February 3, 2026
This article is part one of five of an interview conducted by Amber Busch with Dave Eskenazy.
Transitioning from Real Estate Development to Senior Housing: Strategies, Challenges, and Industry Insights
Executive Summary
Dave shares his journey from real estate development and hospitality into senior housing, explaining how his experience with hotel ownership and operations laid a strong foundation for understanding the senior living business model. He notes the similarities between hospitality and senior housing, particularly in ownership structures and operational demands, and stresses the value of financial discipline in navigating economic cycles and managing debt.
Dave provides highlights of his career, including how Aegis Living drove growth by capitalizing on downturn opportunities and building a strong in-house team. At Merrill Gardens, he shifted from finance to operations, applying data-driven strategies and focusing on key metrics. He notes the challenges of managing dispersed teams and stresses the importance of labor efficiency amid rising wages.
Above all, Dave emphasizes that senior housing is fundamentally a people business—one that requires balancing financial expertise with human-centered leadership. He believes a successful company culture is rooted in creativity, excellence, and a genuine focus on people, supported by transparency, education, and empowering employees to understand the business.
From Hotels to Senior Living: What Carries Over?
Amber Busch:
Dave, I’ve always been curious about your career path. You started in real estate development, then moved to Aegis Living, later to Merrill Gardens, and now you’re at Cogir. What motivated you to make the switch from real estate development to senior housing?
Dave Eskenazy:
I wasn’t actively seeking a career in senior living. After graduating, I spent three years at KPMG, then joined R.C. Hedreen, where I stayed for 20 years. It was a small team with just 10 people, but we owned and built hotels ourselves. We handled construction and operated properties under franchise agreements, which was rare at the time. For example, we built and managed major downtown Seattle hotels like the Renaissance, Hilton, three Hyatts, and the Crowne Plaza. Back then, most hotels were owned by the hotel companies, similar to how senior housing operated with big owners leasing buildings to operators like Aegis under triple-net leases.
Companies like Emeritus Senior Living used to use triple net leases for almost every community they operated. If you look at an old Emeritus 10-K form, they owned about 30 properties but leased around 600. That model reminded me of what I’d seen in hospitality, which made the transition to senior housing feel familiar.
Amber Busch:
I didn’t know that!
Dave Eskenazy:
Today, it’s almost the opposite. The hotel industry was similar, except at Aegis, we owned and operated everything ourselves. We were the contractor, owner, operator, and developer, so I gained experience in every aspect of the business. That meant paying close attention to operations as well as development.
On the ownership and development side, I developed a strong respect for the financial aspects, including debt coverage, over-leverage scenarios, and how economic cycles impact your ability to service debt and refinance. I also learned about managing relationships with major brands like Stouffer, Hyatt, Hilton, and Holiday Inn.
All of this gave me a broad understanding of owning, developing, and operating real estate, as well as working with lenders. I didn’t realize it at the time, since I was young and started as the controller for the parent company, but over 20 years, I picked up a lot of knowledge. Experiencing multiple economic cycles taught me how vulnerable a business model can be and the importance of preparing for downturns. When things are going well, it’s easy to overlook the possibility of a recession, but I saw plenty of worst-case scenarios, with COVID being a recent example.
Amber Busch:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dave Eskenazy:
That experience set me up for my next opportunity. During the 2007 recession, I left R.C. Hedreen after we turned down a chance to develop limited-service properties on the West Coast. The company preferred full-service luxury hotels over limited-service models, so we passed. After 20 years, I was still relatively young and decided to explore new opportunities. I connected with an investor at Investco in Sumner, Washington, to build a limited-service property in Redmond, but the recession forced us to cancel the project.
I took a summer off, and then a former colleague asked if I’d consider senior housing. While I hadn’t planned on it, I had some family experience and understood the business model from a consumer perspective—room rates, occupancy, and so on. It’s not that different from hospitality, which is how I ended up in the industry.
Aegis was founded by partners who combined their operating and development experience to launch the company. When those partners separated, Aegis needed someone with development expertise to continue their growth. That’s where I came in as CFO, but really to bring in-house development experience to support their expansion plans.
Amber Busch:
How many properties did they develop while you were there?
Dave Eskenazy:
We started developing properties while I was there, but it’s a long process. During the recession, we took advantage of opportunities—buying sites that became available at lower valuations and benefiting from reduced construction costs and reduced interest rates. While others played it safe, we invested. We had about four to six properties in various stages of development when I left. We’d also built a strong in-house team, which set them up well for the future.
What Does It Take to Lead a Senior Living Organization?
Amber Busch:
I find it fascinating that you transitioned from traditional real estate finance and development into the senior living niche. Let’s talk about your move to Merrill Gardens. Were you the CEO when you started?
Dave Eskenazy:
No, the previous operations manager was still there when I joined but was preparing to leave. I came in and oversaw everything except finance and development. At Aegis, my focus was on finance and development, not operations. But at Merrill, it was the exact opposite; operations became my main responsibility, while others handled finance and development.
I had been a very operations-focused CFO at Aegis, so I participated in many operating calls. While the role at Merrill was new, it wasn’t completely foreign to me. I spent five years overseeing all operations. Honestly, it was probably harder for me to step back from development and finance than it was to take on operations.
Amber Busch:
What skills from your previous roles, especially in finance and development, helped you most when you moved into operations?
Dave Eskenazy:
I’ve always been a numbers person; data comes naturally to me. In the hotel business, operating statements were critical. We constantly tracked room rates, occupancy, food and beverage, and even things like long-distance telephone revenue, which eventually shifted to internet and AV services. Every department mattered, and so did every revenue stream. Rate and revenue management were essential.
In hospitality, much like the airline industry, rates could change frequently based on occupancy and events. For example, a convention might fill rooms one week but not the next. We actively managed revenue, whereas in senior housing or apartments, the approach seemed more passive. That was a shift for me, but I didn’t see why it had to be that way. I believed we needed to monitor every aspect of the business to maximize profitability and efficiency on both the revenue and expense sides. It surprised me that some classic tools weren’t being used in the industry.
Beyond hospitality, my time at Hedreen exposed me to a wide range of business models through their private investment portfolio, everything from technology to pacemakers, coffee machines, and Coinstar. I was responsible for those investments, which gave me broad exposure.
Over time, I realized that every business has a dozen or more key metrics, not just two or three. Paying attention to those metrics and acting on what the data tells you is crucial. For me, that’s the essence of operations: truly understanding your business so you know what’s working and what isn’t and doing so in a timely manner. Timeliness really matters.
How Is Managing Senior Housing Different from Developing It?
Amber Busch:
I imagine one of the biggest changes when you switched roles was managing people: moving from overseeing a finance team to leading everyone on the service side of the industry. Can you talk about those differences and how you navigated them?
Dave Eskenazy:
In finance and development, your support staff is close by; you can walk down the hall and talk to someone, so you get a good sense of your team. But in operations, most of the staff aren’t in the same building; they’re spread out across different locations.
Even today, people often think of senior housing as part of the real estate sector, and even lenders categorize it that way. But that’s like calling Nordstrom a real estate company just because they own their stores. When a department store is valued only for its real estate, it usually means the operations aren’t doing well.
In senior housing, for every 1,000 residents, we have about 600 employees. It’s the most staff-intensive business I’ve ever been involved with; I can’t think of another industry with such a high customer-to-staff ratio.
Managing labor and labor efficiency became critical, especially as we were at the center of the $15-an-hour minimum wage movement in Seattle. At the time, we were paying $8 to $9 an hour nationwide, including Seattle, but then wages started rising, beginning with airport workers and eventually spreading across the country.
Labor is our largest expense, and as wages doubled from $8 to $16 an hour over time, focusing on labor efficiency became even more important. I didn’t have much experience with that initially, but it quickly became clear that mastering labor management was essential for success.
-End of Part 1 of interview-
Click here to read more about Amber’s interview with Dave Eskenazy.
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