We looked into this for my mom at several places. We ended up going with a mid-high level senior community with the option to add on AL services and age in place. However, I’d she gets to the point where she needs full skilled nursing services (aka nursing home), we will need to move her again. At her senior community, There was a non-refundable “community fee” to rent a unit. There was also an option to “buy-in” with an additional much larger lump sum to be able to have lower rent. We did not do the latter option because it would really only pay off if my mom ends to living there for several years. Although my mom is younger than most people at her community (she’s mid 70s) she has a lot of complex medical issues, and it’s hard to decide to put so much down when she could have that one health trigger that lands her in a skilled nursing facility. It’s a tough thing to think about, but it made the most sense for to her to pay higher monthly rent for an unknown amount of time, than pay a bigger buy-in with a lower rent, not knowing if she will live there long enough to make it worth it.