Three years of a pandemic can bring clarity to senior care facility owners, and big decisions are being made to move on from operating partners that can’t cut it and find ones that can. The Ensign Group announced the operational takeover of 20 skilled nursing facilities formerly leased to North American by Sabra Health Care REIT, finalizing a previously announced deal. The 20 properties are located in California, for which Ensign will enter into two separate triple-net leases with affiliates of Sabra with initial terms of 18 and 20 years, respectively, and each with an accompanying corporate guarantee from The Ensign Group, Inc. Ensign also elected, with Sabra’s consent, to sublease three facilities located in the greater Sacramento area to Aspen Skilled Healthcare, Inc. So, Ensign affiliates will operate 17 of the 20 buildings, adding 1,462 operational beds to Ensign’s portfolio, and Aspen will operate three of the 20 buildings, representing 245 operational beds.
Another four North American facilities in Washington State were transferred to Avamere Family of Companies under its existing master lease of nine facilities in the state with an initial term of 13 years.
Genesis Healthcare also announced it was adding 38 facilities to its operational portfolio, reversing the company’s downsizing mode of recent years. Included in the deal are 34 skilled nursing facilities in Pennsylvania and four in Colorado, all of which were previously operated by ProMedica on behalf of Welltower. This move would also be a reversal for Welltower, which exited its operating relationship with Genesis two years ago.
However, it’s a new Genesis, after the company was acquired by ReGen Healthcare LLC, a private-equity-backed firm based in New York, in 2021. ReGen and its PE backer Pinta Capital Partners, which was founded by Joel Landau, owner of Allure Group, financed an initial $50 million in debt to support the now-private company as it stabilized operations and prepared for growth.
