How To Choose the Perfect Location for Your Assisted Living Facility
Sep 22, 2025
Choosing the right location for your assisted living facility is about finding a nice house AND setting yourself up for long-term success.
The truth is, location can make or break your business. From demographics to zoning laws, each factor plays a big role in whether your facility thrives or struggles.
Good news—you don’t have to figure it out on your own! This guide will walk you through the 7 key things you need to research before you buy or lease a property.
Let’s get started! π
Check out this video, too:
Why Location Matters More Than You Think
Before signing, ensure your area can support an assisted living business.
Many new owners fall in love with a property first and then try to make the numbers work. That’s a dangerous path. A better approach? Do the research first.
Here’s what to look for:
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Strong demand from seniors in the area
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Families who can afford your rates
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Local rules that allow assisted living
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A competitive landscape where you can succeed
When you get the location right, filling beds becomes easier, staff are happier, and your margins are stronger.
Step 1: Check the Demographics (Is There Enough Demand?)
Before you invest, study the local population.
π Key questions to ask:
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Is the senior population growing in this area?
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Are people moving here to retire?
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How many assisted living facilities already exist nearby?
π‘ Tip: Some states share occupancy rate reports—use them to spot areas where beds are in short supply.
Step 2: Look at Income & Affordability
Even if there’s a need, families must be able to pay your rates.
π What to check:
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Median household income
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Percentage of homeowners vs. renters
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Cost of living (so you know what families have left after expenses)
π‘ Pro tip: Match the “feel” of your facility to the market. If you serve Medicaid residents, avoid placing your home in an ultra-luxury neighborhood where families may feel out of place.
Step 3: Verify Zoning & Permitted Use
You can’t operate legally if your property isn’t zoned for assisted living.
π Your to-do list:
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Check city zoning rules for “permitted use”
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Confirm whether you can open without a special permit
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Get any approvals or variances in writing from your planning department
π‘ This step saves you from buying a property you can’t use for your business.
Step 4: Understand the Political & Regulatory Climate
Some states and cities are more business-friendly than others.
π Look into:
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State licensing requirements
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Medicaid policies
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Frequency and intensity of inspections
π‘ You can succeed in both conservative and liberal states—just know the rules and how often they change.
Step 5: Factor in Wages, Taxes, and Costs
Operating costs vary widely by location.
π Compare:
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Minimum wage laws
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Payroll taxes
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Property taxes
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Local utility costs
π‘ Use our FREE underwriting calculator to make sure the numbers work before you commit.
Step 6: Map the Competition
Don’t just search “assisted living near me” on Google—dig deeper.
π How to research:
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Use your state’s list of licensed facilities
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Check occupancy rates if available
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See if there’s a specific need you can fill (like memory care or small-home living)
π‘ Big-box facilities in the area aren’t always a sign the market is good for you. Do your own homework.
Step 7: Measure Search Interest & Local Buzz
Online interest can give you a clue about demand.
π Check:
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Google search trends for “assisted living” in your area
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What local discharge planners and social workers are saying
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Senior center requests and community needs
π‘ If people are already searching for the kind of care you offer, you’ll fill rooms faster.
Next Steps: Putting It All Together
Here’s your mini plan to find the perfect location:
1οΈβ£ Shortlist three cities or neighborhoods.
2οΈβ£ Pull the demographic, affordability, zoning, and wage data for each.
3οΈβ£ Score them and pick your top one.
4οΈβ£ Visit in person (or use Street View) to get a feel for the area.
5οΈβ£ Run the numbers with an underwriting calculator to confirm it works.
Take Action Today π
If you want to launch your assisted living business in the next 12 months:
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Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning.
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Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
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Step 3: Follow this guide, take action, and bring your vision to life!
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:52
Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. In today's video, we're going to be talking about how to choose the perfect location for your assisted living facility. If you need some help with that, make sure you stick around for today's video. [Music] Hey friend, welcome back to Assisted Living Investing. Before we get started in our topic today, I want to remind you to get over to assistedlivinginvesting.net. We'll have
00:00:29 - 00:01:24
our underwriting calculator for you for free over there, the big blue box in the top right corner. Make sure you go and grab that free resource. Now, let's get into the topic for today. We're going to be talking about how to choose the perfect location for your assisted living facility. Now, I have a tool that it it does 90% of the work for you on this. So, if you want something that can really help you out and and help you do a lot of this research, make sure you go and grab the assisted living launchpad
00:00:56 - 00:01:47
bundle. We will link that down below. because it will help you out just a ton. It's going to save you a ton of time. So, make sure you go and grab that. Key component of it is the market research guide and I update it on an annual basis. So, before I tell you how to do all of these things, I want to make sure you go and grab that tool. It is a paid tool. So, it's not one of the free ones that I give away, but it there is so much jam-packed into that thing. So, make sure you go and grab that tool.
00:01:22 - 00:02:18
It's again the assisted living launchpad bundle. We'll have a link down below for you. All right. Now, let's talk a little bit here about why you need to do market research. Before you buy a facility or move forward with renovating a house, you need to know if the location is going to be able to handle if it's going to be able to support assisted living. I do not want you to be going into this blindly and being like, "Man, assisted living is the thing. I watched a video. Brandon had a cool one. Some other
00:01:50 - 00:02:38
people had cool ones. Assisted living is awesome. I'm going to do it. I'm going to like this video first and then I'm going to go, you know, start my own facility. It's a big jump, but you know, you're going to definitely like the video. And as you're doing that, what's going to happen is as you try to just like move forward, if you haven't done the market research, you might find that man, this thing's not zoned properly. There's like only 100 people live in
00:02:14 - 00:03:20
this city. you know, there there are things out there that you have to make sure that you are understanding before you dive too deep into the world of assisted living. So, if if you choose the wrong market, it can really make or break you of what you're doing. I will say as of the recording of this video, right now it's 2025, um most markets are going to be fine. There's not a lot of oversaturation. There's generally going to be like there's huge demand for this, but you can make your life a whole lot
00:02:47 - 00:03:42
easier if you do the market research up front. I'm gonna tell you a really quick story about this. So, with my journey, I I have two facilities. One of them is in Colorado and one of them is in Idaho. The first one I focused so much of my time on underwriting. Like I that's what I was focused on. Did all the underwriting. We built the business plan. I was just trying to figure out how to move things forward. And we we closed. Like it worked out for us. It It's been great, but I didn't do market research. I I
00:03:15 - 00:04:13
honestly didn't give much thought to it. It's in Colorado Springs. Fun home. It It's built in the 1890s. Like a really cool property, but just maybe not the best for what I wanted to do with assisted living, but I was honestly was a little bit I had the blinders on. I was like, I just I want to do assisted living. I'm going to make this work. This deal, the numbers are fine. We're going to do it. and I didn't anticipate a lot of the demographics being as big of an issue for us as they ended up
00:03:43 - 00:04:44
being. So, that was something for us to keep in mind. Now, the second time, and I'm not going to get too deep into specifics there, but the second time as I was looking at it, I I did the underwriting, I did the business plan, but I spent a really good chunk of time. I actually built the market research guide at that point to help me narrow down. We're obviously in Colorado and I live in Utah, but is that where I should be doing this? And that's where we landed on Idaho for us based off of my
00:04:13 - 00:05:26
analysis of where we were at and the difference between those two facilities and our profitability and and operations and and just the other things of like owning a small business in in these different states. It has opened my eyes to the importance of doing market research before you get started because it has been more profitable. It has been an easier journey. We've had more success with our staff, with the population that we work with. Things have just been so much easier. And I attribute that largely to taking the
00:04:50 - 00:05:43
time to understand the market before I jumped in on my second facility. And I probably could have saved myself a bunch of headache. I still would have made a bunch of mistakes cuz it was my first one. But I probably could have saved myself several headaches had I done that research upfront and didn't have the blinders on me quite as much as I did. I'm still successful. It just could have been an easier path for me. And a lot of that comes back to market research and why it's so important for you to do it.
00:05:17 - 00:06:10
So, if that resonated with you, like the video and make sure you go grab the launchpad cuz I did the work for you and I updated on an annual basis so I can like help you avoid some of those headaches. Um, so yeah, make sure you go grab that. Now, let's get into the specifics of like what you need to know. So, you need to understand the demographics of the market that you're working in. You need to know the age. Is it a large aging population? Are people moving there to retire? Where are people
00:05:44 - 00:06:31
migrating to? Is there a high need for assisted living as well? Like the number of facilities that are in the location, the occupancy rates of those facilities if you can get it. A lot of people aren't going to be willing to give it. But some states actually have reports online that you can grab this. So there are ways to figure out this data if you know how to look for it. That's something that I want you to be aware of is you have to understand those demographics. You need to understand the
00:06:07 - 00:07:21
income and the affordability of the assisted living. So, can people afford the services that you're offering? You got to understand that because if they can't, then you're probably wasting your time. If you want to be charging 10, 12, $15,000 per month for a bed and you're in a spot that is low income that may be a little bit more rundown, you're probably not getting the the residence that you want in your facility. It's not going to work. or if you are catering to a Medicaid resident um who doesn't have
00:06:44 - 00:07:43
a ton of money and you are in this like very ritzy place and houses are millions of dollars, people as much as they would like to come be at your house, they might just like feel uncomfortable there or scared to come in. So, you want to make sure those things match. As weird as that sounds, it's true. people, they live in a certain area all their life and just because you have a very affordable thing and a really nice neighborhood, they may not think that they are worthy enough to go and live in
00:07:14 - 00:08:04
that space. So, those are things they're just dynamics that you have to realize that are out there. And so, you want to make sure that you're matching those levels. One way that you can look at this is median household income. You can get this information. We we give it to you in the the market research guide and how to find it for specific markets and things like that. But you want to be looking at at that information. You want to be, you know, how many people are homeowners versus renters
00:07:38 - 00:08:29
goes back to affluence. Um are people spending their money because they have a home or are they renting something and they're not making much? And you know, what are those dynamics? Because you have to remember if if they're not on Medicaid, their private pay, they either need to have that money from selling an asset that they had or a retirement plan that they put a lot of money into in the past or their kids are going to have to pay for it. Um, so it's some combination of those things. And so you're going to
00:08:04 - 00:09:01
need to understand how that's going to impact you. And you want to understand the cost of living, like how much, you know, maybe you've got a group of people that on average make $100,000 a year, but the cost of living is 80, $90,000 a year. So, you want to see where that is and see how much of a gap there is as you're trying to bring people into the facility. So, you want to understand the income and affordability aspect of this. Something that a lot of people don't take into consideration when they're
00:08:32 - 00:09:44
starting a business is the political and regulatory environment of a specific location. So, this goes into state licensing requirements. This goes into Medicaid reimbursement rates, goes into zoning laws, and are they small businessfriendly? This is something that having worked in Colorado and in Idaho, I've had my eyes open to quite a bit about the importance of going to a market that works and and maybe aligns with what I want to do as a small business and my desire to be profitable while also serving a population and
00:09:08 - 00:10:10
how's it going to impact me and are they going to be throwing up regulations that are in my way every two weeks and and I don't know what they are. When I get a survey, I get dinged on things that I had no idea about because I get 10 emails a week from the state telling me to do XYZ and I just got lost in the shuffle or is it something that is pretty easy to follow? Like those are things that you want to be aware of. Regardless of your political leanings, there is a reality of more conservatrun
00:09:39 - 00:10:34
states and more liberal run states in their friendliness to small businesses and their regulatory environment that exists, which healthcare is already heavily regulated and being in a more liberal state can cause you to have to deal with more regulations. Not always the case, but it's something you want to be aware of. And if you're okay with that and you really want the regulations, you see the reason for them and I and I do. I I see it. But I I just want to be honest with you, those are
00:10:07 - 00:10:59
things that you need to take into consideration as you're trying to do this when you're doing the market research cuz you're going to deal with them on a daily basis. And so you have to understand the impact that's going to have on you. And a lot of people don't tell you that, but it's the reality of working in this business. Now, let's also talk about tax and business implications. So, this could be state and local taxes, um the state income tax, for example, property taxes, what
00:10:33 - 00:11:28
are those going to look like? Payroll taxes, minimum wage laws, those are all things that can have a really big impact on you as well. And each state is different. There's not like a federal minimum wage, right? I know at one point there was discussions around that, but it wasn't passed. And so, these are set by different states. And so, you have to understand how that's going to impact you as well. Now, I could tell you that minimum wage is, you know, $7 an hour or whatever it is in Idaho, super low.
00:11:00 - 00:12:05
Whereas in Colorado, minimum wage for a healthcare worker is like $15 $16 an hour. Um, I'm I am not going to be able to pay a caregiver $7 an hour. Like, they will not do it. I actually pay people more in Idaho than I do in Colorado, despite Colorado having a higher minimum wage. It's because I there's a lot of factors in it actually, but because we have more freedom to run the business the way that we would like to be and be more profitable, it allows us to pay our staff a little bit more freely and that
00:11:33 - 00:12:31
really is is beneficial. So, those are things that you want to um be taking into consideration here as well. And the other one is competition of existing facilities. This can be really hard to do. You can generally find the facilities. You might not find them by getting on the internet and searching for assisted living near me. You probably are going to need to dig into state data about the licensed facilities, get addresses and things like that and figure out where they are specifically and see where they're at in
00:12:02 - 00:13:00
the area. Some states will even have occupancy rate data that they ask facilities to report on a regular basis, like quarterly or annually at least. And so you can see some of that information. But you want to be looking at that data to see, okay, like obviously there's a lot and I I know other channels and they tell you, hey, if Brook Dell has put in a facility over here, then that means they've done the market research. And it's probably true, but don't just assume that, hey, man, big box, they
00:12:31 - 00:13:26
just put one over there. I should do one down the street. Do not assume that because maybe big box they decided, "Yep, this is the right place because there's only three or four small mom and pop here and we can handle that." But if you come in now, there's a big box and there's like five or six or seven small facilities. Eh, might not be worth it. They have a lot more gap in their in their way of doing things. So, never make assumptions. I don't know if any of you have watched Reacher or or read the
00:12:58 - 00:14:00
books by Lee Child, but there's a saying in there that I think is maybe a little dramatic for assisted living, but in in that there's a common saying, and it's um in an investigation, assumptions kill. You know, he's dealing with a very different population, but the the principle applies here. In an investing situation, assumptions could make or break where you're at. And so you want to make sure that you are just kind of aware that you should never make assumptions. You should always dig into
00:13:29 - 00:14:18
this and don't just assume, hey, big box, they just built one down the street, man. This is perfect. Never make the assumption cuz I don't want you to get upside down because you're just like, oh, yep, somebody told me to do that now. Yep, that's what I'm going to do. And then it doesn't work out. I want you to avoid that. Never make an assumption. Always, always do your market research. Make sure you're in a good spot. You can also look for trends. You can also do like internet searches
00:13:53 - 00:14:43
for, you know, assisted living in my city. You could see search terms and and and look at that. There there are different ways for you to see, hey, are people like interested in this in in my area. Uh so you can look at that. A lot of lot of information for you here today on how to choose that perfect location for your assisted living business. If you found this helpful at all, make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell. I put out content like this on a regular basis. We do our lives on
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Tuesdays. We put out content on Thursdays as well. I love helping and coaching people just like you. And make sure you go grab the launchpad. We'll have that linked down below for you. Does residential assisted living sound interesting to you, but you don't know how to get started? At Assisted Living Investing, I'm here to help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. I love helping and coaching people, and I would love to help you as well. Check out the
00:14:41 - 00:15:13
links down below for how I can help you out. And remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. and just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you're consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]
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