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Sagora Senior Living is continuing on its arc as a growing provider, having expanded by 30% in 2024.
Now, as the organization prepares to take on multiple properties this year, integrating its newest additions and ensuring that its model can continue to scale effectively are top priorities, according to CEO and President Bryan McCaleb.
At 81 communities across 11 states, Sagora in May 2024 took on management of 17 communities in growing its Asher Point independent living brand across the southeast and midwestern markets.
To ease growing pains, Sagora leadership in the last 12 months has emphasized integration of new communities into the company’s operations playbook while crafting staffing initiatives, like a new onboarding process to bring communities up to stabilization and beyond.
“When you grow by as much as we did—30% growth in 2024—you’re going to have some things that need to be fixed,” McCaleb told Senior Housing News at the recent National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) conference in San Diego. “We’re really digging into that and we’re making those fixes now and from where they were and where we are going, we’re in a great place.”
In 2025, McCaleb sees Sagora’s growth hingeing on solving staffing challenges while preparing to take on additional communities under third-party management.
Inside Sagora’s growth for 2025
Senior living operators have sought different strategies for growth over the past five years, from relying on regional sub-brands and management companies to smaller operators merging to enhance operating performance and identifying new capital partners.
That’s meant operators have had to look internally at their corporate support structures to support scaling, while also making sure frontline staff have the tools at their disposal for delivering care and elevating the resident lifestyle experience.
Sagora took steps in 2024 to craft a home-office task force to identify key benchmarks along a community’s first 90 days of a property being added to the company’s roster—diving into various aspects of operations including IT and sales and marketing to ensure continuity across its markets.
“We already know we’re going to be growing this year,” McCaleb said. “Our biggest challenge is still people, and our focus is on finding the right people and growing the business at a rate we can succeed at.”
In 2025, McCaleb said, Sagora will bring on 12 new Texas communities to its third-party management portfolio, as the company’s unit mix remains an approximate 50-50 split between lower acuity, independent living cottages and higher acuity assisted living and memory care residences. Anytime Sagora gets the opportunity to grow in Texas, the company will, McCaleb added.
Building off a strong year in 2024, exemplified by Sagora taking on communities on behalf of real estate investment trust (REIT) Welltower (NYSE: WELL), McCaleb credited the company’s strong relationships with Welltower and its three other capital providers for paving the way for sustained growth this year and beyond.
McCaleb also noted that Sagora will not have “10 or 12 capital partners,” in the interest of ensuring that the company maintains alignment with its partners. He views Sagora’s future growth coming in the form of building regional density in existing markets, but he won’t discount any attractive proposals that come across the desk.
“We want to be where we are and we’re not looking to be in 25 states,” McCaleb said. “Where we are, from Texas and Nebraska and across and down to Florida, everything there fits us really well.”
In order to keep up with a rapid pace of growth, Sagora has launched a community integration effort that pairs frontline staff communication and resident feedback to ease concerns after a community is brought into the fold.
While metrics presented on a dashboard are important to track from a fiscal planning perspective, McCaleb said he remains a “boots on the ground” fan—placing emphasis on the regional teams in place tasked with building culture at a newly acquired property.
“If you’re not in the communities, and you’re not walking around seeing what’s happening, you’re missing out on details that can lead to solutions you might be looking for,” McCaleb said. “We really are building out our regional teams and they’re our biggest strength.”
Giving regional operations and regional sales and marketing teams the tools they need to succeed in integrating a new community can make a marked difference in seeing occupancy and revenue goals hit, he added.
In taking on new communities under the Sagora banner, McCaleb said he and company leaders have been able to compare and contrast the company’s operating model to past operators and make adjustments, or adopt past practices, to help each community succeed.
“We have the ability to see problems before they become bigger issues and we have people at the regional level who can tackle those and shield our teams at each community from them so they can focus on building our culture and care for our residents,” McCaleb said.
Some of the biggest pain points on integration of new communities came in the form of timing capital expenditure (CapEx) projects, because some of the newly transitioned communities needed physical improvements to make them competitive in their respective markets, McCaleb said. That means looking at community spaces, private residence upgrades and renovating as needed.
As Sagora has grown, McCaleb hasn’t charted the company’s expansion with a set number of communities in mind.
“We’re taking care of people’s lives and we’re leading people as an employer and we’ve got to take care of people well and if we do that, we will have opportunities for growth,” McCaleb said. “I don’t know how big we’ll be, but our commitment is that we’ve got to be able to perform at the level of care for our residents and caring of our team and doors will open for us.”
The company is the largest it’s ever been since forming, and McCaleb said Sagora will continue to build its operating model to support lifestyle and culinary-driven independent living communities, while blending assisted living and memory care communities with those elements and personalized health care services.
“I think independent living is critical, but independent living and assisted living-memory care plays well together, and we like the blend of IL and AL with memory care, but those are really big communities with a lot going on,” McCaleb said. “You have to be focused to make them succeed and play off of one another.”
In the future, McCaleb said there’s “going to have to be” senior living development to support incoming, demographic-driven demand, with the roots of Sagora’s growth coming from ground-up development, but he noted the myriad challenges facing new construction in senior living as it stands today.
“We’ve been stair-stepping upwards since 2020, and 2025 is going to be the next step or two,” McCaleb said.
