonida Senior Living have grown same-store senior housing operating portfolio (SHOP) occupancy by 240 basis points in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2025, with more than half of Sonida communities operating above 90% occupancy, up from roughly 40% in 2025, according to CEO Brandon Ribar. The company’s leaders have notched those gains through focused digital marketing efforts, along with improving the conversion-to-tour ratio.

With conversion rates improving, Ribar said it means that “demand is more qualified, not just more voluminous.” To be better positioned to capture new demand, Sonida is overhauling digital marketing while continuing capital improvements and community repositioning, bringing on new capacity “in months rather than years.”

The “leading edge” of the baby boomer generation is now a strong factor in increased demand, and families are moving in “earlier than they used to rather than waiting” for an adverse health event to trigger a need for senior living, Ribar noted. Sonida is relying on its regional density in markets like Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and northern Florida to manage waitlists and staffing issues and create a better referral pipeline across clusters of communities.

“Demand has been strong and broad-based, and it has been accelerating rather than plateauing,” Ribar said. “Move-ins are outpacing move-outs across our portfolio, and we’re seeing that show up in both lead volume and, more importantly, in how those leads convert.”

Solving staffing challenges can be critical for operators reshaping their models to succeed in 2026. Operators are focusing on increased training and developing career pathways to help improve retention.

Maintaining strong staffing is critical for daily operations and managing future demand, Ribar said. In the last two years, Sonida launched a leadership development program while also seeking out staff with hospitality and healthcare backgrounds. Using technology, including operations platforms that can take some administrative burden off frontline staff, is also a critical piece of solving staffing challenges to prepare for incoming senior living demand, Ribar added.

The company also launched a proprietary data and operational analytics platform known as Sonida Performance Insight Navigator (SPIN) to give frontline teams more insight into financial and community performance metrics. The internal data effort has led to Sonida being more efficient in staffing communities appropriately and able to “reinvest dollars into” the company’s pay and benefits structure.

Changing the industry’s perception one conversion at a time

Providers must stop marketing senior living as an available inventory of units and start marketing it as “a lifestyle and a value proposition people would choose earlier,” Ribar said.

“That means addressing the industry’s branding problem head-on, as people still associate senior living with nursing homes rather than the hospitality-driven, wellness-focused communities most of us are actually operating today,” Ribar said.

Providers must also recognize that the way in which older adults and their families search for senior living is changing, relying more on AI-supported queries rather than a typical online search. At the same time, older adults are more informed about their options before they visit a community for a tour, Stengle said.

“Operators need to provide clear, useful digital information that helps families understand their options before they ever contact a community,” Stengle said. “Being visible, educational and responsive throughout that digital journey, and following up quickly once a family reaches out, will be critical to capturing future demand.”

If construction continues to remain limited, Jedlowski said the industry could face a new problem: an undersupply of “desirable” communities attuned to wellness, lifestyle and hospitality contrasted with the aging supply of existing senior living inventory.

“That’s going to create enormous opportunities for redevelopment, repositioning and new development,” Jedlowski added.

Senior living operators must redefine what senior living is and who it is for when older adults inquire about senior living, with leaders arguing that operators need to identify and manage social isolation “years before frailty” leads to a needs-based move-in. For Trilogy, the future could include new membership-style models that allow older adults to access senior living campuses without living there, alongside creating more neighborhood-like settings for seniors.

“The conversation out there is we’re going to run out of units, but we’re never going to run out of the people that will benefit from our environments,” Woods said. “Our industry should be doing both: building new campuses and finding ways to meet seniors where they are.”

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