Before Occupancy Drops: The Warning Signs Senior Living Executives Need to Watch with Jerry Vinci

Occupancy is a lagging indicator. By the time census begins to fall, the problems behind it may have been visible for months.

In this episode, Melissa Brown talks with Jerry Vinci, founder of CCR Growth, co-founder of Nordon, and host of From Leads to Leases, about the early warning signs that reveal whether a senior living community’s occupancy is truly sustainable.

They discuss declining search visibility, weakening reviews, lost competitive positioning, AI visibility, pricing transparency, resident experience, and the risks of relying too heavily on third-party referral aggregators. Jerry also explains why growing demand will not automatically fill every building—and why operations, service, staffing, and ownership of the lead pipeline matter more than simply increasing advertising spend.

If your community is full today, this conversation will help you determine whether it is positioned to stay that way.

Transcript

Melissa Brown

Welcome to Senior Living Executive Strategy with your host, Melissa Brown, for senior living leaders solving real senior living problems.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. I’m very excited to welcome Jerry Vinci today. Welcome, Jerry.

Jerry Vinci

Thanks for having me. Hey, Melissa.

Melissa Brown

Great to have you. I know you’re the host of the From Leads to Leases podcast. Tell us more about that, how you landed there, and all the projects you’re involved in right now.

Jerry Vinci

From Leads to Leases is a senior living-focused podcast that specifically highlights leadership on the operational side of senior living. I wanted to create a space where anyone in the trenches of senior living could come, commiserate, and share what they know—innovations, challenges they’re struggling with, and so on.

It started there, and then it grew to include a broader spectrum of guests. Overall, our goal is to support the industry and perhaps help operators find new or different ways of doing things, whether through technology or strategy, that they may not have considered before.

We’re in season three now, so we’ve been doing this for the past three years. I’ve interviewed hundreds of guests on the show. What I’ve personally learned, taken away, and applied to what we’re doing has been invaluable, so I’m really grateful for that experience.

In terms of business, I run two firms that work in senior living. One is on the private-pay side. We help manage independent living, assisted living, and memory care. I don’t necessarily work in skilled nursing or Medicaid; that’s a different world.

On the operational side, my agency is called CCR Growth. We’re a demand generation agency, and we try to own the entire experience for communities—from the moment a family starts searching to the day they move in. We help operators fill their buildings and keep them full. We do that with systems instead of hustle and the chaos that tends to exist in many communities.

On the capital-facing side of senior living or senior housing, we have a company called Nordon. I co-founded it to give investors, lenders, and capital partners an independent assessment of whether the census they’re underwriting is real and defensible. Is it going to hold up over time?

As we know, census can be misleading because it’s based on past data, not future data. How do we make sure that if a community is sitting at 90% occupancy, it will stay at 90% or be able to grow and remain competitive in that market?

Nordon partners with due diligence firms and investment committees that are trying to answer those questions: Is this operator able to maintain or grow census in a specific market? We help answer those questions.

Melissa Brown

Very interesting. If you were to pick the top three to five indicators you look for when evaluating a portfolio, what tells you that its census is not only good now, but likely to remain robust or continue growing? How do you make that analysis?

Jerry Vinci

Whether we’re looking at it from the capital side or the operator side, it’s essentially the same. As I said, occupancy is a lagging indicator. It’s usually the last thing to react, not the first, but it’s often the first thing people look at when they’re making a deal or deciding whether an operator is doing a good job in a market.

There are typically seven warning signs I look for. The interesting thing is that they’re all based on publicly available information. This isn’t hidden data behind a private layer that requires access from the operator. These are things anyone could search for and find; most people simply aren’t paying attention to them.

Declining search visibility is probably one of the biggest warning signs. If you’re appearing in fewer of the searches families in your market are actually running, the top of your funnel is going to start shrinking. That won’t have an immediate impact, but your tour volume will drop. If tour volume drops, your move-in ratio is going to drop. It’s a future problem that you can identify right now.

Another major warning sign is a weakening reputation. Several things can go into that. How many reviews are you receiving? Has the review velocity slowed down? Maybe a year ago you were getting five reviews every month, but now you’re getting one every three months. What’s going on? Are you no longer proactively seeking reviews, or is there a problem in the community involving staffing, care, or service? Those things begin to surface in reviews.

When we look at warning signs, we’re not looking at just one isolated issue. If a community received two bad reviews last month but the rest of the year was fine, that isn’t necessarily a signal I would worry about. It becomes concerning when we start seeing a trend or multiple warning signs beginning to decline at the same time.

Another major issue is lost competitive positioning. Senior living is hyperlocal, so we’re evaluating one community against perhaps ten communities within a 10- or 15-mile radius. How are they stacking up? Have they lost a competitive edge? Is there something their competitors are doing that they’re no longer doing, or something they used to do but stopped doing? If a community begins losing that head-to-head comparison, it could become a problem.

Those are a few of the warning signs. I could name them all, but again, they’re all on the surface and easy to see if you’re paying attention.

Melissa Brown

Let’s talk about a couple of those, starting with search visibility. Obviously, we’re talking about Google and some of the other search engines. Historically, we’ve found that a lot of advertising is pay-to-play. Assuming you maintain the same budget, what factors influence whether your search visibility rises or falls? What are some of the key things you look for or recommend that people implement?

Jerry Vinci

The whole pay-to-play mindset might be something I would question in and of itself, because fewer than 20% of search users will ever click on an ad. Ads are paid placement—you’re paying to be seen at the top of the search results.

Now, even AI platforms such as ChatGPT are beginning to roll out advertising options. The cost is pretty low compared with Google, but the efficacy has yet to be seen. I assume it will probably be beneficial.

It’s really about organic visibility and how well you’re appearing, because there are multiple ways to show up in search now. It’s not just ads or organic listings. You also have the map pack, which shows the top three local search results and typically appears near the top of the page. You also have AI summaries.

A lot of people aren’t even clicking through to search results anymore. That started when people began turning to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI tools for answers. If someone asks, “What’s the best assisted living community in Marietta, Georgia?” and enters that search into Google, they’ll get a list of results and have to click through each one. No one is actually telling them which is best; Google is saying that one website ranks higher than another.

AI uses a different set of parameters. It’s literally telling you, “Based on all the signals we can find online, here are the five communities in the Marietta area that we think would be the best fit for what you’re looking for.” The level of specificity is higher.

The challenge is that not everyone is clicking through to a website as they once did. That makes it important for all the content you put online to be educational, informative, and complete.

For example, many communities don’t put pricing online. I’ve never agreed with that strategy, especially when you’re dealing with families in crisis who need information now. They don’t want to search or talk to someone just to find out how much it costs. That’s a waste of time.

There are now multiple ways to appear across these different places, so you need to make sure you’re optimized for all of them. I hope that answers the question.

Melissa Brown

I think that’s great, and I agree with you about displaying pricing. The truth is that anyone who knows the business is already secret-shopping competitors. They know what your rates are, so there’s really no reason to hide them.

I think it’s a real service to residents and family members to give them quick access to that information. This newer generation of adult children definitely doesn’t want to fill out a form and wait for an answer, or call someone, leave a voicemail, and wait. They want an answer right now, so I agree that displaying pricing makes sense.

What are some of the key strategies you recommend for improving AI visibility and strengthening the signals that tell these platforms, “This is a good provider. This is where you should go,” when someone asks that kind of question?

Jerry Vinci

It’s not all that different from traditional SEO. One of the biggest misnomers is the idea that we’re going to stop our SEO strategy and focus only on our GEO—or whatever you want to call it—strategy. They’re really one and the same. It’s all content-based, and all of it is indexed.

Whatever content is on your site will be indexed, whether by Google, Claude, ChatGPT, or another platform. They all have different methods for indexing and collecting information, and each updates that information at a different frequency.

It always comes down to the quality of the content, not the volume. Make sure you’re speaking directly to the audience you’re trying to reach. I see many communities talking to the senior when they should be talking to the adult children, or vice versa.

Look at your site and ask whether you have an answer somewhere for every possible question someone could ask you. Do you have a blog post that addresses it? Do you have an FAQ page that answers it specifically?

Make sure the content is conversational. It shouldn’t be written for search engines; it should be written for the humans who are going to read it, absorb it, and use it to decide whether they want to schedule a tour.

Melissa Brown

I love your comment about adult children. As owners and operators ourselves at Gravity, we really believe in that. Of course, it’s important to design the programming, experience, and culture around your residents, while always keeping in mind what will alleviate the guilt burden the adult child feels in this situation.

It’s been amazing. The design we use in most of our buildings is bright and vibrant—the type of apartment building someone like you or I might move into, because we’re probably around the age of the adult children making these decisions for their parents.

I see this whenever I’m talking to people about a new community. Recently, I was touring an office space that we’re going to convert into an assisted living community with the property manager, a general contractor, and several other people who have no real connection to healthcare beyond this project.

As I explained what we’re going to do, what always got their attention was the food program. It will be whole foods and whole meals made from scratch—even the bread. Everything will be real food made from real ingredients instead of frozen products that we simply heat up because they’re cheaper.

Yes, it probably costs an extra $10 per resident per day to take that approach, including labor, but it’s worth it. Every time I get to that point in the story, an adult child around the right age—someone who is already making that decision or recently made it for a family member—says, “Wow, I’d like to live there.”

I think that’s really the secret to senior living marketing. If you can alleviate the guilt burden of the adult child who is likely influencing Mom or Dad’s final decision about where to live, that is a key to success. Have you found that in the approaches you’ve used?

Jerry Vinci

One hundred percent. I don’t think enough people realize that 80% of all senior living decisions are made by the adult children. Even in independent living, they’re still weighing in. They aren’t simply letting their parents make that choice on their own; they’re actively involved.

There’s a book called The Longevity Economy. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s a great book. It’s a little dated now—one of the latest editions probably came out around 2016 or 2017.

There’s a whole section where the author discusses food and a line of products that came out for older adults. It was like Gerber baby food, but for seniors. There are still people with the mindset that they can give older people anything and they’re going to be okay with it.

That isn’t the generation of older adults we’re serving now. They’re very particular and want things a certain way. They aren’t willing to sacrifice just to move into senior living. If you aren’t willing or able to make their lives better in some way—or in many ways—they simply aren’t going to do it.

Melissa Brown

Absolutely. One of the stories that haunts me to this day is about a colleague who walked through a nursing home that had closed 30 years earlier. The activity schedule was still on the board, and we’re doing the exact same activities 30 years later.

I think food is the same way. The people born in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s aren’t the only people we’re serving in senior living anymore. What are the food preferences of people born in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s? They probably aren’t canned green beans and instant mashed potatoes.

Even if someone eats that way at home, presenting whole foods, real foods, and meals made from scratch is going to taste better. Their appetite is going to be better, and their health is going to be better. We know those processed, packaged foods contain so many ingredients that don’t contribute to overall health.

If you’re able to help the people living in your community live longer and healthier lives, that is only going to help census.

Jerry Vinci

Yes.

Melissa Brown

It’s positive all around.

Let’s switch gears and talk about the “silver tsunami.” We were chatting earlier about how it almost feels like old news because we’ve been hearing about it for well over a decade. The truth is, it’s actually here now, so it has never been more relevant.

How do you recommend that executives approach this reality? What decisions can they make today that will elevate their success two, three, or five years from now?

Jerry Vinci

The first thing is not to focus on—or bank on—the idea that demand alone is going to generate move-ins. There’s a mindset among some operators that they don’t need to invest in or think about marketing and growth as much as they should.

If there are going to be three times as many adults over the age of 80 by 2050, the thinking is, “Why do I care? I can sit here and wait, and they’re going to come flowing in.” That isn’t the case.

Operators need to make sure they’re paying attention to the warning signs. As I said, many of them are public-facing. They aren’t hidden so deeply that only an expert can uncover them. If someone inside the community is paying attention, they can help ensure that the community stays full, maintains a good reputation, and becomes known for good care, experiences, and service.

Those areas are going to make or break a community. There isn’t one marketing strategy that will fix an operational problem.

We’ve seen communities we weren’t managing at the time burn thousands of dollars on Google Ads. If occupancy dipped, they would simply double the budget and assume that more leads would equal more tours and more move-ins.

It doesn’t work that way. If something is happening in the community and we aren’t looking at what management, the care staff, the dining program, or the entertainment program is doing, we’re missing the larger issue.

This is someone’s home. They’re coming here to live 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If that experience isn’t top-notch, the community won’t be able to retain residents or attract new ones.

Melissa Brown

I completely agree. It’s important for senior living operators to take a step back and assess whether a property is getting tired. Maybe it’s the way the building looks. Maybe it’s the activity programming or the way you advertise.

There are things you can do that don’t break the bank and can really freshen up a building. It’s more than repainting the walls the same boring cream color they already are.

I heard about one of the large, well-known groups buying older, single-level buildings constructed in the late 1990s and putting skylights in every room. What an incredible unique selling proposition to take to market. If two communities had equally good ratings but one had skylights, I would choose that one.

Think about changes like that—things that won’t break the bank or require a huge investment, but will keep you from looking like the nursing home of the late 1990s that many people unfortunately associate with negative experiences.

Jerry Vinci

So many people banked on an amenities list in the past. They thought, “This is what will set us apart. This is what will attract people.”

But if you compare three or four independent living communities in a specific geographic market, their amenities lists are probably almost identical. So many of them offer the same things.

Now, it’s all about the service, the staff, and the first touch—how quickly someone reached out and how the prospective resident or family member was treated. Those experiences are what make the difference. It isn’t necessarily about what’s sitting in the building waiting for them when they arrive.

Melissa Brown

Going back to communities that may be moving in the wrong direction, suppose you look at some of those key metrics and realize your portfolio doesn’t look as positive as it once did.

When you examine communities that are struggling—where occupancy is declining or isn’t growing as it should—what do you usually find is the root cause beyond marketing?

Is it often one key executive? Is it an entire team of executives? Can it be a few frontline team members who aren’t providing the right care, culture, or resident experience? What do you find is the most typical root cause?

Jerry Vinci

Every situation is unique. In the last example, I would call that a retention issue. If your frontline care workers are struggling and residents experience that firsthand, you’re going to have a hard time maintaining census. People will begin leaving, and then you have not only a staffing problem but also an occupancy problem.

Usually, it’s a staffing issue, a care issue, or a service problem that begins to surface. Then you start seeing declines across the different warning areas.

Another issue that may not be readily apparent—especially because it isn’t something most people in the community are thinking about—is aggregator dependency. Some operators rely too heavily on A Place for Mom, Caring.com, or another third-party aggregator that isn’t necessarily looking out for the community’s best interests.

For some communities, that is their entire marketing strategy. They rely 100% on A Place for Mom to provide move-ins. There’s an obvious cost associated with that. For each move-in, you may pay the first month’s rent—and sometimes more—to a third party.

It can take two or three months to get out of the red on that resident. If you don’t have a good retention rate, you could remain in the red for quite a while as you try to make up the difference.

That’s a major issue we examine. One of our unstated missions as a growth partner for senior living communities is to reduce or eliminate their reliance on third-party aggregators. We see what that dependence does to their NOI and to the overall pipeline.

If you don’t own your pipeline, you can’t say, “If we need more leads, we have the tools and systems to generate them ourselves.” Instead, you have to call A Place for Mom and ask whether they can send more leads your way. That isn’t a reliable system.

At any time, an algorithm shift can change where those leads go. Suddenly, the leads that used to come to you are going to competitors, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

It’s similar to relying on social media for your entire marketing strategy. It may be working now because you’re interacting with families and building engagement, but you don’t own anything on social media. At any point, Meta could decide not to have business pages anymore, stop showing videos, or make some other change. They own the content you post on their platforms, so they can do what they want with it.

Relying on outside partners to drive new business is always a risk I would examine.

Melissa Brown

Absolutely. We’ve received so much valuable information from Jerry today that I think we’ll have to split this conversation into another episode or two.

Stay tuned next month as we continue this incredible conversation with Jerry of From Leads to Leases, thinking and talking strategically about decisions you can make today to improve your success over the next few years. Take care.

Senior Living Executive Strategy is brought to you by Gravity Consulting, an outcomes-focused consulting firm for senior living, skilled nursing, and home health organizations.

If something in today’s conversation connects with a challenge you’re facing—or if your organization has an operational, clinical, reimbursement, or growth issue that needs to be solved—visit GravityConsulting.com to learn how Gravity can help.