They say by 2030, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under 18 in the United States. It is a demographic “silver tsunami” that the real estate industry is only just beginning to prepare for. But while most are just starting to look at the data, Bryan Devore, director of Senior Services at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties, is already building the roadmap.
Devore earned his place as a Futurist among RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers for his visionary approach to the “senior transition.” Far beyond simply facilitating a transaction, Devore has spent over two decades advocating for a more holistic, empathetic approach to downsizing. In early 2026, he took his mission to the small screen with the launch of Senior Spaces, a reality series designed to educate aging homeowners and their families on the emotional and physical resources available for their next chapter.
From teaching monthly “Aging Roadmap” classes at San Diego Oasis to championing the value of the Seniors Real Estate Specialist designation, Devore is on a mission to ensure that “aging in place” isn’t just a wish, it’s a viable, well-supported reality. He is an outspoken advocate for increasing agent education critiquing the industry’s lack of awareness regarding the unique needs of a top-heavy population.
In this edition of our Newsmakers Spotlight series, Devore shares his insights on the “digital divide” created by AI, the critical importance of accessibility in fair housing and why treating a senior’s housing transition with dignity is the highest privilege in the business.
Paige Brown: You work closely with seniors navigating major housing transitions. During Fair Housing Month, conversations often focus on access and equity. What does fair housing mean when you’re working with older adults who may be downsizing, relocating or moving into assisted living?
Bryan Devore: Fair housing is about not discriminating, so you don’t want to discriminate against seniors when it comes to housing. Making sure that seniors are able to have access to their housing is critical, even if we need to modify their homes to make them more accessible so they can get around comfortably, like with a walker or wheelchair or having appropriate ramps or not too many stairs.
PB: Many seniors face unique challenges when buying or selling a home, from financial concerns to health limitations. Where do you see the biggest gaps in understanding or support for this group, and how can real estate professionals do better?
BD: Certainly real estate professionals can do better by understanding the limitations that seniors have, whether it’s physically, or as simple as hearing and vision loss. It’s the capability to navigate their space and their area. It’s also the emotional component and understanding that the transitions that seniors are making are probably the most physically and emotionally challenging transition they’ll make in their lives.
Having compassion and empathy, understanding what physical and emotional challenges that seniors face, they’re usually downsizing from a larger home, which is physically daunting and overwhelming. For real estate professionals, it’s incumbent upon them if they’re ever going to work with a senior, whether it’s specializing in it like me, or if they just happen to be helping the parents of a past client, understanding the emotional and physical side, and some of the gaps as far as technology.
Seniors, while a lot of them who I work with are able to use technology like DocuSign for electronic signing or apps for looking for properties, not all of them are, and agents need to be more patient when working with seniors because things take longer. They don’t have either the access or the proclivity for using the technology, which a lot of us take for granted. When it comes to working with seniors, it’s kind of like when I started 23 years ago, we had no DocuSign, so it’s kind of going back to that.
When it comes to a senior move, there’s a lot of other resources that come into play, like senior move managers and other people who help with the process, estate sales, etc. Being able to have a network of people that you work with certainly makes a huge difference in making the transition much easier.
PB: In early 2026, you launched Senior Spaces, a reality series focused on the downsizing journey. What inspired the project, and how does media help educate both consumers and agents about the importance of treating these transactions with care and respect?
BD: The idea first came to me when I was touring a senior community, and it was way different than what I thought senior living was. My impression was that it was like the convalescent home that my great-grandparents lived in—a bunch of people in walkers and wheelchairs, and the food was soup and saltine crackers, and that was it. I realized how much better it was and how amazing they could be. If only seniors would come out to see them, they would at least be open to the possibility of moving to one. But a lot of the time, seniors don’t go looking for information about what’s available until it’s a crisis and then it has to happen. They are watching television, so why not make a fun reality show where we can see what the couples are going to do, which way are they going to go, what are the decisions going to be?
It’s entertaining and it’s educational at the same time—they can’t help but learn. In the process of doing the show, it opened my eyes to all the resources that are out there and that so many seniors and agents don’t know about. And why would they? Because they haven’t been a senior before. If you haven’t been a senior, you don’t know what a placement professional does, who helps people find the right senior living community. You don’t know what a care manager is. You don’t know what a senior move manager is. So why not introduce people to these resources before they need them?
The goal of the show in a nutshell is to educate seniors and their families on all the resources that are out there to help them, whether they’re going to age in place, downsize and move somewhere else to age in place, or move into a senior living community. It’s been very gratifying to see that people are getting out of it what I hope they would, which is access to information and resources that they didn’t know existed and didn’t even know they needed.
PB: You also teach monthly aging roadmap classes at San Diego Oasis. What are the most common questions seniors ask about housing, and do you find these clients are often apprehensive about learning?
BD: Most seniors, about 92%, want to age in place in their current home, mostly because they’re comfortable there, they don’t want to change, they love their home and they want to stay there, which is admirable. But only about 50-60% can because either their house just cannot work for them, or they don’t know what they need to do to modify it so they can age in place successfully. It’s important for them to learn about these things so that they can age in place.
The majority of the time, seniors are apprehensive to learn, and that’s because they really prefer to age in place where they are. Now, what I have found is that the ones who are more eager to learn are the ones who age more successfully and who are more proactive in their lives, not just about housing, but in general. They recognize the signs that physically they can’t do what they used to be able to do, maybe mentally they can’t do what they used to be able to do, so they’re looking for options.
I love working with people who are proactive in trying to figure this stuff out, which is the majority of the people who go to my class. The class covers all different topics— home care, estate planning, financial, palliative care, nutrition—all to help seniors gather these resources together. Not everybody is going to choose to stay home. Some people may say, “I didn’t realize that a community could be like this. I want to go check this out.” I think it’s just getting them the information, not selling them on anything, but just providing the resources, providing the information, giving them the space to explore, and then ultimately whatever they choose, being there to support them.
PB: Your work often involved families as well as the seniors themselves. How do you balance the needs of adult children, caregivers and the client while making sure the senior’s voice remains at the center of the decision?
BD: First and foremost, it’s what is most important for the senior, and in most cases, the needs of a senior line up with the needs of the family, not always. There are times when a senior may want something and the adult child says, “No, you should do this because it’s maybe better for them in some way.”
You see the best of the best and you see the worst of the worst, unfortunately. It is important when family is involved, whether it’s because the senior wants them involved or the children feel it’s their role to do so, to keep the family engaged, help them understand what the senior wants and help with the communication. I just have to stay neutral and keep everyone engaged, keep everyone moving forward.
It’s great when I see an adult child taking a very positive, active role in supporting their parents and doing a lot of the heavy lifting, some physically, but also emotionally to get the job done. At the forefront, is it what’s best for the senior and what they want. They still have agency, and they get to decide what’s going to be right for them in their life.
PB: AI is revolutionizing how consumers search for homes, but there is often a “digital divide” when it comes to older demographics. How do you see this wave of technology affecting your senior clientele, and what is the agent’s role in bridging the gap?
BD: Most of these search engines now are incorporating some sort of AI. I know Homes.com has a tool where you can get super specific about what you’re looking for, and it’ll pop out the homes for you. But if seniors are not comfortable using that sort of interface, then they become more reliant on their agent to be able to do that and to use AI on their behalf to get this information. It does create a little bit of a divide for those who can and those who can’t. A lot of people are becoming much more comfortable with it and using it, and they’ll probably make it even easier.
I think that as it develops, and it gets better and better, and more people are more comfortable using it, and look at 10 years from now, the people who are seniors will have been not seniors when AI kind of began and started being used. It’s just a matter of time before everyone just uses it all the time. But for now, it does sometimes create a divide. So, it’s on the agents to help guide their clients using AI.
PB: You’ve said that helping seniors through this transition is a privilege. Looking ahead, what changes would you like to see in the industry to better serve aging homeowners and make these moves more accessible, transparent and fair?
BD: I definitely feel that agents should increase their education on seniors, their needs, and the different generations. I have the Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES) designation through the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). I think it’d be great if all agents had that, because at some point in your career, if you’re going to be in your career long enough, you may not specialize in working with seniors, but you need to know how to work with them. You may get a referral from a client for their parents or grandparents.
Having some of that knowledge certainly empowers people to help guide seniors and get them resources that they need, understanding that it’s not like a first-time buyer who, when it comes to their move, they’re going to get their friends to help them move and buy them pizza and beer, and that’s it. It’s a very different situation when seniors are downsizing, physically, emotionally and financially.
If agents were at least to get some sort of baseline education on working with seniors, even if it’s not a full SRES designation, but take a class, I think could really help the transitions that seniors go through just be that much better.
At Berkshire Hathaway, we have a resource center we can go to for marketing materials and all kinds of different things, and we also have chat rooms. There’s one for people who specialize in working with seniors, but no one knew about it. I posted the show in there, and all of a sudden I see this flood of messages from agents saying, “I didn’t know we had this chat room, and this is my experience.” It’s opened my eyes to the number of people who are out there who specialize in it, and yet, if I’m in a room of 20 seniors teaching a class and I ask them, “raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of a senior’s real estate specialist,” no one would raise their hand. The public doesn’t know about it, and I think that NAR does a really bad job of educating people. They don’t do it at all. What’s the value of having the designation if the people who will benefit from me having the designation don’t even know it exists?
So I tried to reach out to them and say, “Hey, I want to try to do something with the SRES in the show,” and never heard back. I sent them the YouTube link to the show, but didn’t hear back. All I’m trying to do here is to raise the bar and raise awareness for everyone about the value of working with an SRES, about the value of working with someone who has experience working with seniors.
If a senior wants to downsize from their current home and buy something, that’s great, but how are they going to be able to make the move successfully? And then how are they going to set up their home for success? Do they have to modify their home? Most agents won’t even know where to go, so they’ll just consummate the sale and then the senior has to go find those things on their own. Now, imagine if the agent was able to bring in the contractors who are CAPS certified—Certified Aging in Place Specialists—who know what things they need to modify their home, to stay in their home longer. It’s a whole industry that I never knew about until I got into this. It certainly opened my eyes.
They say by 2030, there’ll be more people over 65 than under 18. We’re very top heavy when it comes to the age of our population and housing. There’s a group called the National Aging in Place Council, and we have chapters throughout the country. There’s five pillars for aging in place successfully, and one of them, and I think the most important, is the housing component, because if you don’t have the right place to live, nothing else matters. You can only go so long without having the right housing.
PB: What does it mean to you to be named a Futurist in RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers?
BD: It’s in honor and I’m grateful to be be in a position to educate people and bring them resources they need in a way that I think people will learn from it. I love doing it—it’s a lot of fun. I tell people that I still, after almost 23 years, enjoy real estate, but making a TV show is super fun. I had a great time with the cast and crew. It’s great that I can help people get them prepared for that next chapter of life in a way that I enjoy it. The tagline is “Changing the lives of seniors one story at a time,” and I’m going to keep telling this story. I’m going to keep doing this.
Futurist is an appropriate word because we do have to look to the future as we are an aging population and help prepare everyone for that next chapter, however that’s going to look.
Check out RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers here.
RISMedia’s 2026 Newsmakers is sponsored by:
