Virtual tour
Seven stops through an Ardent home, in the order you would meet the rooms on a real visit — with the things worth looking at in each one, and the questions worth asking about them.
Room by room
Jump to whichever room you came here for — most families go straight to the bathroom and the bedroom, and they are right to.
Stop 1 of 7The street
No sign, no lobby, no reception desk — a house on a residential street with a driveway and a doorbell. Families tell us this is the first thing that makes the decision feel survivable: their mother is moving to a house, not to a building with a wing and a floor number.
What to look for
Both homes
The rooms above are photographed in our homes. Which house a room belongs to matters less than you would think — the layout, the ratio and the licence are the same in both.
Our Saugus home sits on a quiet residential street, with six private and companion rooms, a shared living room and a shaded patio for afternoons outside.
A filmed walkthrough of this house is in production. Ask us and we will send it to you the week it is finished.
Our Valencia home offers six rooms in a bright, open floor plan, with a landscaped yard and easy access to the Valencia paseos for daily walks.
A filmed walkthrough of this house is in production. Ask us and we will send it to you the week it is finished.
The real visit
Families often come twice — once alone, once with their parent. Neither visit needs an appointment weeks out, and neither ends with a contract in front of you.
Evenings and weekends included
Pick a timeFirst 5 minutes
Not a sales director — the caregiver working that afternoon, or one of the owners. You are in the living room within a minute of arriving, usually with residents already in it.
Next 10 minutes
Living areas, the kitchen, a bathroom, and whichever bedroom is open. Open the cupboards, look at the shower, sit on the bed. Nothing is staged for a visit and nothing is off limits.
Next 10 minutes
You meet the people who would be with your parent at two in the morning, and you can ask them yourself how a night goes. Residents are usually about; whether they feel like talking is their call, not ours.
Last 5 minutes
Cost, what is and is not included, what happens when needs increase, and whether we can safely provide the level of care your parent needs. If the answer to that last one is no, we will say so.
Take this with you
A tour is easy to enjoy and hard to judge. These are the questions that separate homes, and we would rather you arrive holding them than wish later that you had.
Staffing at two in the afternoon on a tour day is not the number that matters. Ask for the overnight one, and ask who covers a call-out.
In a six-bed home this should be a short, specific answer with a name attached to it.
You are listening for a sequence — who is called, in what order, and how soon you hear about it.
Every California RCFE has both, and both are public record. A home that hesitates here has told you something.
Every home has a ceiling on the care it can give. Better to hear where it sits now than to find it during a crisis.
Ask for the extras in writing — supplies, transport, a higher care level — before comparing two homes on price.
More of the questions families ask us are answered on the FAQ page.
Or how quiet it is at four in the afternoon, or how the caregiver speaks to the woman in the second chair. Come and stand in it — there is no pressure and no cost.
