About SREI.

The Early Years

Nikki started in residential real estate in 1990. Chris got his license in 1995. They weren’t yet focused on the mature market — they were just agents building careers. But Nikki’s academic path was pointing somewhere specific. She earned her Family Studies & Gerontology degree in 1997 and then a Masters in Counseling Psychology, both from Southern Nazarene University. Throughout that period she was also working part time as a mental health technician on adult psychiatric and senior diagnostic units, as a case manager for an areawide aging agency, and as a Licensed Professional Counselor across multiple clinical settings — all while continuing to sell real estate.

She wasn’t studying aging from a distance. She was sitting across from older adults and families every week, watching them navigate some of the hardest decisions of their lives. That changes how you see things.

In 2000, Nikki and Chris made a deliberate decision: the mature market would be their specialty. Not a side focus. Their specialty. They launched a real estate and senior move management practice built around the clients most agents weren’t equipped to serve — longtime homeowners, downsizers, families managing estates, adults navigating the transition from independent living to something else entirely.

Real People Closing Real Transactions

The specialty worked. After clearing the initial learning curve — which included figuring out how to market to, communicate with, and truly serve the senior segment well — they built a practice that consistently closed 80–120 transactions annually. The vast majority being downsizers and last-time home sellers. These weren’t quick flips or investor deals. They were complex, emotionally loaded, high-stakes transactions that required a different kind of business model.

That volume, sustained over years, is part of what makes SREI’s curriculum different. The material wasn’t developed in a classroom or pulled only from research. It came from thousands of transactions — the conversations that went sideways, the family dynamics that derailed deals, the clients who needed more than a comparative market analysis to make a decision.

The Personal Side

It wasn’t just professional experience that shaped their understanding of this market segment. Both Nikki and Chris were actively involved in the lives of their grandparents during their later years — and both navigated the sales of family homes after their grandparents passed.

Nikki’s grandfather made the transition from a farm he had worked for decades to assisted living, and ultimately to long-term care. Watching that unfold — the logistics, the grief, the complexity of leaving a place that had defined a life — gave her a firsthand understanding of what that kind of move actually costs a person.

Chris’s grandmother developed dementia and required placement in a memory care community. And when Chris’s father died, his mother faced the task of downsizing from the home she and her husband had shared for 53 years — the only home Chris had ever known growing up. She ultimately moved to a condo nearby. It was the right decision. It was also a hard one.

These weren’t case studies. They were their families. And those experiences permanently shaped how they train agents to approach their practices — not as a transaction category, but as one of the most significant life chapters a person or family will ever navigate.

From Regional To National

In 2005, Nikki and Chris sold their practices — the real estate brokerage and the move management company — and stepped into leadership, coaching, and training roles within a national real estate franchise. They spent several years working with agents across the country, first in Florida, then Louisiana, and ultimately in Austin, Texas, where they joined the franchise’s corporate coaching operation. Nikki worked as a BOLD Coach, traveling across the U.S. as the fledgling program launched and ultimately became a major industry movement; Chris was hired as Director of Operations for MAPS Coaching while also serving as a Leadership Coach.

Those years sharpened their understanding of how agents learn, what makes training stick, and what most general real estate education gets wrong. They also confirmed something Nikki had suspected since her time as a national SRES instructor: the existing training for agents working with older adults wasn’t sufficient. Not by a long shot.

In 2011, they made the decision to build something of their own. That decision became SREI.

Building SREI

Seniors Real Estate Institute launched in 2012. The Certified Senior Housing Professional® certification followed in 2013 — designed from the start to be rigorous, practitioner-tested, and grounded in the real complexity of mature-market transactions. Not a course you take over a weekend and forget. An experience, education, and credential that mean something.

In 2015, family circumstances took Nikki and Chris back to Oklahoma City. Aging family members needed support — and so they returned. They launched a second combined practice including both real estate and senior move management. This time not simply production for production sake, but as a working laboratory. They were building SREI programming in real time, and they needed to stay current. Running active businesses meant they were dealing with the same issues their students and members were dealing with — every day.

That practice operated for a decade, generating the real-world insight that continues to drive how SREI trains and coaches its members.

Using their combined skills in the areas of real estate, coaching, training, counseling, and gerontology, Nikki and Chris launched a second signature training — Senior Downsizing Coach Skills Training®. In 2019 they graduated their first class of Certified Senior Downsizing Coaches® (CSDC), addressing the gap that even well-trained CSHPs kept running into: clients who needed more than just a competent agent. They needed someone who could effectively and confidently coach them through the emotional and logistical complexities of leaving a home they had lived in for many decades. This training was built for that. People were stuck. Senior Downsizing Coaches could help.

Where They Are Now

Nikki continues to serve as the primary voice, curriculum architect, and lead trainer at SREI. She stays involved in research as a college adjunct professor, an active speaker and volunteer in the aging services industry, and an ongoing field researcher — because staying connected to what’s actually happening with older adults and the professionals who serve them is how SREI stays relevant and continues to innovate.

Chris runs SREI from the operational side — systems, technical infrastructure, and event management. His legal studies background, NLP certification, and John Maxwell leadership training all show up in how he supports the organization, staff and faculty, and agent members.

Together, the Buckelews bring something to the senior real estate industry that no credential or course catalog can manufacture: decades of real experience, a deep personal connection to those they serve, and an ongoing commitment to being advocates, practitioners, and educators — in that order.