After Selling 5 Communities To Ventas, Avanti Senior Living Sees Room To Grow

Avanti Senior Living has spent 2025 focusing internally on improving operations, while also expanding its capital relationships following a transaction with Chicago-based real estate investment trust (REIT) Ventas (NYSE: VTR).

Avanti completed a sale of five of its six senior living properties to Ventas and was retained as the operator of the communities, according to CEO Lori Alford. Avanti previously developed the purpose-built communities to meet the needs of today’s senior living residents, Alford said.

The five-community portfolio with Ventas in Texas and Louisiana includes assisted living and memory care licensed for care but “marketed and branded like active living” properties, she noted.

Ventas has “high expectations” for future operating performance and Avanti agrees with the REIT’s’ “winning together” attitude, Alford said.

Ventas supports its senior living operators with an operational playbook informed by data. To Alford, Ventas is “the science” while Avanti’s operations team is “the art” of their arrangement.

“What we’ve realized is that these strategic partners want relationships that are built on transparency and predictability, and we’re excited for this partnership with Ventas because of the data and systems that help with consistency and benchmarking,.” she said.

Alford said the opportunity with Ventas gives the operator a chance to add new communities under third-party management agreements and potentially acquire buildings or develop anew once conditions improve.

“What that means for Avanti is that there’s going to be some growth ahead,” Alford said. “We’re in a position where we could acquire, develop, or do third-party, and we’re excited about the position we’re in.”

This future growth could also involve new capital partners, from additional REIT relationships to potential private equity and other institutional capital providers. Alford said the company is currently seeking to further expand in the U.S. South.

Avanti has focused on adapting to meet the needs of a modern workforce to improve operations, working to integrate new technology with an emphasis on establishing “work-life wellness” to prioritize employee well-being and prevent burnout.

“We have really been focusing a lot on burnout and educating and how to set boundaries,” Alford said. “With how demanding the environment is today, we have to train our people to set these boundaries to prevent burnout.”

Preventing burnout is critical to success in operations, Alford said, who noted the ongoing worker shortage of licensed care staff.

“As an industry, we have to look at things a lot differently because what we’ve been doing is not going to work, and we know that’s insanity. That’s why we’re modernizing how we approach our culture and team interactions to improve retention,” Alford added.

For example, Alford advocates to Avanti leadership for not checking emails past 6:30 p.m., while also applying time management training and checking in routinely with executive directors and wellness directors to ensure they aren’t burning out on the job, Alford said.

“Our staff needs time with their families and time to decompress and let their brains rest,” Alford said.

This stems from Alford’s own personal experience in which the senior living leader experienced a brain aneurysm in 2019 that resulted in 15 hours of different brain surgeries. The surgery “saved her life”  and gave her perspective on work-life balance and the need for restful recovery and relaxation alongside the duties of work.

“I had a choice to make in making boundaries of separating work and personal and I had to do that in order to heal my brain,” Alford said.

To adapt to a changing workforce, Alford said the company has changed its recruitment tactics for reaching younger workers who are often seeking “purposeful” work.

“We have five different generations here, and the younger ones are definitely becoming a larger portion of our workforce,” Alford said. “That trend is only going to grow. Attracting them has become a major focus for us, which is one of our biggest priorities.”

Avanti is beefing up technology support to meet a more tech-savvy workforce. Avanti switched out its customer relationship management system along with new electronic health record and billing systems.

In the years ahead, Alford sees the next era of senior living being “defined by personalization and predictive operations,” while the predominant headwinds will remain margin compression from rising expenses and increased insurance costs.

“The winners will be those who can innovate in technology integration, employee experience, personalized care and well-being,” Alford said.

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