Senior Living
2027 Outlook Survey
Benchmarking the sector's top challenges, priorities, and growth forecast.
Senior Living Finance Teams Grapple with Labor Costs While Eyeing Growth
Senior living operators are heading into 2027 with real growth on the table, and they're running it on lean finance teams. Consero spoke with finance and operations leaders in the sector about their 2027 portfolio plans, their biggest operational challenges, and where they most want their finance function to improve.
Labor and staffing costs top the list of challenges facing the sector, and the capabilities finance leaders want most, a faster close and clearer forecasting, are capacity problems rooted in process and systems.
Most of our respondents are building that capacity with a fully in-house finance team, planning new development and modernization efforts while navigating staffing pressure. Among the participants, small multi-site and regional operators are the most likely to be planning expansion in 2027.
Download the Full ReportA sample skewed toward growth-minded operators.
Single-community operators make up the largest single segment of respondents at 28.6%. Developers account for 22.1%, and large/national operators (14.3%) and regional operators (13.0%) combine for more than a quarter of the sample.
2027 Outlook
Portfolio plans, the biggest operational challenge, and where finance teams most want to improve heading into next year.
Growth Outpaces Contraction Nearly 4 to 1
Portfolio plans set the pace for everything else operators are navigating heading into 2027: how much pressure finance teams absorb, what systems get stretched, and where staffing gaps show up first. 42.9% of respondents expect their portfolio to stay about the same in 2027. But growth intent is real: 28.6% plan to expand modestly (1 to 5 communities) and 5.2% plan significant expansion (6 or more communities), for 33.8% total. Only 7.8% expect to contract.
Growth appetite concentrates in the middle of the market. Small multi-site operators (55.6% expecting growth) and regional operators (50%) are the most bullish segments, well ahead of large/national operators (36.4%) and single-community operators, who are the least likely to be planning growth (18.2%). The operators already running a handful of communities are pushing hardest to expand.
Name labor and staffing costs their single greatest challenge, more than double the next closest concern: access to capital and financing at 15.6%.
Get the Report →Labor is a persistent cost pressure in senior living, and the sector reaffirms that concern in the 2027 outlook. Large/national operators were the most likely cohort (53.6%) to name labor/staffing their top challenge.
Faster Close and Forecasting Top the Improvement List
Asked where their finance function most needs to improve in 2027, respondents point to speed and visibility first: 32.5% want a faster, more accurate financial close, and 26.0% want better forecasting and cash flow visibility. Investor and stakeholder reporting follows at 20.8%.
New Development Leads Planned 2027 Activity
57.1% of respondents expect to pursue new development in 2027, consistent with the portfolio growth numbers above. Technology or back-office upgrades follow at 24.7%, and refinancing/recapitalization at 16.9%, pointing to where operators are putting attention beyond the physical footprint.
New development and technology investment tend to move together: operators adding communities in 2027 are often the same ones upgrading the systems behind them, layering two major projects onto the same finance team.
Path Forward
Operators consistently underestimate how fast growth strains their finance team. Small multi-site and regional operators, the segments most likely to expand in 2027, may experience a gap between what growth demands and what lean teams can deliver.
Every new community adds entities, bank accounts, and reporting lines to consolidate, and that workload grows faster than most in-house teams can staff for it.
Close times and reporting gaps tend to widen right as lenders and investors are paying the closest attention to a growing portfolio, in a climate where access to capital ranks among the sector's top challenges.
Closing that gap takes a finance operation built to scale as fast as the portfolio does, onboarding new entities and communities in 30 to 90 days.
Consero's agentic Finance as a Service model delivers that speed. AI agents handle the close, consolidation, and reporting under the oversight of Consero's finance experts, giving operators the visibility they said they need without adding headcount. In-house teams get freed up for the judgment calls, financing, new development, portfolio strategy, that come with growth.
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Findings are based on survey responses from 77 senior living finance and operations leaders, spanning single-community operators, developers, regional and multi-site operators, large/national operators, and other industry participants. Figures are self-reported and may not total 100% due to rounding or questions that allowed more than one response.
