What A Place for Mom is and who owns it
A Place for Mom is the largest senior living referral service in the United States. It was founded in 2000 by Pamela and John Temple and Brian Trisler, and it is now headquartered in New York (Wikipedia). Its own About page describes a network of more than 11,000 senior living communities and 5,000 home care agencies, more than 400 advisors, and more than 400,000 community reviews (A Place for Mom, About).
It is a private, for-profit company owned by investors. Warburg Pincus bought a majority stake in 2010. In 2017 Warburg sold that stake to General Atlantic and Silver Lake, which took equal positions. In January 2022 the company raised $175 million in a round led by Insight Partners, with General Atlantic and Silver Lake also taking part, at a valuation above $1 billion (Wikipedia).
That matters for the rest of this article. The service has to earn a return for its investors, and the only people who pay it are the providers on the other side of the referral.
How the referral fee works
Who pays
The community does. The company's About page puts it plainly: "A Place for Mom is paid by our senior living network communities when a family we refer chooses to move into a community." Home care agencies are different. They pay each time a family is referred to them, whether or not the family hires them (A Place for Mom, About).
What triggers the fee
A move-in that came from an accepted referral. The company's partner guide says a referral a community doesn't decline within 72 hours counts as accepted, and that the community must tell its advisor within 24 hours of a move-in, including rent, projected care charges and unit type. The guide then says the company "will bill the community for the move-in under the terms of our agreement" (Partner Central, Getting Started). If the family had already contacted the community on its own within the previous 180 days, the community isn't obligated to treat it as an A Place for Mom lead, but it has to say so within the contract window.
How much
A Place for Mom doesn't publish its fee. The Washington Post's May 2024 analysis described it as a fee equal to about a month's fees for a successful placement, and Senior Housing News repeated that figure in its coverage (Senior Housing News, May 16, 2024). Other services describe their fee the same way; CareScout, which now runs the Seniorly referral business, says its fee is usually a percentage of the first month's costs (CareScout). Contract terms vary by community and by contract date, so if you are an operator, ask them for current terms before you sign.
Is A Place for Mom free?
For families, yes. The company says its service is free because it is paid by participating communities, and that advisors are not compensated based on which community in the network a family chooses (A Place for Mom, Senior Living Advisors). Whether the cost shows up later in a community's pricing is a fair question, and one a Senate letter raised in 2024. More on that below.
What the family gets and gives
What you get
- An advisor, usually by phone, who asks about care needs, budget, location and timing.
- A shortlist of communities from the network that match those answers.
- Help scheduling tours and, according to the advisors page, help planning the logistics of a move (A Place for Mom, Senior Living Advisors).
- No bill. Nothing is charged to you at any point.
What you give
Your contact details, and permission to use them. The terms of use say that by submitting a form you authorize the company to pass your information to the providers it calls "Organizations" (A Place for Mom, Terms of Use). The privacy policy adds that those organizations "may contact you directly via email, telephone, text, regular mail, or in-person visits" (A Place for Mom, Privacy Policy). In practice that means each community on your shortlist may call you, and the advisor will follow up as well.
The other thing to know is that the shortlist comes from the network. A community that doesn't have a contract with A Place for Mom won't be on it. Senator Casey's 2024 letter put the network at about 14,000 of roughly 30,600 communities nationwide (Senior Housing News, June 20, 2024). That is a lot of options, but it isn't all of them.
What the community gets and gives
What you get
- Families who are already looking, screened by an advisor against your profile. The partner guide tells communities their community was picked because the advisor thought it fit the family.
- A portal, Partner Central, where you see referrals, update pricing and availability, and send notes back to the advisor (Partner Central).
- No cost until a move-in. There is no monthly retainer.
What you give
- A fee for every move-in that traces back to an accepted referral.
- The first relationship. The family met the advisor before they met you, and the advisor stays in the conversation.
- Exclusivity on your side of the deal. The same family can be on a list with several of your competitors, but the partner guide tells you never to send a referred family to a competitor or to another referral agency. If you pass the family to a sister community, your community is still responsible for the invoice (Partner Central, Getting Started).
- Reporting duties. You have to report move-ins within 24 hours and flag duplicates within the contract window, or the referral is treated as accepted.
Some of the terms on that public partner page carry 2019 dates, so treat them as a guide to the shape of the deal, not the current numbers.
The 2024 scrutiny
Two things happened in 2024 that anyone reading about this company should know. Neither changes the model described above.
On May 16, 2024, the Washington Post published an analysis of inspection records for 863 communities in 28 states that A Place for Mom had named to its "Best of Senior Living" lists for 2023 and 2024. About 37.5% of those communities had state citations affecting resident care, and the Post wrote that the company is paid large fees by facilities and doesn't independently assess their records (Washington Post, summarized by Senior Housing News). In its response, the company said it is proud to serve as a resource for family caregivers, that its advisors speak with more than 700,000 families a year, and that it encourages families to do their own research.
On June 18, 2024, Senator Bob Casey, then chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, sent the company a letter alleging "deceptive business practices." The letter said referrals are limited to communities that pay, that nearly 40% of referred families were placed above the assisted living budget they gave, and that families who want to use Medicaid are effectively excluded. It asked for three years of revenue figures, the total number of move-in fees received the prior year, and details on the 100 communities that paid the most, with a response due July 15 (NBC News; Senior Housing News).
A fair reading: the fee-per-move-in model is the same one most referral services use, and it is a legitimate way for a family to get free help. The reporting raised real questions about how the fee shapes what families see. Families can answer most of those questions by asking the advisor directly and by looking up state inspection records themselves.
How it compares with other referral services
Senior living referral agencies almost all work the same way: free to the family, paid by the provider. The differences are in what triggers the payment and who the advisor is.
| Service | Who pays, and when | What they say about the fee | Advisor model |
|---|
| A Place for Mom | Communities at move-in; home care agencies per referral | Not published. Reporting says about one month's fees | National, 400+ advisors, mostly by phone |
| Caring.com | Providers: some per move-in, some per lead, some by annual subscription | States all three options on its site | Directory plus phone advisors |
| Seniorly / CareScout | Communities at move-in, directly or through a local advisor | "Usually structured as a percentage of the first month's costs" | Online matching plus local advisors |
| CarePatrol | Providers in its network, after move-in | Not published | Local franchise advisors, 200+, who say they prescreen communities |
Sources: Caring.com, How We Make Money; CareScout, How We Make Money; CarePatrol. Operators should note that Caring.com is the only one of the four that says plainly some providers pay per lead rather than per move-in.
Care Growth is not a referral service, so it isn't in that table. The difference is covered at the end of this article, and in more detail on our A Place for Mom comparison page.
What it means for a family
Using A Place for Mom is a reasonable choice, especially if you are starting from zero and short on time. Go in with these questions:
- Who pays you, and when? A good advisor will answer in one sentence.
- Is every community near me on your list, or only the ones in your network? Ask for the names of ones that aren't.
- Will the communities you send me call me directly, and how many of them? You can ask the advisor to limit the list.
- Do you have each community's state inspection history? If not, look it up on your state's licensing site before you tour.
- Is the price the same as it would be if I walked in on my own? Ask the community this one, in writing.
- If I find a community myself, do I still need to go through you? You don't, and the community may prefer you didn't.
What it means for an operator
When it's worth it
Paying about a month's revenue for a resident who stays two years is a good trade. Referral services make sense when you have empty units now, a building in lease-up, or no marketing of your own yet. They stop making sense when most of the families they bill you for would have found you anyway, or when your own channels fill the building at a lower cost per move-in.
How to track move-ins by source
- Log the first touch for every inquiry: date, channel and family. Do it before anyone calls them back.
- Ask every family how they found you, and write the answer down.
- Check each referral invoice against your inquiry log. The 180-day duplicate rule only helps if you can prove the date.
- Work out cost per move-in by channel every quarter: fees paid divided by move-ins for referral services, spend divided by move-ins for your own ads and website.
- Compare length of stay by source. A resident who leaves in 60 days costs more than one who stays three years, whatever the fee.
Our senior living marketing guide walks through the tracking setup in more detail, including call tracking and form attribution.
Rented demand and owned demand
A referral service rents you a family. The listing is theirs, the relationship started with their advisor, and the family's details sit in their system. When you stop paying, the flow stops. Owned marketing is the opposite: a fast website for your assisted living community, your Google Business Profile, paid search for families looking in your town, and a lead handling process that calls every inquiry back within minutes. Every inquiry lands in your CRM, and cost per move-in tends to fall as pages and reviews build up. For a group with several communities, that gap compounds across every building.
Most communities we talk to use both. Referral services cover the gaps; owned marketing carries the base. The mistake is letting referral services become most of your move-ins without knowing what each one cost.
Where Care Growth fits
We should be clear that we also charge per move-in. The difference is what you own. Care Growth builds and runs your website, listings, ads and lead handling in your community's name. Every lead goes to you, not to a list of five communities, and if you ever stop working with us you keep the site, the listings, the ad accounts and the data. If a resident placed through our work moves out within 30 days, we credit that fee back.
We are not a referral network, and we don't pretend to replace one. If you are weighing the two, read our A Place for Mom comparison and the list of A Place for Mom alternatives, which covers other referral services, local advisors and owned marketing side by side. Care Growth is headquartered in Denver and works with communities nationwide. Claim your free growth audit if you want to know what your own channels could produce.
Related: A Place for Mom alternatives · Lead handling · Paid ads · Assisted living marketing · Senior living groups · Senior Living Marketing Guide
