Evans Senior Investments has done it again, announcing the closing of a skilled nursing portfolio sale in the state of Michigan just a couple of days after another SNF sale in Rhode Island. The deal first rose to the surface in November 2019, when the seller, CareTrust REIT, announced the intended sale after the operator, Metron Integrated Health Systems, had stopped paying rent and decided to exit the buildings in the midst of Medicaid fraud allegations involving millions of dollars of improper payments. The news came as quite a shock to CareTrust at the time, and a sale was pursued.
The portfolio was about 86% occupied across the 496 licensed beds at the time of marketing and was generating over $43 million in total revenues. So, they offered the opportunity for a buyer to quickly grow its presence in the state and improve on the existing operations. The final purchase price came to $36 million, or about $73,000 per bed, but CareTrust was not paid immediately. The REIT apparently received $3.5 million in cash and provided a short-term loan for the remaining $32.4 million at a 7.5% interest rate. Our guess is that the loan has been repaid.
