What We're About

R3R1 was engaged for the launch of a 126-unit senior housing community for a client with a proven business model. Although our client operated a successful business model for many years, interest from local consumers for this property was less than anticipated from initial marketing efforts.

Preliminary marketing efforts included several months of direct mail campaigns which produced very few inquiries. In fact, on this project, the client received approximately 20% of what a comparable launch of a similar community would receive.

Immediately upon engagement, we undertook efforts to analyze the demographics as related to this project to uncover apparent obstacles.  We discovered that this was a relatively new town, founded in 2007 and as such there was a disproportionately young population. Prior demographic studies revealed that five percent of the population was over age 65, the targeted group for a retirement community. Upon closer examination, it was determined that thirty-three percent of the population were of a specific group that tended to live in multi-generational homes - grandma and grandpa live in the household with the younger generation and do not, as a rule, use senior housing services. Therefore, this lowered the number of potential prospects from five percent of the population as seniors that could potentially use this service to merely three percent.

Another obvious concern related to industry competitors in this region. Existing communities had current occupancy issues and struggled to maintain census. Additionally, we discovered that there were five new communities under construction within a seven-mile radius.

After this community opened, is was not a surprise to anyone that the average number of in-person appointments with new prospects, including leads generated from a referral agency, was approximately four per week. By way of comparison, the average number of meetings at like properties falls between twelve and fourteen meetings per week.

On average, this client reaches its determined census goals at a new community is around eighteen months. The average closing rate is in the range of eleven percent. Therefore, if the sales team at a 126-unit community conducts fourteen face-to-face meetings per week, they would generate 1.54 move-ins per week, and in 81-82 weeks, or just about 19 months the community would reach a 92% occupancy rate.

However, using the R3R1 process, 132 units were rented during the first nine months, and ten residents vacated a unit during this same period. At the end of the project, this community was 97 percent occupied. The move in rate was 52 percent (after cancellations) from a total of 254 in-person meetings with prospects.

In summary, using the R3R1 process the move-in rate was five hundred percent higher than when not using the R3R1 process. In half of the standard time for reaching its goal, our client has a successful business with some twelve million dollars of equity when they otherwise could have had a capital call and lost their entire investment.