How AI innovation is helping operators of every size adapt to prospect new behavior and make every touchpoint count 

Two decades ago, online search shifted how consumers researched their housing and care options, reshaping senior living sales, and now consumer behavior is shifting again. Instead of typing keywords and scanning a list of links, families today are asking artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT a full question, such as, “What’s the best memory care near me for my mom who wanders?” These inquiries often eliminate the need to visit individual websites, with AI delivering a detailed written answer and recommendations that may name specific communities. 

Industry expert Renee Kimberly, Vice President of Sales Strategy and Enablement at Senior Lifestyle, is seeing more prospects enter the sales pipeline mid-funnel, having already used AI tools to research their options.  

At the same time, AI tools place capabilities that once required a large technology budget or a data science team within reach of operators of any size. Together, these changes are beginning to reshape how the industry reaches and responds to prospects. 

The 2025 Argentum Technology Reportⁱ found that 76% of its senior living respondents believe AI will have a positive or transformative impact on operations. Lifeloop’s 2025 report, The state of AI in senior living: Trends & opportunitiesⁱⁱ, revealed that 36% of senior living operators reported using AI tools, a sharp increase from the 9% reported just a year prior.  

AI adoption is climbing, but the numbers vary widely depending on who is surveyed and how “using AI” is defined. Many operators are understandably cautious. Technology costs have always been a budget issue and AI introduces concerns about security and reliability. Yet sales and marketing is one of the safest places, compared to the clinical area as an example, to start implementing AI solutions: it’s lower-risk, easy to explain, and quick to show measurable results.  

This article looks at what operators should understand before investing in AI tools and how three operators — Avanti Senior Living, Phoenix Senior Living, and LCS — are using AI to reach prospects more effectively and improve their sales and marketing results, with additional insights from industry expert Kimberly.  

Renee Kimberly — Laying foundations for AI analysis 

Kimberly, though recently appointed to her leadership role at Senior Lifestyle, has been leading data analytics and technology innovation in the senior living industry for more than 22 years. “Throughout my career, I’ve believed that great technology should empower people,” Kimberly said.  

Senior Lifestyle is listed in the American Seniors Housing Association’s 2026 ASHA 50 as one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of seniors housing, serving residents’ needs from independent living through skilled nursing and other specialized services. Kimberly specializes in using AI to analyze sales leads for sentiment, tone, nuance, and communication preferences. That analysis helps identify prospect intent and overcome objections in the sales funnel, which matters more now that prospects increasingly arrive already informed by AI.  

One project she led deployed an AI agent (software that can act on its own to complete a task) to understand why prospects might hesitate to start a conversation with a community team. The AI processed 15,000 leads, generating different “call to action” email messages, and tracked how each performed. Two possible barriers emerged: wariness of the stereotypical pushy salesperson, and reluctance to share sensitive personal health information. The AI then suggested messaging that addressed those concerns, focused on developing a relationship early, and gave prospects “permission” to engage. The approach resonated: Harder-sell tactics delayed decisions, while building trust removed barriers more quickly. 

She noted that the AI analysis also provided a new sales perspective: whereas sales teams viewed a tour as “intent,” most prospects viewed a tour as “explore.” This insight further reinforced the importance of relationship-building and earning trust during tours. 

Kimberly encourages operators to overcome their fears around AI through simple experimentation as well as through education. “Embrace AI,” she said, “because your customers are.” She suggests three starting points: 

• Take an AI prompt-writing course. Prompts are the instructions to generative AI tools. The better your prompts, the better the results. 

• Learn how to use AI responsibly and securely. AI tools given free rein can expose personal, financial, or health data. 

• Know the basics of answer engine optimization (AEO). AEO means writing and organizing your website so AI tools can find relevant and accurate information about your community, such as care levels, pricing, and location, and include it in their answers.  

Whether you intend to build your own AI tools or use a product partner’s, Kimberly recommends first gaining a foundational understanding of how AI communicates with your prospects. In the early 2000s, search engine optimization (SEO) shaped which communities families found online and created a pay-for-ranking structure that most operators couldn’t compete in. AEO now shapes which communities AI tools recommend. 

The layers of artificial intelligence (AI)

Three senior living AI use-case examples

The three operators profiled below represent distinct paths to AI adoption at different scales: Avanti, with seven communities, built its own tool; Phoenix, which manages 55 communities, partnered with a technology vendor; and LCS, managing over 130 communities, developed an in-house data science function. Their experiences show how internal capability, scale, and vendor relationships can shape an operator’s approach.

Avanti Senior Living — A founder-led AI Strategy

With seven luxury assisted living and memory care communities, Avanti Senior Living shows what a smaller operator can do with AI. Founded in 2013, Avanti is headquartered in Spring, Texas.

Lori Alford, CEO of Avanti Senior Living, has spent 26 years in senior living championing innovation and technology for resident care and experience. Avanti continually looks at where technology can improve processes and decisions or reduce repetitive work.

Alford has woven AI adoption into the core of Avanti’s culture, and that culture has deep roots: the company has used automation for over a decade. Though not the AI of today, those early tools taught Avanti the value of automating repetitive work and built a team willing to explore how technology can support its mission.

In 2023, after personal projects showed her how easy it could be to create with AI, Alford recognized the potential benefits it could bring to Avanti’s sales and marketing process. In 2024, she partnered with a coder to build a sales AI agent for Avanti—software that texts new inquiries, logs activity, and scores leads on its own. Her own comfort with AI made building, rather than licensing a commercial product, a practical choice for Avanti, though it is not the only route for a smaller operator. The vision she shared with her sales team was to have AI “take the mundane tasks away, so you can focus on residents more.”

Deploying this proprietary AI agent gave Alford the ability to customize around Avanti’s own sales process, iterate quickly, establish scoring logic, and begin using the resulting intelligence before some of those capabilities were readily available within its third-party CRM software. In effect, Avanti owns both the tool and the intelligence it produces.

The speed-to-lead results came quickly. Every new inquiry gets an instant text, day or night, and the median time to first human contact went from 11.6 hours (including non-working hours) to 5.4 hours. Alford estimates that the agent saves each sales counselor three to five hours per week by eliminating the need to chase first touches and log activity.

“AI should not replace the relationship in senior living,” says Alford. “It should remove the friction around the relationship.” If AI can reduce administrative work, identify which prospect needs attention, or help manage a waitlist more strategically and give leaders better information, the salesperson has more time for conversations and building relationships that lead to move-ins.

Although Alford is well versed in AI and manages the agent herself, she sees her role as executive sponsorship, guiding rapid experimentation and getting the organization comfortable adopting new ways of working—disciplines that even a leader less AI-savvy can implement.

Alford also spends significant time in the field with her sales teams. “Great ideas come from both sides, not just the technology end,” she said.

Avanti hosts AI training classes for its sales team two to four times a year. “AI fluency is becoming a core skill for our teams, so we invest in helping people understand how to use it effectively,” Alford explained.

Alford’s biggest lesson as a CEO is to stay clear on why AI is being used, what operating problems it solves, and the impact it’s having.

For operators looking to develop their own AI processes, Alford has direct advice: “You can do it,” she encourages, “just start.” Alford recommends starting by identifying the recurring decisions, administrative work, and information gaps that repeatedly slow your teams down, rather than beginning with choosing an AI product.

Phoenix Senior Living — Vendor partnership at the core

Phoenix Senior Living, headquartered in Roswell, Georgia, manages 55 communities across 10 states, serving more than 3,700 residents with a continuum of care from independent living through skilled nursing and respite care. Its vendor-led approach is a route open to operators of any size.

Justin Harden, VP of Sales & Marketing, and Summer Blizzard, SVP of Administration, credit a culture of innovation and strong partnerships with technology firms for much of their success in implementing AI initiatives. “It’s always been about keeping the focus on serving seniors — putting our residents first,” explained Blizzard.

In 2024, with AI already easing administrative work elsewhere in the company, Phoenix’s sales and marketing team wanted to bring it into the sales process. “Our goal was least friction to sale,” Harden said. “Sales directors documenting conversations, mundane CRM tasks, those things took time away from face-to-face conversations. We wanted to give back time to our sales teams,” he explained.

Phoenix partnered with Further, a senior living sales and marketing technology company. Over a series of conversations, the Further team asked strategic questions that helped Phoenix determine best-fit solutions and build a rollout plan.

Phoenix started with sales director training, using Further’s AI-driven roleplay simulations. The AI dials the salesperson’s phone like a real inquiry, asking about pricing, services, amenities, and care. It shares details only when asked, so salespeople practice qualifying a prospect.

“The teams were uncomfortable with being trained by an AI agent at first,” Harden shared, “so we used that feedback to add more education about AI into the training.” Now they appreciate how AI simulations remove stress from learning since there’s no worry about losing a real lead, and how the roleplays can be completed independently, on their own schedule.

In late 2025, Phoenix deployed “Teri,” a conversational, generative AI agent, as its virtual receptionist for all incoming telephone calls. The program is named in honor of Phoenix CEO Jesse Marinko’s late mother. Powered by Further’s proprietary large language model (LLM), Teri answers questions warmly, schedules tours, and routes callers to the right staff.

Harden and Blizzard shared that some prospects have even arrived for tours asking to meet Teri and thank “her” for being so helpful.

Phoenix had originally planned to pilot Teri, but after seeing immediate benefits it rolled Teri out to all communities. Further’s integration with Yardi software pushes prospect data directly into Yardi’s CRM, so every inquiry Teri handles adds to Phoenix’s own prospect history.

Since deploying Teri, Phoenix has seen its inquiry-to-tour conversion rate increase by 6%. Combined with other AI-assisted CRM tasks, sales teams save around 15 hours per week.

The rollout was not without its challenges. When senior executives called Teri with higher-level questions, they uncovered several “areas of opportunity,” as Harden put it. Teri had initially struggled with pivoting when a caller changed topics mid-conversation and was trained to transition more smoothly.

Because Further hosts everything, Phoenix didn’t need to invest in hardware, infrastructure, or engineering staff—a model that puts sophisticated AI tools within reach of operators without in-house technical teams. “Our tech stack is pretty lean,” commented Harden. “We have Further and we have Yardi.” Next on Phoenix’s wish list: competitive intelligence tools to better position its communities.

When asked about what advice they have for other operators, Harden and Blizzard agreed that the right relationships are vital. “Choose to work with tried-and-true vendors who have a deep understanding of the industry,” said Harden.

LCS — Building an in-house data science function

LCS is one of the nation’s largest operators of not-for-profit senior living communities and, according to the 2026 ASHA 50, the third-largest senior living operator in the country. Its in-house approach shows what AI looks like on an enterprise scale, with lessons for operators of any size. LCS leaders saw an opportunity and a problem: years of prospect and sales data spread across the organization weren’t being fully used, and community sales teams’ time was stretched thin.

In 2022, LCS built an in-house data science team within marketing, led by Chief Marketing Officer Rick Westermann. The goal was to turn the organization’s data into insights its teams could act on: getting more out of Salesforce, the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and lightening the administrative load on community sales teams. Adding AI was the natural next step, with support from LCS’s technology and data engineering teams.

“The sales arena was, and continues to be, ripe with opportunity for AI. From better scoring and optimizing who gets contacted to how we create efficiencies and ease of work within our CRM, there is a lot we can continue to build,” said Westermann.

LCS rolled out AI in two phases. The first used machine learning to score leads, identifying which CRM data points matter most and teaching the model what a ‘good’ lead looks like. Trained on the sales activities in historical Salesforce data, the models rank leads by their likelihood of progressing through the funnel. The models weigh factors such as response times, family involvement, and other behavioral indicators so teams can focus where they’ll have the greatest impact.

The lesson applies to any operator: AI models are only as good as the sales activity captured in the CRM, so consistent data capture today lays the groundwork for tomorrow’s tools.

As the program matured and entered its second implementation phase, LCS expanded beyond lead scoring into AI-generated sales summarization. This capability automatically creates concise summaries of prospect interactions, engagement history and pipeline activity, allowing sales professionals to spend less time documenting conversations and more time building relationships.

Rolling out AI across many communities at once meant explaining why AI matters. It also meant acting on team member feedback to build trust in the tools meant to support their expertise, not replace it. LCS credits that community feedback with making AI adoption successful.

To measure the return on its AI investments, LCS uses attribution models to analyze sales results. It found that lead scoring increased conversion rates by 100–150 basis points. For ongoing performance monitoring, LCS also tracks the amount of time a lead spends in the sales funnel.

LCS continues to expand its AI roadmap, with governance policies, AI agents, and more predictive and decision-support tools next up. Nick Hamilton, Vice President, Data & AI, now leads the team as it builds capabilities, advances key enterprise initiatives and partners with LCS operational leaders to unlock greater value from data through conversational AI and advanced analytics.

For operators just beginning to bring AI into sales and marketing, Westermann points back to community-level feedback. “Field-level feedback is a must,” he noted. “Our department has the data science, but we need their expert feedback.” 

Key takeaways

As more prospective residents and families research senior living options with AI tools before they ever call, how those tools describe a community matters. Search engines created a first-contact stage in which many operators couldn’t afford to compete for visibility, but structuring content for AEO, as Kimberly recommends, now gives more operators a way to compete in this AI-driven answer era.

The three operators profiled in this article took different paths, yet similar patterns emerge:

• Each operator is turning everyday sales activity into its own prospect intelligence. Every call Teri handles flows into Phoenix’s CRM; LCS’s lead scores are built on its own historical Salesforce data; and Avanti’s custom agent scores leads using logic designed around Avanti’s sales process.
• Sales and marketing proved to be a practical place to apply AI in senior living: lower-risk, measurable, and explainable to teams who need to trust the tools they’re using.
• All three began their sales AI work with a focused use case (AI roleplay training at Phoenix, lead scoring at LCS, and a custom sales agent at Avanti) and expanded from there.
• Leaning on community-level experts was non-negotiable in every case. Rick Westermann credits community feedback with making AI adoption successful; Lori Alford spends time in the field herself; and at Phoenix, feedback from sales staff led the company to add more AI education to its training.
• Scale also matters less than it did in the search era: size shapes which path an operator takes, not whether one is available. For operators still on the sidelines, the advice from all three points in the same direction: choose partners who understand the industry, listen to the teams in the field, and, as Alford put it, “Just start.”

The operators profiled here show that there is no single right model of AI innovation. Whether through an in-house data science team, a trusted vendor partnership, or a tool managed by the CEO herself, each is doing the same essential thing: making every interaction count.

With AI, operators of every size now have the tools to move early and adapt to prospects’ new behavior, and those who start now will set the pace in the years ahead.

By Kate Abate, AdvoKate Longevity: Intergenerational Community Architecture 

The NIC Conference Scholar Program, sponsored by Welltower, gives students in senior housing academic programs full access to NIC’s Fall and Spring Conferences. Faculty at colleges and universities nominate students for the program.  

Selected Scholars take part in conference educational sessions and networking events. The program gives them a direct look at the issues shaping senior housing, and the chance to connect with industry leaders. Those connections often carry beyond the conference. Past scholars have gone on to internships and job offers in the field, and they stay involved with NIC as their careers develop. By investing in these students, NIC and Welltower are helping to build the next generation of senior housing professionals. 

Former NIC Conference Scholar, Kate Abate, reflects on her experience attending the 2022 NIC Fall Conference and the career opportunities it provided.  

As a mid-career student graduating from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, I understood the value relationships could make with respect to career growth. Half of the battle is showing up. The other half may just as well be showing up to the right room. 

When I learned I had the opportunity to be nominated for the NIC Scholar Program, I did everything I could to secure my place, including reaching out to NIC Co-founder and Strategic Advisor, Bob Kramer, after hearing him speak in a class. I asked for advice on pursuing what seemed like a rare opportunity: becoming involved with New York’s first university-based retirement community. He said, “Absolutely—innovation is the future.” That set me in motion. 

Having studied the seniors housing field, I knew many of the leaders I admired would be attending the 2022 NIC Fall Conference. Bob confirmed my belief that it was the place to be. If I was fortunate enough to be there, I wanted to arrive prepared. I researched attendees, studied the conference agenda, and familiarized myself with the organizations and communities represented. My goal was simple: learn from the very best. 

The experience exceeded every expectation. 

I reached out to CEOs, developers, and operators whose work I admired and asked if they would spare fifteen minutes to share career advice. I was surprised not only by how many said yes, but by their genuine interest in helping someone just entering the profession. Equally memorable was the way the NIC team welcomed and stewarded the Scholar cohort. We were treated as future contributors to the field, and that confidence inspired me to show up fully. 

The energy was palpable. 

The defining moment came late on the second day of the conference. I learned that Joel Nelson, founder of LCS, the company developing Broadview at Purchase College, would be in the lobby in just a few minutes. I introduced myself and shared my enthusiasm for the university-based retirement community model and my hope of contributing to the Broadview project. He encouraged my interest and told me he would see what might be possible. 

The next morning, I woke up to emails from Joel Nelson and Ashley Wade, Broadview’s first Executive Director, inviting me to begin the conversation about joining the project. 

That opportunity became the foundation of the next chapter of my career. During the following three years, I had the privilege of helping launch and stabilize Broadview, an experience that shaped not only my professional path, but also my understanding of leadership, innovation, and purpose in seniors housing. 

One piece of advice from Bob Kramer has stayed with me ever since. After encouraging me to pursue Broadview, he simply said, “And take notes.” 

I did. 

My advice to future Scholars is equally simple: prepare before you arrive, introduce yourself, ask thoughtful questions, and take notes. The relationships you build and the conversations you have may shape your career in ways you cannot yet imagine. 

For me, they certainly did. 

The U.S. senior housing sector is entering what NIC MAP’s latest Market Outlook Report calls the steepest stretch of 80+ population growth in the nation’s history — and the industry’s current pace of construction isn’t close to keeping up. 

A Demographic Wave with Certainty 

The first Baby Boomers turned 80 in 2026, kicking off a demographic shift that is unusually predictable: because it’s based on census counts of people already alive rather than economic forecasts, the timing and scale are essentially locked in. The 80+ population is projected to grow by a third by 2030, two-thirds by 2035, and nearly double by 2040 — adding roughly 5 million people over 80 within five years and 13 million within fifteen. 

That growth is already showing up in operating data. Senior housing occupancy has risen more than 200 basis points in each of the last four consecutive years — a streak not observed in any other major commercial real estate property type over the same period. Annual net absorption has averaged 32,000 units since 2022, about 50% above the pre-2020 record of under 22,000 units, and every quarter since 2022 has topped the strongest pre-pandemic period on record. 

Construction Has Not Kept Pace 

While demand for senior housing has increased, new construction has moved in the opposite direction. Senior housing construction starts have fallen every year since 2021, dropping 67% to roughly 10,000 units in 2025 — a level last seen after the 2008 financial crisis. The causes mirror those across commercial real estate broadly: high interest rates, elevated construction costs, and labor constraints. Senior housing carries an added headwind: operating margins, while recovering, remain below pre-2020 levels, so many projects that penciled out in 2019 still don’t work financially today. 

The result is a widening gap. In 2022, 80+ population growth overtook senior housing inventory growth for the first time this decade, and NIC MAP projects that gap will continue widening through 2030, with population growth approaching 7% annually against inventory growth near 1%. 

A Multi-Decade, Trillion-Dollar Build-Out 

To hold national occupancy at 90% as the population ages, NIC MAP’s model shows the industry needs to deliver more than 100,000 new units in most years between 2025 and 2035 — with a spike above 141,000 units required in 2027 alone. The current development pace of roughly 10,445 units a year covers only a fraction of that. Even the industry’s highest-ever 12-month total this century, 56,145 units, would cover only about half of a typical year’s need. 

Left unaddressed, the shortfall compounds: the cumulative gap between required and actual deliveries grows from about 60,000 units in 2025 to nearly 600,000 by 2030 and over 1 million units by 2035. Translated into dollars, the capital required to maintain today’s penetration rate is forecasted to exceed $1 trillion by 2050 — with the large majority of that need sitting above what current investment levels would supply. 

Capital markets appear to be taking notice: senior housing led all major property types in one-year total returns on the NCREIF index, and 2025 transaction volume topped $15 billion, an industry record. But translating that renewed investor interest into actual new supply — through ground-up development, campus expansion, and repositioning — remains the central challenge facing the sector over the next two decades. 

For more in-depth details and insights, we encourage readers to access the NIC MAP Senior Housing Market Outlook – Second Edition report.  

NIC MAP released third quarter data for the 880 active adult rental communities they track across the U.S. Active adult communities are age-eligible, market-rate, multifamily rental properties focused on enhanced lifestyle programming without providing meals. 

Key takeaways included the following:  

Takeaway #1: Pace of Active Adult Development Has Slowed 

• The chart below illustrates active adult rental inventory by the year these properties opened. 

• Active adult is still a relatively new product type, with roughly half of inventory opened in the past 10 years. 

• In the first three quarters of 2026, however, NIC MAP tracked only 2,200 new units opening across 880 active adult rental communities comprised of nearly 130,000 units. 

• This pace is well below recent years in which openings averaged 7,000 new units per year over the 2023 through 2025 period.  

Takeaway #2: Active Adult Occupancy Rates Climbed Higher 

• Against this backdrop of slower supply growth, the average active adult occupancy rate increased 0.6 percentage points in the third quarter to 93.2%, up 1.3 percentage points so far in 2026. 

• For stabilized properties open at least two years, occupancy rates jumped by 0.9 percentage points to 94.4%, roughly in line with where they started the year. 

Takeaway #3: Active Adult Occupancy Rates Improving in Sunbelt and Other Select Markets 

• For the 15 largest active adult rental markets, the bar chart below shows All Occupancy rates, with the U.S. average of 93.2% shown in the dotted line. 

• The highest occupancy rates in the third quarter were in Buffalo (97.7%), Los Angeles (97.4%), and San Diego (97.4%).  

• Phoenix had the lowest occupancy rate at 88.7%. Austin ranked second lowest but had a significant improvement of 3.3 percentage points from the prior quarter to 91.3% in the third quarter.  

• These trends may indicate that some of the softening in the active adult market in 2025 has improved in 2026. 

Takeaway #4: Most Popular Active Adult Amenities Focus on Lifestyle and Wellness 

• Below are the top ten amenities ranked by percent of active adult properties in the third quarter. 

• Fitness centers, clubhouses, pools, and activities coordinators were most popular within both the Primary and Secondary Markets, highlighting the focus on lifestyle, wellness, and engagement that appeal to active adult residents. 

Senior housing occupancy surpassed 90% in the third quarter, the first time that primary market occupancy rates have been above 90% since 2014. Occupancy rates reached record highs in four primary markets – San Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, and Dallas. At the same time, inventory growth remained near record lows, measuring below 1.0% for the sixth consecutive quarter. 

These and other findings on quarterly senior housing data trends were presented by NIC’s Research & Analytics team during a recent webinar with NIC MAP clients.  Joe Daniel, Vice President, Direct Supply, joined Lisa McCracken, NIC’s Head of Research, on the webinar to discuss industry trends related to the development pipeline activity. 

Key takeaways included the following:  

Takeaway #1: Senior Housing Occupancy Rate Surpassed 90% 

• The occupancy rate for senior housing rose 0.6 percentage points in the third quarter for the 31 NIC MAP Primary Markets to reach 90.4%, driven by positive net absorption outpacing the number of new units arriving online. 

• The third quarter of 2026 marked the first time that occupancy rates have been above 90% since 2014. 

Takeaway #2: Assisted Living Occupancy Rate Gains Outpaced Independent Living 

• Breaking out occupancies by property type, the occupancy rate for independent living communities rose 0.4 percentage points in the third quarter to reach 91.7%, while the occupancy rate for assisted living communities rose twice as fast, increasing by 0.8 percentage points to reach 89.1%. 

• As a result of assisted living gains outpacing those of independent living, the gap between the two occupancy rates narrowed to only 2.6 percentage points in the third quarter, which was the smallest spread between the property type occupancies since 2014. 

Takeaway #3: Four Primary Markets Reached Occupancy Rate Highs 

• There are four markets where occupancy rates today have reached their time series highs – San Francisco (93.3%), Chicago (91.2%), Kansas City (91.1%), and Dallas (88.7%) – and four additional markets that are within just 50 basis points or less of reaching their historical highs. 

• Overall, 17 of the 31 Primary Markets (55%) had occupancy rates at or above 90% in the third quarter. 

Takeaway #4: Inventory Growth Remained Near Record Lows 

• Turning to new supply, year-over-year inventory growth remained below 1.0% for the sixth consecutive quarter and near the time series low. 

• Breaking out supply by property type, independent living inventory increased 0.3% from a year earlier, well below its historical average growth of 1.5% annually. 

• Assisted living inventory increased only 0.4% from a year earlier, well below its historical average growth of more than 3% annually.