At 75 Communities and Growing, Jaybird Senior Living Targets Middle Market

Jaybird Senior Living has more than tripled in size since 2019, but it has achieved this largely under the radar.

Today the company’s portfolio includes 75 communities in the Midwest – far higher than the number of communities the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based company had even a few years ago.

And the company isn’t done growing, with plans to enter the state of Missouri and continue its focus on the middle market, where CEO Kevin Russell sees “real opportunity.”

“I think there’s not enough capital in the middle market and we’re going to try to fill that void where we can,” he told SHN.

Russell also took a unique path to get to where he is today, and he has worked in investment banking and practiced law in the United Arab Emirates.

Jaybird’s growth plans

Driving much of Russell’s philosophy on growth is a focus on the middle market.

The company had grown steadily in the months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, but shifted its focus to safety in early 2020 as the coronavirus took center stage.

Jaybird’s biggest presence is in Iowa, where it operates 40 communities. The company also operates 13 communities in Wisconsin, 11 in Minnesota, and two each in Kentucky and Illinois.

Looking ahead, the company is targeting markets for growth where it has a footprint or can build one – and ideally, in a location where someone from the Jaybird corporate office can visit every week.

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to buy a single building in Florida today,” Russell explained. “[But] if someone offered me a portfolio of 10 buildings in Florida, that might be interesting.”

Jaybird’s current portfolio is varied in size and includes buildings ranging from 35 to more than 100 units. The company also targets secondary and tertiary markets for growth.

“I think those communities have a lot of legs compared to some of their urban peers, given where the marketplace is going and the importance of home health,” Russell said.

The middle market is a huge need in senior living now and in the future, and Jaybird is laser-focused on meeting that demand.

“The middle market – and the secondary and tertiary environment – is where I think the most innovation in this industry is going to happen,” Russell said.

Jaybird Senior Living CEO Kevin Russell took a unique path into the senior living industry.

He is a lawyer by training, and he practiced corporate law in New York and London. Eventually, his work in investment banking took him to the Middle East, where he worked as general counsel and senior adviser to a branch of the United Arab Emirates royal family in Abu Dhabi.

Russell returned to the U.S. in 2015. Shortly thereafter, he invested in two senior living communities in Minnesota. Russell was a partner with a venture capital fund in San Diego when he bought his original communities. Not long after, he invested in an additional 20 communities and acquired a small Midwestern operator – Jaybird Senior Living.

Now, he believes that the various disciplines he practiced – law, investment banking, emergent markets, private equity – drive what Jaybird is about today.

“If you’re working in a startup, everything you do is trial and error,” said Russell. “And I think that’s a function of innovation.

One challenge for the future is the fact that senior living margins are still compressed across the industry due to high expenses and lower occupancy rates. To overcome that challenge, Jaybird is creating a team focused on ways to offset shrinking margins, including by thinking outside the box.

“People typically think of innovation as being about technology, but it’s really not … and at the end of the day, I have a team that really embraces that,” he said.

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