Brookdale Senior Living Ceo: ‘table Is Now Set’ For Operational Improvement

Brookdale Senior Living’s occupancy inflection has not happened as quickly as expected, but the company’s top leader believes all the strategic pieces are in place and that its plan is beginning to make progress.

A new top sales leader, a reorganized portfolio, targeted capital improvements and acquisitions are spurring growth heading into the final two quarters of 2026, according to CEO Nick Stengle.

Occupancy growth fell short of the Brentwood, Tennessee-based company’s previously announced investment guidance, ending the second quarter at 82.4% average weighted occupancy, an increase of 260 basis points and up from 82.1% in the first quarter of this year. 

Brookdale CEO Nick Stengle said the company has moved from a period of organizational change into one where “the table is now set” and the “pace of change is more or less behind us.”

In the last year, Brookdale has shifted into six operating regions, each designed to function like a smaller company while using the company’s scale to drive operating performance. As part of the changes, Brookdale also clarified staffing roles across community, regional and corporate management.

“The changes that we have made [were] all very appropriate, a bit disruptive, maybe even tumultuous, as the word you used,” Stengle said in the Q&A portion of Tuesday’s earnings call. “Now we’re looking forward to the new team, the new structure, and the new organizational effectiveness that we have.”

Leadership during Tuesday’s call pointed to the hiring of former Harmony CEO and A Place for Mom executive Margaret Cabell as chief sales officer as an important factor in shifting the sales culture and bringing hands-on, community-level leadership to bear amid the changes.

Consolidated occupancy “should be” around 83% for Brookdale’s full-year guidance, according to Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Dawn Kussow. She said the company is expecting “strong growth in the third quarter,” including a 30 basis point increase the company saw in the second quarter compared to the same time last year.

While Stengle said Brookdale has no desire currently to expand to new markets or new states, Brookdale completed targeted acquisitions in areas the operator already has scale in. Prior to the call, Brookdale announced plans to acquire a 17-community, 735-unit portfolio from a leased to ownership structure for $157 million. Both acquisitions were acquired below replacement costs, according to Kussow.

Also in the quarter, Brookdale acquired a 244-unit Houston-area community it previously managed for $23.4 million. The Brookdale Galleria is in an affluent submarket of Houston, and the company closed its skilled nursing operation to repurpose the community into amenities that better meet local demand.

Brookdale stock fell 8.43% on Tuesday to rest at $12.55, a loss of $1.15 compared to the previous day’s trading.

Decisions on staffing driving change

Stengle outlined important roles central to change at Brookdale, including operations leader, executive director, sales director and clinical director.

To improve performance, Brookdale leaders have “bolstered” those positions and their reporting relationships at the community level, giving them more authority, empowerment, and accountability to reap better performance. With turnover levels of these key positions “the lowest it has been since” the pandemic, Stengle said the company was realizing “some real performance improvement” on engagement of local leaders.

Top leaders “really leaned into” the importance of strong, autonomous leadership at the community level with regional oversight. Brookdale replicated the “same organizational model” within its segments to align sales, operations and clinical leaders that report out to those regional positions.

“It’s a very meaningful change because then it creates clear accountability, clear empowerment, and clear authority through the district into the community,” Stengle said. “So instead of having two, three or four district leaders reaching a community and providing guidance and authority… there’s now a single line of accountability.”

While strong demand for senior living underpins occupancy growth expectations in the short term, Stengle said Cabell’s hiring in June has already led to improvements. In July, Cabell helped launch an initiative at the communities focused on the daily roles of sales staff, focusing on activities and not final sales outcomes. In her role, Stengle noted that Cabell had brought a “new energy” along with “a new strength” approaching the company’s sales process going forward.

“It really has the organizational structure of ops, sales, and clinical truly working together. Every single layer of the organization has been a pretty meaningful change,” Stengle said.

Dispositions continue for Brookdale

Brookdale is currently in the midst of offloading communities as the portfolio continues to be reshaped.

Leaders expect the company to sell 29 communities this year, and as of June 30, the company sold 13 owned communities for roughly $147 million in net proceeds, while also exiting from two leased communities.

In August, Brookdale sold three communities for $2.5 million, with 13 dispositions remaining. Most are expected to close before the company’s third quarter earnings call, leadership said on Tuesday. In total, Brookdale is expected to bring in $190 million in disposition proceeds.

Average units, roughly at 42,800 in the second quarter, are expected to dip to roughly 42,200 in the third quarter and 41,500 units in the fourth quarter, reflecting the “tail end” of the company’s capital recycling program and the impact of the Galleria acquisition, Kussow said.

Based on declining move-out activity, Brookdale leaders on Tuesday defended the company’s approach to discounting that Stengle said was “very deliberate” and “appropriate at the time” to spur move-in activity in June and July of last year. But in 2026, Stengle sees Brookdale taking a “very different approach” both on in-place rental increases and a more “deliberate and disciplined” move-in pricing approach.

“So, we are really threading the needle between balancing rate and balancing move-in pace. And if anything, it’s a bit of a two-speed world,” Stengle said.

That means taking a varied approach to communities at 90% occupancy and those below 70% census, where the company can push rate in highly occupied buildings and offer discounting in the lower-occupied segment. As of the second quarter, Brookdale has 85 communities below 70% occupancy, which is down from 129 communities below 70% occupancy during the second quarter of last year.

Of those 85 communities under 70% census, nine are slated for disposition and 50% of those are “recent erosion” cases, having dropped below 70% occupancy due to seasonality or requiring one to three units of additional occupancy to move above that threshold.

This led Brookdale to “relaunch” its “SWAT team” led by Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations Clark Jones to tackle lower occupancy communities, Stengle said. In May of last year, Brookdale launched the “SWAT” teams to target low-performing properties through “high opportunity response teams” that have a range of options at their disposal, including new lease up strategies to adding more corporate support to improve census.

“We’ll be tackling those that have been more consistently under 70 to really make some meaningful changes in the small cohort that are in that position,” Stengle said.

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