The optimism in the seniors housing and care industry was palpable at the NIC Fall Conference in Washington, D.C. last week, partially because of interest rates falling for the first time since the onset of the pandemic, but also partially because of the record-setting M&A streak we have been on for most of the year, so far. We are three quarters into 2024, and we have already virtually reached 2023’s annual deal total of 511 deals, at 508 deals according to LevinPro LTC. If you include the deals made public on October 1, we have surpassed that total, with an entire quarter to go. And if the anecdotal stories of BOVs, new listings and closing pipelines are true, we are going to shatter the previous annual record of 559 deals set in 2022.
In the third quarter, 171 deals were made public, but that is a preliminary number that is likely to rise in the coming weeks. That is down slightly from the 185 deals in the second quarter but surpasses the 152 deals of the first quarter. So there was not much of a summer lull that historically occurs. Comparing year over year, 2023’s third quarter only saw 123 deals, or the quarterly nadir in the midst of high interest rates and little liquidity. We will further analyze the quarter’s trends in the October issue of The SeniorCare Investor, to be published next week, but with the number, the size and the quality of the deals that have been announced, the M&A market seems to be in a much healthier position than in the last couple of years.
