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As I work on my annual story about the trends I see upcoming in 2026, I wanted to take a moment to analyze 2025 and how it has shaped the senior living industry. It was a year full of optimism for senior living companies, though challenges continue to cloud their certainty about what comes next.
On the one hand, rising demand continues to push average senior living occupancy higher. New technology also is helping senior living operators reach their customers in new ways, and changing generational preferences are altering operators’ messaging. And a new class of leaders has taken the reins at companies across the industry, with creative ideas about the future.
The industry is grappling with a longer-term crisis even as it makes the most of demand increases now. Despite hopes that conditions would turn favorable in 2025, development remained frozen this year with 60% of the 140 markets NIC MAP tracks recording no new senior living development projects underway. As I’ve written before, the senior living industry does not want to find itself in a position where substantially every unit is full and waitlists are growing with the opening of new communities still years away. Data shows that the boomers are looking for senior housing, and I think they will find something they want sooner rather than later whether senior living operators have room for them or not.
Similarly to how demand and development represent both an opportunity and a challenge ahead, so too does new technology used in digital marketing. As senior living prospects embrace generative language models like ChatGPT and online search “answer engines,” operators must change their strategies to reach new customers.
And while a new class of leaders is pushing the senior living industry to consider new ideas, that ongoing transition between the industry’s pioneers and its newer leaders is its own hurdle. That isn’t to say these aren’t talented leaders worthy of their roles, but rather that any such transition doesn’t happen overnight.
In this members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze recent market forces shaping the senior living industry ahead of the new year, including:
- How a lack of new development shaped the industry this year
- New changes in marketing methods and messaging
- Leaders bringing new philosophies and taking the reins from veterans
Development almost nonexistent while demand surged
In my view, the biggest force shaping the senior living industry in 2025 was the cross-current of rising demand and relatively frozen new development.
According to NIC data that we’ve shared over the past 12 months, senior living unit absorption and demand are high, while the rate of new development is anything but. Eight of the 31 primary markets that NIC tracks experienced negative inventory growth between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period this year.
Meanwhile, the baby boomers moved into senior housing in “record numbers,” according to NIC data. The data shows that for every 10 new units that opened in any given market, 31 were occupied and absorbed this year.
But the current state of project timelines, cost of land and cautiousness from capital providers has so far forestalled the kind of new construction needed to catch up with demand. As a result, the number of people aged 75 and over is projected to eclipse annual inventory growth through 2030.
The frozen state of new development was a hot topic at our BUILD conference this year. I think the words “ready to grow, struggling to build” from NIC Senior Principal Omar Zahraoui on stage at the event describe the state of the industry in 2025 well. As growth via development remained hard to pencil out, senior living owners and investors flocked to smaller M&A deals.
I believe that growth will overtake other challenges in the years ahead as the industry struggles to overcome its widening investment gap. For some companies, that reality is already here today.
Senior living digital marketing is changing
The rise of answer engines, coupled with the preferences of the senior living industry’s newest customers, meant big changes for senior living marketers in 2025.
Last month, I covered how senior living referral giant A Place for Mom is pivoting its marketing strategy in favor of online answer engines like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Whereas APFM previously sought to prioritize SEO and end up in organic search lists, the company now believes that answer engines and other AI-powered tools have superseded traditional search engines – and the data backs that notion up.
“It’s great to have a website, but who’s going to this website now and how are they going to be learning about what’s on your website?” APFM CEO Tatyana Zlotsky said. “It’s all about figuring out how to get into the ‘answers’ of the LLMs that people are already using for their research instead of Google.”
Making matters harder, the senior living story itself needs to evolve as quickly as the tech that leads residents to operators. The senior living value proposition still rests on things like food, fun and leisure, which is not much different from the story the industry told more than 70 years ago, Dr. Joe Coughlin, director of MIT AgeLab, said during a panel at the Fall NIC Conference.
“Even the best, most profitable, high-margin businesses in senior housing right now are continuing the story that was created in the late ‘50s,” Coughlin said. “We certainly have far better architecture … but we haven’t created a narrative that’s more aspirational.”
At the same time, I do think about the pivot that some providers have made toward wellness-focused models that prioritize a multi-faceted approach to aging that goes far beyond the “cruise ship on land” framework. But I agree with Coughlin’s point that the industry has not fundamentally altered the public perception of senior living communities as largely undesirable places to live.
From methods to messaging, it’s clear to me that senior living marketing is changing with the arrival of the boomers, and operators can’t only rely on their old methods to fill their communities.
Changing of the guard is at hand
Multiple senior living operators in the past year announced new leaders at the helm. In fact, Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD), Civitas Senior Living and Maplewood Senior Living have all named new top leaders since October. Another well-known operator, Watermark Retirement Communities, named a new CEO in April. What’s driving these CEO transitions is a need to turn the page from the past to the future and respond to new challenges and opportunities with new ideas.
According to a December report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the most common reason cited for CEO departures in October of 2025 was “stepping down,” signaling “planned successions, strategic transitions, or moves into advisory or board roles.”
It’s no surprise to me that prominent senior living organizations named new CEOs in 2025 as senior living grew more complicated. As I wrote last year, the senior living industry is losing its most seasoned leaders just when their expertise is needed most. That necessitates a careful handoff, as senior living operator Silverado did by naming an interim CEO this year.
These companies are bullish on their leadership transitions but the new leaders face some daunting challenges. If a trend shaping 2025 was the passing of the baton, the test in 2026 will be how far and fast the new leaders can run. Brookdale is the most dramatic case in point. CEO Nick Stengle has introduced a more regionalized structure and is bullish on key indicators, but I’m eager to see if he brings even bolder ideas and initiatives to the nation’s largest provider in the year to come. Bottom line, the changing of the guard is a challenge – and an opportunity – that many more companies will undergo in the years to come.
