Fund Your Assisted Living Business in 2025βWithout Going Broke!
Mar 18, 2025
Starting an assisted living business is exciting, but let’s be real—finding the money to launch can feel overwhelming. Whether you’re opening your first facility or looking to expand, getting the right funding is key. The good news? You don’t need to be rich to start!
This guide will show you how to fund your assisted living business without draining your savings or taking on unnecessary risks. Let’s dive in!
Check out the video, too:
Step 1: Build a Solid Business Foundation
Before asking for money, you need a strong business plan. Lenders and investors want to see that you’ve done your homework.
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Create a Business Plan – Outline your vision, financial goals, and strategy.
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Understand Your Costs – Know exactly how much money you need for startup costs and monthly expenses.
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Run the Numbers – Use an underwriting calculator to check if your business will be profitable.
π Need help? Check out the Assisted Living Investing Launchpad Bundle at Assisted Living Investing to get started!
Step 2: Understand Your Down Payment
Most loans require 10% to 30% down. That means if your facility costs $1 million, you’ll need between $100K and $300K upfront. Don’t panic—there are creative ways to get this money:
π° HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) – Use your home’s equity to secure a down payment.
π€ Partnerships – Find a partner who brings in capital while you manage operations.
πΈ Retirement Funds – Use a 401(k) rollover strategy to invest in your own business.
π‘ Seller Financing – Some property owners will finance part of the deal for you.
π Private Investors – Pitch your business plan to angel investors or lending groups.
π Pro Tip: Not all deals require huge down payments. Finding the right property can save you money upfront!
Step 3: Find the Right Property
Choosing the right assisted living facility is just as important as securing funding. Here are three smart options:
π’ Buy an Existing Facility – Purchase a licensed home with residents already in place.
π Fix & Flip a Struggling Facility – Find a mismanaged home and turn it into a profitable business.
π‘ Convert a Residential Home – Start small by turning a house into a care home for 6-16 residents.
π Need help analyzing deals? Grab the Assisted Living Launchpad Bundle at Assisted Living Investing for financial templates and real-world examples.
Step 4: Master Underwriting & Financial Projections
Lenders want to see that your business will be profitable. You’ll need:
π A 24- to 36-month financial projection
π Detailed underwriting that shows expected costs and income
π‘ Realistic profit margins—no inflated numbers!
π Not sure how to run the numbers? Download our free underwriting calculator to get started!
Step 5: Explore Loan & Financing Options
Now that you’re prepared, it’s time to find the best loan for your business. Here are some top choices:
π¦ SBA Loans (7a & 504) – Requires 15-20% down but offers low interest rates.
π³ Conventional Business Loans – Great for those with strong credit & experience.
π° Private & Hard Money Lenders – Faster approvals, but higher interest rates.
π Bridge Loans – Temporary funding while you refinance into a better loan later.
π Pro Tip: Don’t take the first loan offer you get—shop around for the best deal!
Step 6: Build Relationships with Lenders
Once you have your business plan, down payment strategy, and financials ready, it’s time to approach lenders. Here’s how to stand out:
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Be prepared – Bring tax returns, financial projections, and proof of funds.
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Tell your story – Show lenders why your assisted living business is a smart investment.
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Expect rejection – Many entrepreneurs hear “no” before they hear “yes”—keep going!
Final Thoughts: Take Action Today!
π‘ Funding your assisted living business in 2025 is possible— you just need a plan. Follow these steps:
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Build a Business Foundation – Create a solid business plan and run financials.
π‘ Find the Right Property – Choose a facility that fits your budget.
π° Explore Funding Options – SBA loans, partnerships, and creative financing.
π Master Underwriting – Show lenders you have a profitable business model.
π Talk to Lenders – Be persistent, and don’t give up after the first “no.”
π Ready to get started? Download our FREE Business Plan Checklist at Assisted Living Investing today!
πNeed help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:44
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months excited to have you here on the channel in today's video we're going to be talking about how to fund an assisted living business in 2025 if you need some help and Guidance with that make sure you stick around for today's video and also go grab our free underwriting calculator assisted Liv investing. net it'll pop up and you can grab that free tool to help you along your path and
00:00:22 - 00:01:15
help you along your journey so you can be successful hey friend welcome back to the channel excited to have you here today again our topic for today's video is how to fund residential assisted living in 2025 I get this question all the time on the Facebook group even in the comments here on YouTube and it's something that I know that a lot of you need some help and some guidance with so I'm super excited to dive into that with you today if you need some help with that make sure you hit a big like and then just
00:00:54 - 00:01:45
type in funding down below it'll help other people find this it helps out that Al YouTube algorithm um so just type in funding below if you need some help with funding and I'm hoping I can answer a lot of those questions for you in this video if you have other questions though please do type those down below because I can add them to topics for live sessions that we will do in the future so type any questions that I don't get to so I can make sure I'm answering everything that you need on your path to
00:01:19 - 00:02:12
launching your Assisted Living business here in 2025 now let's talk about how to actually do this funding the thing that I want to really point out to you is you need to have this solid business Foundation First off and we've talked about this several times in in in previous videos I'm going to try to link at least one of them up above for you but building the business Foundation is such an important part of what you're trying to do it is going to allow you to have the business plan and have the
00:01:45 - 00:02:38
underwriting and know how much money you need to have and if it's going to be successful or not um and really help you make some good progress towards launching that Assisted Living business so you have to start at the foundation if you don't have that Foundation it makes things it it it's so much more difficult I have two assisted living facilities my first facility I was just graas grasping at straws I was just kind of that's a cool deal let's do that let's try to figure this out oh you need
00:02:12 - 00:03:09
this yeah let me grab it for you and we closed on it we eventually found the right lender we closed on the deal everything was great it was fine and and and we got the facility but what I found is it we wasted so much time trying to find the lender and by the time we we finally closed we were just like okay oh crap now I got a business I got to run this the second time around though I had learned so much from the first time that I knew how to design my business plan I knew how to do my underwriting and I
00:02:41 - 00:03:31
knew at that point how to approach a lender from a position of authority and and a position of I know what I'm doing this is what I want to this is who I want to serve and this is how I'm going to do it and giving all of that information out to these individuals and that really expedited the process the holdup in that scenario actually our second one was me getting our policies and procedures done that's a story for another day but it goes so much more smoothly when you build this Foundation
00:03:06 - 00:04:07
if you need some help with that check out the business plan Foundation Basics Workshop we'll link that down below but it's Assisted Living investing. netb FB really inexpensive very kind of a cheaply priced product for you to help you build that business plan and help you really make some progress there so go check that out again it's Assisted Living investing. netb FB for business Foundation based now once you have built that business Foundation once you have that in place the other thing that I want you to be
00:03:36 - 00:04:26
aware of is what your down payment is when you're starting to move forward and get the funding that you need for your Assisted Living business you're going to need some form of down payment the down payment is you know a percentage of the amount that you are going to be borrowing and you're going to ask for that let's say it's a million dollars and the down payment is 10% 20% 30% it could be any number along the that Spectrum depending on the lender and what their requirements are so let's
00:04:01 - 00:05:01
just for just really easy math let's say it's 20% down you're asking for a million dollar your down payment is $200,000 okay this is kind of I don't know I would say in the ballpark for an SBA type of a loan 15 to 20% down is probably what you're looking for there so you need 150 to 200,000 down for a million doll home now some of you hear that you're like you know what sounds like a really cool idea assisted living but I don't have that kind of money and that's fine but I want to challenge you
00:04:31 - 00:05:27
you who's listening to this I want to challenge you when you have that thought coming to your mind because there's other ways to do this you don't have to have the $150 $200,000 when I started my businesses I didn't have any money I had like it was Co time so I was able to like dip into a 401k and like do an early pull out and stuff like that and I had like a whopping $30,000 to my name that's not enough for down payment for two assisted living facilities instead what I did is I went
00:04:59 - 00:05:51
and found had conversations with my dad and was able to work with him and and created a partnership and he had the money as a down payment so through a HELOC is how we were able to do that home equity line of credit so there are different ways to do this and if you don't have that money that's okay what you need to do is think of other ways to do this shift your mindset just a little bit to say okay I don't have the money who has the money and then having those deeper conversations with people so
00:05:26 - 00:06:17
that's what I really want to challenge you to do is is try to figure out who has the money to really help you make some good progress on that okay now after you have that down payment you understand exactly what that's going to look like the next piece of this is finding a deal so when you are finding a deal you have to do a few things you have to number one find a good property and this this could be something where you're buying an existing facility that's cash flowing and doing well or an
00:05:51 - 00:06:34
existing facility that has a lot of potential because it's been mismanaged for a long time could be any of those scenarios it could be you're buying a home and you see the potential cuz it has has eight bedrooms and and you're going to be able to bring in a bunch of residents for that you have to find the right deal then You' got to review those financials or you're going to have to look at the financials and see how you can do that I I can actually help you out with that you can get that with the
00:06:12 - 00:07:05
business planning guide Assisted Living investing. net BPG I give you my financials for my 16 bed facilities for both of them so you can see what that looks like and really make some good progress there but you want to be looking at those financials make sure that they look good and understand what that looks like so that you can then make some good progress so once you understand and review those then you have to underwrite you have to do and this pops up all over the place it's in your business Foundation but you've got
00:06:39 - 00:07:33
to underwrite the bank wants to see this they want to see how it looks on paper and if it's going to actually work but I want you to also be super conservative in how you do your underwriting because what I really don't want you to do is like you watch a video of mine you're like oh Brandon says assisted living is the greatest thing ever I've got to do it and any deal is going to be perfect perfect and it's all going to make sense that is not the case I backed out of the very first deal that I found that we
00:07:06 - 00:07:57
were working on an Loi a letter of intent to to go under contract for because the numbers just didn't make sense and so I backed out I've backed out of dozens of deals because the numbers just don't make sense so you have to be comfortable there's a a a risk level a threshold of risk that you have to be comfortable with and that all comes from underwriting and helping you understand exactly what's going into that so underwriting super important you you've got to figure that out Banks also
00:07:32 - 00:08:26
going to require it they want to see a 24 or a 36 month Prof fora again you can go grab my free underwriting calculator at Assisted Living investing. net big blue button in the top right corner go grab it there all right now you've done all of those things you figured out you know you built that business Foundation you figured out where that down payment is going to be coming from you have done the underwriting you figured out the financial situation now it's time to actually go and start talking to Banks you can start
00:07:59 - 00:08:55
talking to Banks before for this for sure and I I wouldn't be mad at you if you did but what I want you to understand is the more prep work that you put into this the more you you build this up from the beginning and have all those things that we just talked about in place those conversations with lenders go a lot easier they're just just so much more simple because you're building trust with that lender they say oh this person like they're on top of they have all this stuff you know I I
00:08:27 - 00:09:15
think we're going to be able to work with them versus oh man I don't know if they're they can't even find their tax returns from last year how are we going to be able to work with them you want to kind of grab a lot of this information so you can hand it to them and build some really good relationships there now some of the types of loans that you could be going after are SBA we've talked about this before on the channel we'll try to link up a video about SBA Loans up above uh you could go
00:08:51 - 00:09:38
conventional mortgage or traditional mortgages you could even go with private money there's a lot of different funding Avenues out there that you can get into and you can always refinance into something later on if you start off with private or hard money to get you started and then a year two years later you refinance into an SBA loan or something else um those are all options that you could be looking at so there's a lot of different funding options out there and I encourage you to kind of explore and
00:09:14 - 00:10:09
have a lot of conversations so you can see which ones are out there and who's going to say yes the other thing I want to point out to you is you're going to get told no by so many people I have been told no dozens of times and if I stopped when I was first told no I wouldn't be where I'm at today like I just wouldn't be here and so you have to be consistent and persistent I say that at the end of all my videos because it's true the more consistent you are and taking those little baby steps and being
00:09:42 - 00:10:26
consistent and persistent with it you will be successful I promise you that but you have to do it you have to be consistent and persistent if you want to be successful with all of that said that's how you get funding for assisted living in 20125 if you want to start this Assisted Living business number one you've got to build that business Foundation number two you've got to figure out the down payment where you're going to get that number three you got to look at those financials and make
00:10:04 - 00:10:50
sure you're comfortable with them and number four you've really got to start talking to lenders and building those relationships if you need some help with this this is a phase three part of my process to help you launch your Assisted Living business if you want some help and some guidance go apply to The Mastermind program at Alim mastermind.com free application process lets me see if I can help you out if I can I will send you all the details and then you can decide if it's a good fit
00:10:27 - 00:11:13
for you or not for what you need at this point in in your journey also want to remind you to go grab that free underwriting calculator Assisted Living investing donet just go there big blue box in the top right corner and grab that free underwriting calculator to help you along your journey it's going to be key in helping you get the funding that you need does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you're not sure how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net I'm here
00:10:50 - 00:11:35
to help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months want to thank you for watching remind you to like the video subscribe and ring the bell so you get notified every time we go live on Tuesdays or do our long form videos on Thursdays so I can help you out and and really give you the guidance that you need to help you launch your assistant building business and remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep going step by step by step and I promise you that if you doing
00:11:13 - 00:11:28
you're consistent and persistent you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
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