A limited rate of new community openings has senior living demand surging in 2025. Senior living operators are making the most of this period.
Frontier Senior Living has notched almost nine consecutive months of occupancy growth ranging between 20 and 40 net move-ins every month, according to CEO Greg Roderick.
“In previous years, the last four years, it was either flat or negative,” Roderick told Senior Housing News. “If you’re looking at comparing, it’s significantly better.”
Roderick credited that growth to things like retraining training employees across the company’s departments, not just in marketing. Other operators, like Belmont Village, are shifting services to stay flexible and provide a multitude of care and living options for a new generation of residents. That effort has paid off in the form of faster lease-up for new communities.
“We’re seeing one of the largest buildings we’ve ever built with the best lease-ups we’ve ever seen,” Belmont CEO Patricia Will told Senior Housing News. “That comes from a great location and a lot of operating proficiency … but also a change in the seniors themselves.”
Making the most of high demand
In the second quarter of 2025, the senior living industry added just 809 new units, representing the lowest level of openings on record since 2005 when NIC MAP began tracking the data.
Senior living operators are reaping high demand as a result, partly due to the fact that incoming older adults simply have fewer new communities to choose from. All primary markets NIC tracks exceeded 80% in 2Q25, with Boston, Cincinnati and Baltimore all surpassing 90% in that period. The average senior living occupancy rate across all markets was 88.1% in the second quarter.
But high demand does not translate into occupancy gains alone. As operators well know, the incoming baby boomers have new wants and needs that senior living companies must cater to in order to attract them.
That is partly why Houston, Texas-based Belmont Senior Living has continued to actively build out its portfolio with a “very rich” development pipeline for the coming years, Will told Senior Housing News.
Operators are changing their strategies to make the most of demand trends. For example, Frontier is retraining salespeople and other staffers to improve telephone etiquette, host successful events and emphasize a company culture of every staff member being a member of the sales team when prospects come to tour.
“We have to market,” he said. “We’re continuing training in every single department, not just marketing, because when the marketing director or sales director is talking with someone and they come in for a tour, they have to see what they’ve been told.”
In 2025 so far, Frontier has completed around 200 training sessions from its home office in Dallas, with a goal of holding at least 400 sessions in 2025. The company trains workers on topics ranging from business office management to executive chef and sales director training in “hyper-focused” sessions lasting no more than 20 minutes.
The training helps staffers confidently showcase the company’s offerings to new prospects. Frontier’s lead volume in July is between 10% and 15% compared to the month prior, according to Roderick.
To stay flexible for an incoming group of residents bringing new wants and needs, Belmont Village has fully licensed for assisted living all units in newer buildings, such the ones it opened in Coral Gables, Florida in late 2023, and La Jolla in San Diego, California in 2022. The practice helps the operator accommodate couples at differing acuity levels, Will said. Additionally, the operator is shifting the real estate and design elements within the buildings it develops to offer larger rooms with more open space.
“We can easily accommodate that, not only by the initial plan that we have for the building, but we build out of steel and concrete, and can easily transform the unit mix to bend to customer demand as opposed to trying to serve up to the customer what they don’t want,” Will said.
West Linn, Oregon-based Anthem Memory Care reported one of the strongest months for net move-ins in June, according to CEO Isaac Scott. July is shaping up to be a strong performing month, he said.
Anthem’s communities all average at least 80% occupancy, and the company has set a goal to increase that to 85% by the end of the year, according to Scott.
At the beginning of the year, Anthem rolled out a new pricing structure across the company and expanded its levels of care from two up to six in order to be ready for increasing levels of demand.
“We created more opportunities to market to a wider audience,” Scott said. “We’ve set up a clinical operating system so that we now get compensated for the care that we provide to those residents who are aging in place and who are at the higher level of the spectrum.”
Industry must keep adapting
The baby boomers are bringing a wave of new demand to senior living, but that doesn’t mean operators can rest on their laurels and watch move-ins flow in.
According to Will, the industry must contend with the fact that boomers graduated college at a greater rate than the previous generation. Incoming residents will no doubt have greater wants and needs as a result, she believes.
“I think the level of sophistication of an engagement inside communities to keep up with who the customer is is going to be terrifically important,” Will said. “If you can accomplish that, the marketing takes care of itself.”
In the fourth quarter of 2024, Frontier was averaging around 35 net move-ins per month, which Roderick said was “fabulous” compared to previous years. Additionally, the company increased its rental rates between 5% and 7% compared to 2024 to better cover the cost of care.
He believes that the company’s operational shifts will keep up that momentum in the year ahead.
“We’ve got our costs very much in line,” he said. “We’re going to reward the residents of our buildings with a much more modest increase.”
While the memory care side of the industry can be “wobbly” due to factors that can easily mitigate strong occupancy gains, such as a strong flu season, Scott hopes the remaining months of 2025 to continue to be strong with regard to demand.
“If we can be a bit better than we were last year in those October, November, December, months, we would really, really benefit from them,” Scott said.
