The Real-Estate Firm Betting That Aging Well Is an Operating Business

The most revealing sentence in Livingston Street Capital’s investment materials is also the least glamorous. The firm says it prefers “needs” to “wants.” In practice, that can mean an apartment for a healthy 68-year-old who is finished with lawn care, a medical building occupied on a long lease, or a factory that a tenant cannot casually relocate. None is likely to become a cocktail-party trend. That is the point.

Founded in 2016 by Peter Scola and Joseph Fox, the privately held firm sits in Radnor, Pennsylvania, with an additional New York presence and a national shopping list. Its affiliates say they own and manage more than 2,300 active-adult and independent-living apartments, along with more than 1.1 million square feet of commercial property in at least 14 states. The current menu includes multifamily housing, healthcare, industrial property and selected office assets. The menu can change. The filter is meant to remain.

Livingston describes itself as situationally opportunistic. That is finance language for refusing to marry one property type. When long-leased industrial or healthcare buildings offer the right balance of income and risk, it can buy those. When demographic shifts make housing more interesting, capital can follow. The company underwrites core, core-plus, light value-add and selected opportunistic deals, then manages the assets for the long term or sells when pricing creates an exit.

The apartment between two worlds

The sharper story is active-adult housing, a category that is often mistaken for senior care. Livingston’s 55-plus communities are not assisted living, memory care or skilled nursing. Residents are generally independent; the property does not exist to dispense care. It offers an apartment, age-targeted neighbors, amenities and structured chances to participate. Think fitness rooms, gardens, crafts, classes, clubs and a calendar with enough activity to make a hallway acquaintance turn into a dinner companion.

That distinction solves an awkward problem. Many older homeowners want to shed maintenance and unlock home equity but do not need, or want to identify with, a care facility. A standard apartment may remove the gutters and lawn without replacing the social texture of a longtime neighborhood. Active-adult housing tries to occupy the middle: privacy without isolation, convenience without clinical overtones.

“We anticipate the need for community balanced with independence will be stronger than ever.”Peter Scola, founder and CEO

The customers are therefore visible on two levels. Livingston works for capital partners and accredited investors seeking income and appreciation from private real estate. At the property level, it serves residents, medical operators and corporate tenants. Those groups do not buy the same thing. Investors buy exposure to leases, demographics and management. Occupants buy a place that works every day. The firm’s job is to keep the two promises from drifting apart.

The operating layer

A demographic thesis is easy to copy in a presentation. The more defensible part is execution. Livingston developed Allure Lifestyle Communities as the vertically integrated property-management and operating platform for its active-adult and independent-living portfolio. Allure’s LIFE program organizes resident experience around social activity, creativity, wellness and independence. The capital owner and the people shaping the weekly calendar sit within the same broader organization.

That arrangement can shorten the distance between a spreadsheet and a resident complaint. Leasing patterns, event attendance, maintenance issues and amenity use can inform the asset plan. Meanwhile, a coherent operating brand can travel from one acquisition to the next. For residents, the offering is not merely granite countertops plus an age restriction. It is the possibility that the property will make connection easier without dictating how to live.

Vertical integration is not automatically an advantage. It adds payroll, systems and reputational exposure. If the experience disappoints, ownership cannot simply blame a third-party manager. But it gives Livingston control over the variable that matters most in service-rich housing: what it feels like to live there. That is a more specific position than “we like senior housing,” and it helps separate the firm from passive buyers that outsource every resident-facing decision.

A portfolio that pivots

The company’s transaction history shows the other half of its personality. In 2018, an affiliate acquired a 393,817-square-foot industrial facility in Columbus, Indiana, occupied by an automotive supplier. It sold the building in 2021 for $55.3 million. Another affiliate bought a 33-bed medical center in Great Bend, Kansas, in 2018 and sold it in 2022 for $39.9 million. Two plasma-collection medical offices in Idaho and Utah went for a combined $14.4 million the same year.

Housing acquisitions moved in the opposite direction. The firm bought the 114-unit King City Senior Village near Portland in 2020, entered suburban Dallas with a 180-unit community in 2021, and assembled a larger Texas footprint that included a 402-unit two-property portfolio. In 2022 it acquired the 231-unit Canvas Valley Forge near Philadelphia. A 210-unit conventional apartment community in Towson, Maryland, reportedly cost $62.8 million. In 2024, trade publications reported a 125-unit independent-living acquisition in Lakewood, Colorado.

These deals illustrate the business model without revealing its private economics. Affiliates and investment vehicles combine investor equity with property-level debt, collect rent, execute an operating or asset-management plan, and eventually refinance or sell. Public offering material also shows the firm sponsoring Delaware Statutory Trust structures for eligible investors. Fees, consolidated revenue, valuation and current assets under management are not publicly disclosed, so transaction volume should not be confused with company revenue.

Where Livingston fits

In the market, Livingston lives between several familiar species. It is narrower and more hands-on than a giant diversified asset manager, but broader than a single-sector owner. It competes for properties with public healthcare and apartment REITs, specialist medical-office investors, active-adult developers and other private real-estate funds. Its small team - LinkedIn places it in the 11-to-50 employee range - is part of the pitch. Fewer layers can make a change in strategy quicker, though a lean organization also has less room for operational error.

The founders bring institutional pattern recognition to that compact structure. Scola’s career crossed banking, ratings, capital markets and direct investment, including senior roles at Cantor Fitzgerald, Bank of America, Fitch, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Securities. Fox has spent more than three decades in acquisitions, structured finance, asset management and joint ventures. Livingston says its team has participated in more than $20 billion of career transactions and completed more than $400 million in acquisitions at the firm.

Culture matters here because the strategy demands both conviction and revision. The firm publicly emphasizes collaboration, accountability, diversity of perspective and adaptability. Those values sound standard until placed beside a portfolio that has actually changed emphasis. A rigid industrial fund cannot wake up and become an active-adult operator. Livingston designed itself to form thematic programs, build the needed expertise and shift attention when relative value changes.

Its test will be whether that flexibility remains disciplined. Multi-strategy can mean intelligently following opportunity, or it can become a collection of unrelated bets. Livingston’s “needs versus wants” rule is an attempt to keep the center intact. Long leases, essential uses, demographic durability and control over operations are the connective tissue. The categories are diverse; the questions asked of them are deliberately repetitive.

The intriguing asset is not the clubhouse. It is the operating feedback loop between residents, managers and owners.

For residents, the practical payoff is simpler: another housing choice. For property sellers and brokers, Livingston is a buyer able to evaluate several kinds of commercial real estate. For investors, it offers a private route into themes that range from aging demographics to essential corporate space. And for competitors, the useful lesson is portable: when a macro trend becomes obvious, the advantage often moves downstream, into the unphotogenic routines that make the thesis work.

A community garden will never look as consequential as a capital stack. Yet in active-adult housing, the garden may reveal whether a building is merely occupied or genuinely used. Livingston Street Capital’s wager is that both views belong in the same investment meeting.