Ascent Living Communities

An underperforming community usually has an operating problem, not a real estate problem.

Ascent Living Communities is a Colorado based operator running six communities and 740 units across Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care. We take on buildings producing below what their market should support, and we run them to a different standard.

The industry offers two models. Each one costs you something.

National platforms bring scale, capital access, and brand. On a community that is struggling, they also bring a home office several time zones away and a building that never rises high enough in the portfolio queue to get the attention its problems require. That is arithmetic rather than intent. One asset inside a portfolio of hundreds will always be a small percentage of the whole.

Regional operators bring presence and genuine care, and most lack the systems to absorb another community without degrading the ones they already run.

Ascent was built to be neither.

We are a regional operator carrying the systems a national platform would have, and the order we built them in was deliberate. We grew slowly and built the operating platform before the portfolio required it, rather than growing first and assembling the systems afterward to catch up. That is a harder way to build a company and a considerably better way to run one. It also keeps us close to the work. Our people are known by name rather than by headcount, and every asset is underwritten as its own thesis instead of being fitted to a corporate mold.

For years we ran this business with a magnifying glass. Now we have something closer to an MRI.

A magnifying glass shows you what you already thought to look at. Most operating decisions in senior living get made from financials that close in the middle of the following month and describe a period already six weeks gone.

Our communities run off the last twenty four hours. That is not a reporting preference. Underperformance in this business rarely arrives as one dramatic failure. It accumulates from small correctable gaps that persist because nobody sees them in time.

See how the platform works

The results we can show you.

Occupancy

Portfolio average from approximately 81 percent in 2024 to 91.2 percent as of June 2026, with two communities still in lease up.

Length of stay

Up 158 days in Assisted Living and Memory Care, a 21 percent increase since 2023.

Team engagement

An internal net promoter score of 59. Above 50 is the range associated with the most admired service brands.

Industry wide, residents have been moving in later and staying less time. Ours has moved the other way, because we see changes in a resident’s needs earlier. That is a better outcome for a family and a different financial profile for a building.

Two communities, carried through a full cycle.

Carillon at Belleview Station

A distressed building, taken over and carried through a full cycle.

The situation: A large Denver community operating at roughly 57 percent occupancy under an operator for whom it was one asset among many.
What we did: Took over operations, rebuilt the team, connected the building to our platform, and repointed marketing at the submarket that was actually there.
The outcome: Occupancy into the high nineties and a recapitalization that returned our capital partner’s investment. We still work with that partner more than a decade later.

Village at Belmar

Built, filled, stabilized, and recapitalized.

The situation: A ground up development in Lakewood where Ascent was the operating expertise inside the partnership from design forward.
What we did: Contributed program and unit mix during design, then significantly outperformed the pro forma occupancy ramp schedule the deal had been underwritten to.
The outcome: A stabilized asset and a completed capital cycle. The full life of a deal, start to finish, with the same team on it throughout.

Rosemark at Mayfair Park becomes a third card once that transaction closes later this year.

Find the conversation written for you.

Brokers

What we buy, where we are looking, and how fast you will get an answer. A defined buy box and an honest no when the answer is no.

See our criteria

Development partners

Senior living operating expertise inside your project, engaged early enough to influence the building rather than inherit it.

How we partner

Owners and capital groups

A single asset or a portfolio. We are available to talk about operating it.

Start a conversation

An operator and a finance principal, running the same company.

Tom Finley

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Real estate finance and capital markets. Tom leads underwriting, capital structure, and transactions, and answers those questions himself.

Susie Finley

Founder and President

Nearly thirty years in senior living. A trained gerontologist and licensed administrator, Susie spent fifteen years as an executive director, ten of them inside a national operator, and has led communities and operating teams in the years since. The platform this company runs on was built on her vision and her experience of the problem it solves.

Tom and Susie Finley cutting the ribbon at the Hilltop Reserve opening — Opening day at Hilltop Reserve.

The Ascent home office team standing together outdoors — The Ascent home office team.

Behind the two of us is a home office of eighteen and roughly 580 people across the portfolio. Day to day operations are run by that team. Our job is what happens next.