Can You Really Own More Than One Assisted Living Facility?

assisted living administrator licensing assisted living business plan assisted living growth strategies building a team for assisted living how to scale care homes leadership in assisted living own multiple assisted living homes running facilities in different states scaling assisted living business Jul 11, 2025

Yes — and if you're serious about building wealth and impact in this space, you should. One home is a great start. But if you want real freedom, consistent income, and a business that doesn’t need you in it 24/7… you’ve got to think bigger.

But scaling the right way? That takes planning, the right people, and strong systems.

Let’s break it down step by step.

Check out this video, too:

Why This Matters

If you're serious about turning assisted living into a real business — not just a job — you need to think beyond one house.

⚡ More facilities = more income
⚡ More scale = lower costs
⚡ More people = more impact

But more growth also means more moving parts. Here's what you need to know to scale smart.

✅ YES: You Can Own Multiple Facilities

You’re not limited to just one assisted living home. There’s no cap on how many you can own. If you've got:

The funding 💰
The staff 👥
The systems ⚙️

…you can grow as big as you want.

I own two facilities in two different states — Colorado and Idaho — while living in Utah. So yes, it’s possible.

🛑 But… Administrators Are a Bottleneck

Here’s where things get tricky: Administrator licensing.

Every state has its own rules about:

How many beds a facility can have
How many facilities an administrator can oversee
What type of license is required

👉 Example from Idaho:

16 beds or fewer: One admin can oversee up to three buildings
Larger homes (40+ beds): Admins can only cover two buildings

If you want to run 5+ homes, you’ll need multiple licensed administrators. That’s when having a hierarchy helps.

🧱 Build a Team That Can Scale

Here’s how I recommend you do it:

Start small: Bring someone in early who can grow with you
Train as you go: Create administrators-in-training
Build a leadership ladder:
- Admins → Regional Admins → Executive Directors

This allows you to delegate, oversee operations, and scale without burning out.

⚠️ Scaling in Different States = Extra Work

I learned this the hard way. Running facilities in different states means:

Different regulations 🧾
Different training requirements 📚
Zero staff overlap between locations

Example: My two homes are 15 hours apart by car — not ideal (or possibly) for sharing administrators or staff.

👉 Pro tip: Stick to one state until your systems are dialed in. Scaling is much easier when you're not juggling different state laws.

💡 Action Steps to Start Scaling

If you're ready to grow beyond one home:

Check your state rules
Visit your local health department's website and look up the admin and facility rules.
Hire the right people
Train early. Look for team players who want to grow.
Map out your structure
Create a plan for leadership as you expand.
Use free tools
Get the free Underwriting Calculator to plan your next facility.
Don’t go it alone
Join a community (like our Success System) where scaling strategies are shared.

Next Steps: Take Action Today!

🚀 Want to launch your assisted living business in the next 12 months?

✅ Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning.
✅ Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
✅ Step 3: Follow this guide, take action, and bring your vision to life!

Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! ⬇️

▶️ Watch on YouTube

Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:03 - 00:01:01
hey friend it is Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living investing excited to have you here with me on the channel today we're going to be talking about the can you operate more than one facility at a time and how do you do that so if you don't know me I am Brandon gson own and operate two assisted living facilities and I created the channel Assisted Living investing to help people like you learn the ins and outs of investing in residential Assisted Living so I wanted to just kind to quickly give you an overview you can

00:00:32 - 00:01:38
get a free access to the free underwriting calculator that we have um and I've got a link Down Below in the description uh but you can get over there and get access to that Assisted Living investing. netal again today we're talking about more than one facility can you do it here as you get into the Assisted Living World more background on me I own and operate two assisted living facilities um out of state actually so I live in Utah one of them is in Colorado and one is in Idaho and I'm able to operate

00:01:05 - 00:02:02
those facilities and help people through the I I created the channel to help coach people and and and help people like you learn how to do this and and learn from what I have done and so you don't have to like pick up and try to figure everything out on your own uh so I love coaching I love mentoring uh I taught at the University of Utah for a little bit on Healthcare analytics uh have a a master's in healthcare administration have worked a lot in the health industry and have a lot of experience now if you're here for and

00:01:34 - 00:02:21
you're you're watching live I'd love it if you could chat down below newbie if you are brand new to this you're trying to figure it out yourself and and you need some help or operator if you've already done this but you're wondering how can I scale my business and how am I going to make progress on doing this as I as I go along because you know once You' started and you've done one you want to do more of them because then you can get that economy of scale is going to help you out through the process so

00:01:58 - 00:03:01
we're going to talk about that quite a bit here in today's video so number one is more than one can you do it absolutely you can um as I mentioned I own too U so that there is proof for you that you can do it um you can actually operate as many as you'd like there's no like rule that says hey you know once you own 10 you've got to stop that's that's not the case you can own as many as you want uh so long as you um you know have the funding for it and then have the people in place to to help you

00:02:29 - 00:03:28
run that business so as as an owner operator there's no limit to how many facilities I can own which is great news for you if you are looking to get into this uh or if you're an operator looking to expand there's not going to be uh some regulation that says oh you know there's the cap um no you can keep going which is awesome and and exciting to be able to do so let's talk a little bit about the administrator so this is this is where you may run into a bit of a barrier in how many you can have uh how

00:02:59 - 00:03:53
many you can operate so again with everything that you do in Assisted Living everything that I teach you about everything that I qualif that I that I talk to you about I'm going to qualify it by saying it depends on the state where you live California is going to have a different rule than Utah which has a different rule from Colorado which is different from Florida which is different from Arizona each rule has their own little take on it there are federal regulations um at at its core that makes Assisted Living what it is

00:03:26 - 00:04:23
that you have to follow but each state is going to have their own little intricacy and um how many beds qualify for a certain type of a facility and how many uh residents and how many beds and how many houses an administrator can can oversee and those types of things so there's going to be different rules there so qualifying everything if you have questions about that I would get with your you know search on your local State Health Department figure out what they say and it's going to give you uh

00:03:54 - 00:05:05
some of that information from there um an administrator can have a license on multiple buildings so that is possible um I have had conversations a lot of it depends on the size of the house and how many beds you have in that and that's going to kind of dictate how many buildings they can oversee so uh what I've seen actually in Idaho is uh for smaller facilities 16 or less beds you can have your license over three facilities up to it's like 50 beds or something like that um whereas if you have larger facilities and you've got

00:04:30 - 00:05:28
you know 40 plus beds in them then that administrator uh can have it over two of them I think is is what it is up to like a 100 bed beds uh is how that one works now there are different tiers of that you can have like a regional person or an executive director which can have more coverage over that but the the license itself as an administrator as I understand it can only be on a a certain amount of of buildings so that is a little bit of a bottleneck for you if you want to expand and have like 10

00:05:00 - 00:05:52
facilities you're going to have to have multiple administrators and you might want to start building in a hierarchy of of people in your business but once you start doing that scaling it's going to make sense for you to be able to do them so the administrator a bit of a bottleneck that you want to be aware of but uh certainly one that you can work around and and kind of work through so scaling here as I mentioned something you would want to do is kind of have like an a regional administrator uh

00:05:26 - 00:06:29
that's going to be able to help you out through that process or an executive director so that person over you know 10 facilities um and they could have oversight over it and they are the one that is coaching and training up the administrators and you also might want to have like administrators in training um that are working through and in working to become an administrator so you can kind of build in this hierarchy that allows you to scale quickly and scale in a way that that makes it easy for you to run your business which is

00:05:58 - 00:06:53
which is great that's something that you want to be able to do the more economies of scale that you have the easier it's going to be the less your Co the more your costs go down your income goes up and you have a higher profit margin which is let's be honest we're we're running a business while we do want to help people in this business and that's what we're here for is is helping those that are in need we also can't just like Hemorrhage money and we need to be able to do well for ourselves and um and have

00:06:25 - 00:07:20
it make sense for us and so that's something that you would want to do as you look at scaling the other thing is yeah I mentioned this overseeing the work of of that facility administrator is what that kind of regional administrator or executive director is going to do they're going to have conversations do some training make sure that everything is in line with all the rules and regulations that you need to follow in the industry and what that's going to look like as you go through that process so it's something

00:06:52 - 00:07:48
that U you can really use that person and and helping you get there the other great thing about it is if you can bring people in when you're small you got one facility and and you have somebody that's comfortable with you and they can grow with you they're going to learn so much through that process and want to start growing with you and increasing their ability to kind of help you expand the portfolio and expand uh the the things that you're trying to do to help more people in the areas where you're at

00:07:20 - 00:08:16
what you do need to be aware of though is it just kind of depends on where um where that is located so if you are in different states like I I'm in Colorado and I'm in Idaho and the drive between my facilities if I were to drive is I I don't know like because I kind of live in the middle it's 12 hours to get to one five hours to get to the other but there's no like real good director out I bet it's probably about 15 hours to drive from one facility directly to the other that's not easy like I can't have

00:07:48 - 00:08:41
an administrator in both of those uh one administrator for both of those facilities doesn't make any sense um so being in different states is going to make it really hard for you to scale that business and and you're also going to be dealing with different rules and regulations this is something I didn't realize when I started when we purchased our first one in Colorado uh was now here here's these set of rules and then we're going to move to Idaho and do this one and oh my gosh there are more sets

00:08:14 - 00:09:08
of rules that I've Got to Now learn and understand and I don't have the economies of scale I can't have people covering different um you know the different facilities and and covering hours and shifts and things like that I can't do it because I don't have that type of of coverage when I'm in different States and so something you want to be aware of if you want to mult do this in multiple States it's going to be really hard for you to scale uh and and and have that be successful you can still do it don't get me wrong there uh

00:08:41 - 00:09:36
but the scaling piece of it is going to be a lot more difficult when you do it that way but if you are doing it in the same state it's going to be really easy you're going to be able to scale that up and have people get in there um and you're going to be able to kind of shift people around have them work together um have administrators cover multiple facilities and kind of help you out through that process and and helping you be successful so I want to get over to the comments and if there's anybody here

00:09:08 - 00:10:02
um again newbie um or uh operator uh comment down below what you are if you have questions even if you're watching this after the fact after the live uh go ahead and drop those questions down below as well because I will get in here I'll read every one of those comments and kind of help you through the process uh you can also get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net and I have a contact button there to have questions specific around your circumstances go ahead and drop those in there and then it will allow us to kind

00:09:35 - 00:10:28
of have a deeper conversation as much as I want the comments on YouTube sometimes they get lost in there and I was looking at comments the other day and uh just like I hadn't responded to one that was on there from two years ago because it had been a response to one of my responses and it just kind of makes it hard so you have really specific questions and really want help get over to the website and and reach out to me there it's going to be the best way for you to contact me make sure you like the video subscribe

00:10:02 - 00:10:56
and ring the bell notification so you get notified every time we do one of these live sessions I'm doing them on a weekly basis I'm going to start getting into more of a regular Groove and I think I'm going to do these earlier in the week but if you're on the email list I will tell you when we will be doing those going forward so that you are just aware of that and as we head into the holidays um it it might just get shifted around um so just want you to to be aware of that as well as we go through

00:10:29 - 00:11:18
the process there um make sure you get over to Assisted Living investing. netal where you can download your free underwriting calculator to help you out on your investment Journey Down Below as well for the business planning guide to help you out with creating a business plan which is I hear this from people all the time this is one of the most key parts of building your your Assisted Living business you have to have a solid business plan you have to be able to go into a lender and convince them that

00:10:54 - 00:11:45
you're going to be able to successfully run a business and this is how you do that you're underwriting your business bu uh plan those things are going to be absolutely key all those links are down below in the description of the video um so make sure you go and and grab those there as well uh does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you just don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we are here to help you through the process start to finish I want to thank

00:11:19 - 00:11:49
you for being here with me live I want to thank you uh for following the channel and excited to help you along your investment journey I have a lot of fun things planned so make sure you stay tuned and we will talk to you next time thanks for watching and have a great day

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