Senior living operators are seeking to more quickly turn over units as demand for their communities remains strong while length of stay and lost revenue days put pressure on operations.
Unit turnover is just a reality of the senior living industry, but operators are bolstering their ability to move in new residents through partnerships with general contractors, well-trained maintenance staff and a more streamlined process.
The transition process is different across independent living, assisted living and memory care. Lower-acuity residents often stay in units longer and can require more intensive turnarounds due to the personalization of units. In assisted living and memory care, operators focus on resident safety, ensuring units are updated, clean and equipped with functioning ambient monitoring technology.
Senior living operators are doing so to avoid lost revenue and to keep their revenue streams steady.
“It’s important to be efficient in the turnover process so that we don’t have a loss of revenue for more than a couple of weeks,” 12 Oaks Senior Living President Greg Puklicz told Senior Housing News.
At lower occupancy levels, communities have room to welcome new residents in short order. But at high occupancy levels where substantially every available unit is full or claimed, the turnover process “has to be efficient,” he said. The Dallas-based senior living provider partners with third-party contractors to complete unit transitions and upgrades when a resident moves or dies. Without the partnership, Puklicz said the process would put too much strain on community staff.
Senior living providers including 12 Oaks, Discovery Senior Living, Distinctive Living and Priority Life Care are all taking steps to improve the unit turnover process, emphasizing speed, efficiency and technology to cut down on lost revenue days while incrementally improving communities one residence at a time.
‘Stick to the schedule’ on unit transitions
12 Oaks recently had to make 30 units ready at The Atriums in Overland Park, Kansas as the community welcomed new residents. Rather than involving community staff, 12 Oaks places a vice president of asset management in charge of the turnover process to coordinate with local contractors and complete projects instead of giving more responsibilities to already busy maintenance staff, Puklicz said.
“You have to stick to the schedule and try to do that without burdening on-site staff,” Puklicz said.
Senior living demand is high in 2026, reflected by the industry’s currently rising occupancy rate with median occupancy in NIC primary markets and stabilized occupancy above 90%. Given that high demand and the need to turn over units, 12 Oaks aims to transition units in seven to 10 days. That’s an improvement compared to the past, when it took the operator and its staff up to three weeks to complete. Overall, 12 Oaks averages approximately four move-outs per 100 units per month, Puklicz said. On average, 12 Oaks anticipates approximately six move-outs per month on a 150-unit community. If it takes a month to turn around six units, that’s a potential revenue hit of more than $24,000, Puklicz noted.
12 Oaks improved assisted living length of stay by approximately three months to an average of 22.5 months currently. Today, unit transitions require corporate support, strong partnerships with local contractors and a standardized playbook, Puklicz said.
Bonita Springs, Florida-based Discovery Senior Living has an average unit turnover timeline of just under two weeks.That timeline hinges on the scope of remodeling or maintenance required in the residence, according to Discovery Senior Living Senior Vice President of Operations Esmerelda Lee. Relying on comprehensive unit turnover checklists and standardized specifications by product type can help reduce the time needed to transition a unit for a new resident, Lee said.
For example, in 2025, Discovery Senior Living unveiled a new brand of luxury senior living residences called Calligraphy with brand-specific unit finishes and lifestyle services. Units in need of a transition must undergo deep cleaning, painting, flooring and finish inspections, HVAC servicing, appliance testing and life safety checks, Lee said.
“Senior living continues to evolve and increasingly mirrors expectations consumers have in multifamily and hospitality environments,” Lee told SHN. “The industry should move away from viewing unit turns as purely a maintenance exercise and instead recognize them as an important component of the customer experience and value proposition.”
Typical unit turnover projects take “under two weeks,” with timing dependent on the level of care the unit is designed for and the scope of work needed. This requires communities to have a “disciplined and repeatable process,” Lee added.
“Given our scale, we have an in-house design, development and facilities team and infrastructure that establishes finish standards, oversees execution and ensures consistency while still allowing flexibility to reflect local market expectations,” Lee said.
Improving standardization in unit transitions
Operators should consider standardizing unit turnovers in a way that allows communities and corporate leadership to track available unit counts and identify where transitions are needed, according to Priority Life Care Chief Operating Officer Bobby Petras.
The Fort Wayne, Indiana-based senior living provider has increased the pace of unit transitions and is able to forecast unit availability through an internal data dashboard that tracks unit maintenance and indicates when they are available for a move-in. The dashboard and platform also tracks available units, when units could likely become available and helps prioritize where to send maintenance staff or when to involve a third-party contractor, Petras noted.
“The industry needs to move away from reactive turnover management toward standardization, proactive, technology-enabled processes,” Petras said.
Across the company’s 65 senior living communities, more than a dozen are at or near full census and at high occupancy, and Petras said a unit transition’s timeline can mean the difference between maintaining revenue and hurting the bottom line.
Today, unit transitions for Priority Life Care communities take between three and seven days to complete depending on the level of care and maintenance needs of a given unit. In memory care, turnarounds focus on life safety quality assessments and appliance functionality. Assisted living unit transitions take roughly three to seven days to complete, focusing on projects that require new flooring, fresh paint or finish upgrades.
Independent living unit turnover timelines take up to two weeks as units are more customized by prior residents, with transitions requiring new fixtures, countertops and generally more extensive renovations similar to renovating a multifamily apartment unit.
“We’re not just trying to turn the unit, but we’re also updating the unit at the same time and we are going to undertake upgrades whenever possible,” Petras said.
Having pre-selected color schemes, flooring products and finishes like countertops, backsplashes, cabinets and fixtures can help speed up the time it takes to complete a unit turnover project, Puklicz added. This helps avoid “one-off decisions” at the community level while also maintaining a community’s consistent feel and allowing for greater cost control and better access to building materials.
Biggest change in unit turnover: Preventing lost revenue days
In 2026, Freehold, New Jersey-based Distinctive Living views the unit turnover process as a “revenue strategy” beyond being a function of ongoing maintenance, according to CEO Joe Jedlowski.
“Today, every vacant unit represents lost revenue, lost occupancy and lost momentum,” Jedlowski said. “As demand has accelerated and lengths of stay have shortened in higher acuity settings, operators have had to become significantly more disciplined around execution and speed.”
A high occupancy level in a community can expose “weakness in your turnover process,” and each day a unit sits empty carries a “measurable financial impact,” Jedlowski added.
Independent living length of stay sits at “multiple years” while assisted living ranges from 18 to 30 months and memory care ranges from 12 to 24 months. This requires operators, including Distinctive, to move “as quickly as possible” to transition units to new residents without sacrificing quality. Distinctive Living aims to complete a unit transition in “24 hours or less” across all settings, but Jedlowski acknowledged the nuance required between an independent living unit turnover and one in assisted living or memory care. There’s also important distinctions between if a unit needs to be upgraded or simply refreshed.
As providers are increasingly compared to luxury hospitality and multifamily offerings, Jedlowski said unit turnovers are shifting to focus more on upgrading units than simply changing fixtures, adding a coat of paint and cleaning a unit.
“Operators are using turns as an opportunity to modernize apartments and align them with current consumer expectations,” Jedlowski said. “The most expensive apartment in senior living is the one that’s empty.”
