How Senior Living ‘ghost Trends’ are Shaping The Future 

Some senior living trends are obvious, from the boom of the active adult sector to the rise of wellness-focused models. But other trends are less apparent.  

These “ghost trends” are not yet the industry equivalent of the gigantic Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, but they are shaping the industry in notable and increasingly important ways. They involve consumers, investors and operators, and are affecting everything from where capital is being allocated to how senior living communities are reaching prospects and closing sales.  

That’s according to Heritage Communities Chief Marketing Officer Lacy Jungman and Senior Living Transformation Company (SLTC) Managing Partner and CIO Frank Small. They spoke on this topic at the recent Senior Housing News TRENDS Conference in Chicago, where they identified and delved into the implications of several ghost trends. 

Reaching 4 Generations

One of the biggest “ghost trends” Jungman is paying attention to is the frequency with which four generations in the same family are involved in the search for senior living, including the Baby Boomer prospective resident or couple, Generation X adult children, Millennial grandchildren and even Generation Z great-grandchildren.

This makes the question of “Who you gonna call?” harder to answer in 2026 and beyond.

“It’s wildly important to make sure that we’re hitting all of these different thresholds and different marketing aspects, because every single one of them still deserves our marketing efforts and the messaging, but they’re all slightly different,” Jungman said of these different cohorts.

It creates a new challenge for operators just where to spend their marketing dollars, whether it’s on website upgrades or personalized outreach based on engagement. Jungman noted how Gen Z relies on AI search and information to distill a broad range of senior living options into digestible information that can lead to a buying decision. 

“That’s wildly different than going to a paid referral source or going to your neighbor and asking, ‘Where did you move your mom?’” Jungman observed. 

Data shows that AI-powered tools like Google’s Gemini “answers overview” are steering viewers to click on fewer search engine results. A 2025 Pew Research survey of 900 U.S.-based adults found that those who encounter an AI summary during an online search are “less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one.”

Search behavior has also shifted more heavily toward social media in senior living, Jungman said, making it a requirement that senior living providers connect with the public through platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

“You no longer have the option to be on there. You have to be there, or you won’t be in the consideration set,” Jungman said.

A demographic tide – not wave 

The senior living industry commonly refers to the demographic shift of aging Americans, led by the baby boomers, as a generational “wave” that could bring in the sector’s “golden age.” But SLTC’s Small believes that this mega-trend is actually misleading, and the “ghost trend” is that the demographic shift is a tide, not a wave that spikes in an instant and recedes quickly. 

“It’s really slow moving and something that takes time and that lands unevenly,” Small said during the TRENDS Conference. “[Average] occupancies are above 90%, great—but high tide and money [in one place] is going to mean low tide somewhere else, so it doesn’t move all equally.”

Courtesy of Merz Photography for Arrowfly

In other words, demographic-driven occupancy has been building for years in aggregate, but strong occupancies are not universal. Acuity, market, price point and other variables all determine whether a community or a provider is able to benefit from demand or is experiencing a low tide.

“It’s so asset specific, so market specific, so operator specific, it’s so team-in-the-building specific … as an investor, I find myself parroting the lines [about demand], and I’m like, okay, you’ve got to step back and actually drill down a little bit,” he said.

SLTC has been engaged in drilling down, which has led the organization to target investments outside of the “NFL cities” and typical secondary markets. One example is a building that the organization acquired in Fredericksburg, Texas. While the location about an hour outside San Antonio might not have immediate name recognition, it boasts the highest number of millionaires per capita in Texas.

“There’s a lot of great places that that our target consumers want to live,” said Small.

Senior living gets dynamic

Another ghost trend might be summed up simply in one word: dynamic.

Jungman sees an opportunity for senior living providers to make their websites more dynamic. That is, more personalized and tailored to behavior of customers based on data, location and past actions. 

“When was the last time that you refreshed your photos on your website? When’s the last time that you refreshed it right before that? When’s the last time you refreshed and put any extra money into it, unless it was a complete overhaul, which you saved years for? Your website is not dynamic,” she said.

Jungman said that she and Emily Tucker, vice president, growth-senior housing sales and marketing at Trilogy Senior Services, both believe that dynamic websites are currently a ghost trend but could become much more commonplace even within a year.

For instance, a more dynamic website might change when a prospect visits it a second time, bringing up articles, resources or webpages directly relevant to what the prospect was searching for on a first visit. Or, rather than defaulting to a homepage, a website might allow a visitor to “go back to where I left off” on a previous visit, Jungman said.

Another “dynamic” trend is dynamic pricing. This is a common practice in the air travel and hospitality industries where demand causes prices for flights or hotels to fluctuate based on search activity and demand. It’s not a new trend in senior living, and perhaps not truly a ghost trend, but it is evolving in some ways that Jungman and Small said are under the radar.

That’s because senior living’s buying process is not as simple as buying a plane ticket or a hotel room. It’s an emotional process that requires months, sometimes years in making a decision to transition into.  

The answer is a dynamic pricing model that fluctuates less often than in other sectors, including multifamily housing. Once a week seems to be where “people are landing,” with the price changes tied to a variety of factors, including occupancy, unit type and unit location, Small said.

Courtesy of Merz Photography for Arrowfly

He and Jungman cautioned that it’s a delicate balance to strike between creating a productive sense of buyer urgency through dynamic pricing versus eroding consumer trust due to prices that are perceived to be too volatile.

“The question is, how do we roll it out to our teams, because the knee-jerk reaction from a sales team is to say no,” Jungman said. But she believes that careful messaging can counteract the fear that dynamic pricing will hurt consumer trust. 

Furthermore, if the industry continues to aggressively push on resident rates to keep up with rising expenses, Jungman said some operators could “run the risk of out-pricing” their local markets. Dynamic pricing could allow for some greater “flexibility to adapt to the market.” 

Self-service senior housing

Alongside a more personalized online experience, Jungman said operators must go beyond transparency in pricing to include near real-time unit availability and other information and tools that will enable more self-service on the part of consumers. Like dynamic pricing, this might be considered a ghost trend in senior living today but it’s a clear trend in multifamily.

In the future, Jungman said she believes the industry could create “reserve now” or “hold now” functionality through refundable deposits, allowing prospects to lay claim to a unit for some limited period of time before seeing it in person and connecting with a sales professional. 
 
“They’re self-touring 24 hours a day, and while I believe we are a far way off from that, there are still opportunities for us to provide those moments for self-service,” Jungman said, referring to the multifamily sector. 

Referring back to another ghost trend – that four generations are shopping together for senior living – Jungman emphasized how important it is to empower these consumers through self-service opportunities.

“If there’s four generations that are searching for senior living right now for one family member, this gives them the opportunity to take more control into their hands,” she said.

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