• Ziegler Handles Providence Portfolio Sale

    The Ensign Group, Inc. has agreed to acquire eight facilities in the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, subject to the completion of certain regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. This acquisition includes the real estate and operations and are being acquired from Providence Home and Community Care. The real estate... Read More »
  • Ignite Medical Resorts Acquires in Texas

    Blueprint was engaged by a Houston-based real estate developer and investment firm to facilitate the sale of a skilled nursing facility in El Paso, Texas. The facility had been leased to a subsidiary of Vibra Healthcare, a national specialty hospital and skilled nursing operator based in Pennsylvania.  Built in 2017, VibraLife El Paso... Read More »
  • Class-A Community Trades in Philadelphia

    Berkadia announced the sale of a Class-A independent living, personal care and memory care community in the Philadelphia MSA. It was built in 2019. Berkadia Seniors Housing & Healthcare, led by Managing Directors Dave Fasano, Ross Sanders, Cody Tremper and Mike Garbers, closed the transaction on behalf of the seller, a private equity firm.... Read More »
  • Wisconsin AL Community Changes Hands

    On the heels of his closing in Minnesota, Bob Richards of Senior Care Realty headed over to Wisconsin to sell a small assisted living community in Dane County. Built in the mid-1990s, the community featured 20 units and a mostly Medicaid census. But occupancy was 100%, and the community operated at a strong margin above 30%. That is impressive,... Read More »
  • Private Asset-Based Lender Acquires Two Senior Notes

    Blueprint facilitated the sale of two senior notes secured by 24 seniors housing communities. The portfolio of communities spans approximately 1,200 units across eight states. Prior to the sale, all of the communities securing the notes transitioned to a new, national operator as part of a larger corporate wind down of the borrower. Individual... Read More »

60 Seconds With Swett: A Bad Inflation Report and Its Effects on M&A

The Labor Department’s latest inflation report was certainly not the news that everyone was hoping for, and that many were expecting. According to the report, the core consumer price index, which excludes energy and food, rose 6.3% in August from a year earlier, up from 5.9% in both June and July. That was the real shock of the report, and the Dow plummeted by more than 1,100 points at one point on Tuesday. Crucially, this is the last report released before the Fed meets on September 20 and 21, which only increases the chances of another 75-basis point increase to the federal funds rate. M&A has already been affected by the rise of interest rates this year, so another jump (along with... Read More »

60 Seconds With Swett: Judging the Mood of Next Week’s NIC Conference

Next week is NIC’s Fall Conference in Washington, D.C., and we are curious to see just how inflation, rising interest rates and general economic uncertainty will affect the mood of the many dealmakers in attendance. We are on track to break a record for total transactions announced in a year, and only an especially slow fourth quarter would prevent that from happening. Given how much capital is out there for higher yielding assets (compared to multifamily that is), and the fact that rates are still historically low for now, we think we’ll break that record. There will just be a little more conservatism in most buyer’s bids and from their lending partners, which is not a bad thing. The... Read More »

60 Seconds With Steve Monroe: In Memoriam: Bill Sheriff

We learned two days ago that our friend Bill Sheriff passed away over the weekend. We lost a true gentleman and a true leader in the seniors housing industry. Not many people knew Bill well, as he was a quiet, but thoughtful, man. Known to be a man of few words, I had the honor of sitting down with him, one-on-one, for a four-hour interview for ASHA’s Entrepreneurial Spirit of Seniors Housing series. And yes, it did last four hours, and yes, he did most of the talking. I had known Bill for a few decades, but mostly short conversations at conferences or on the phone. But when you spend four hours with someone, starting with when they were born all the way to the present day, with many... Read More »

60 Seconds With Swett: Interest Rate Concerns Cooling M&A Market

In the last couple of months, we have heard from a number of people in the dealmaking business that rising interest rates have caused their potential buyers to hit pause, and a couple of major investors even said that pencils were down for the time being. We can’t say we’re surprised, given where wages have gone and what other issues inflation has caused. And if future earnings are affected by permanently higher labor costs alone, then the higher debt payments caused by higher rates really won’t cut it for those buyers. We have also heard that bid-ask spreads were widening, which will affect transaction volume. The terms “bid-ask spread” and “pencils down” conjure up memories of the worst... Read More »

60 Seconds With Swett: SNF Values Soar Post-Pandemic, AL Falls

We continue to observe the post-pandemic senior care M&A market with curiosity, with many crosscurrents of headwinds and tailwinds to make sense of. And our most recent valuation statistics, which includes prices and financials both publicly announced and confidentially disclosed to us, shed some light on the currentmarket.First, the average price for skilled nursing facilities in the last four quarters soared 19% to $118,600 per bed from $98,000 per bed in calendar year 2021. Taking out the exceptionally high estimated price for Stonerise Healthcare’s SNFs, we still see the average price rising above $100,000 per bed for the four-quarter period. With more facilities coming up for sale... Read More »

60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Brookdale Has Great Start To Third Quarter

Brookdale Has Great Start To Third Quarter Nearly two years ago, we wrote that the first half of every year was a census downer for the industry, but that the third quarter was always a winner. We are making history, or better said, you are making history. The first half of this year has been a winner, which it should have been because of the COVID recovery. But census should have been growing faster, held back in part by the labor supply problems and lingering COVID outbreaks. Month-end occupancy for Brookdale Senior Living increased by 210 basis points in the first half of 2022, and then got a great start for the third quarter with a 50-basis point increase in July. The weighted average... Read More »