• 60 Seconds with Swett: The Great Debates of Senior Care

    Next week for our Second Quarter Investor Call, sponsored by Ziegler, we’ll be trying something different that is sure to be both entertaining and useful for our audience of operators, investors, brokers, lenders and everyone else. We’ll be tackling The Great Debates of Senior Care, covering some of the most important issues facing the industry.... Read More »
  • Thank You Ortelius?

    Brookdale Senior Living just reported June occupancy, and the increases were much better than we expected for a second quarter, which historically has been a mixed bag for the industry. Let’s just say, we were impressed. June’s same-community weighted average occupancy was 81.1%, up 220 basis points year over year and up 50 basis points... Read More »
  • SLIB Sells SNF in New Jersey

    Toby Siefert of Senior Living Investment Brokerage got a skilled nursing sale in New Jersey over the finish line after survey issues caused a buyer switch-up. Built in 1980, Medford Care Center is located in the town of Medford (about an hour east of Philadelphia) and features 180 beds on an 11-acre campus. Operations were not strong, and the... Read More »
  • Carnegie Capital Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary with Texas Portfolio Deal

    Carnegie Capital, the national seniors housing debt brokerage founded and run by JD Stettin and David Farhadian, celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a $124 million, or $117,100 per bed, portfolio acquisition transaction. Carnegie provided a combination of advisory work and debt placement for the nine-skilled nursing facility portfolio with... Read More »
  • 12 Oaks Senior Living Appoints New CFO

    12 Oaks Senior Living appointed Elliott Westerman as CFO, effective immediately. Westerman has more than two decades of leadership experience across senior living, healthcare, and real estate sectors. As CFO, Westerman will oversee all aspects of financial management, including financial planning and analysis, capital structure strategy,... Read More »
60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Brookdale Senior Living and SWAT

60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Brookdale Senior Living and SWAT

Brookdale Senior Living announced it had recently formed SWAT teams to deal with its lowest-occupancy buildings to try to get them over the 80% hump, and there are a lot of them. Since then, the term SWAT team has been appearing more and more with other providers.  SWAT is a scary term, and stands for Special Weapons and Tactics, and in law enforcement is used to deal with barricaded persons, active shooting scenes and high-risk search warrants. Not exactly something we want to be associated with trying to get customers into senior living. But I understand the intent. The other frequently used term is the “silver tsunami” about to hit us. Again, a tsunami is extremely destructive,... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Republican Budget and Medicaid Cuts

60 Seconds with Swett: The Republican Budget and Medicaid Cuts

There will be significant political interest in what happens to Medicaid funding as Republicans work to pass a budget and tax bill with their very slim majority. Touching entitlements remains politically risky, and the party is divided on whether any Medicaid cuts would be acceptable heading into an election cycle. At this stage, per-capita caps on federal Medicaid payments to states do not appear to be under serious consideration. However, even without direct federal cuts, rulemaking changes could materially affect Medicaid-dependent providers. CMS has issued a proposed rule that aims to close what it describes as a Medicaid “tax loophole” that some states have used to inflate federal... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Republican Budget and Medicaid Cuts

60 Seconds with Swett: Welltower Is on a Roll

Welltower came out with its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, and surprise, surprise, it was yet another great quarter, and its share price jumped 3.5% immediately upon the news. It was the tenth consecutive quarter in which same store SHOP NOI growth exceeded 20%, at 21.7% in the first quarter. Guidance for same store NOI growth also rose by 100 basis points to a midpoint of 19.0% for FY2025. On Tuesday’s call, Welltower did mention that SHOP margins remain below pre-pandemic levels, but they may not be for long. Also, that issue currently plagues thousands of communities in this country and was prevalent in the years before COVID too. Perhaps that is why most of what we hear from... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: April Already Passes 50 Transactions

60 Seconds with Swett: April Already Passes 50 Transactions

Tariff turmoil? Volatile and still-high interest rates? Uncertainty surrounding Medicaid spending, labor costs and HUD’s queue length? Seniors housing and care dealmakers have looked past a lot of this noise to announce 50 transactions in the first three weeks of the second quarter, putting the market on track for the busiest M&A period ever. We know we sound like a broken record, but the start of April did feel like we reached a new level of activity, and given the conversations we’ve been having in the last few weeks, the second and third quarters may only accelerate in deal volume. For some sellers, seeing through the January 2025 rate increases was enough to enter the transaction... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Republican Budget and Medicaid Cuts

60 Seconds with Swett: Adapting to the 2025 M&A Market

The M&A market is slowly shifting, with increased liquidity, further stabilizing operations and some larger and higher quality deals hitting the market. Perhaps things are not moving as quickly as some want, and cap rates are not compressing enough to attract certain sellers to the market. But interest rates have been the major drag on dealmaking, values and lending, and the recent chaos around tariffs did not help. So how are dealmakers taking advantage of the current market dynamics? When does it make sense to sell a Class-A stabilized asset these days if cap rates are not where they were several years ago? And what is going on in the debt markets that potential buyers need to be... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Republican Budget and Medicaid Cuts

60 Seconds with Swett: Medicare Advantage Sees A Pay Bump

As the healthcare industry braces for whatever impacts tariffs may have on operations, an impossible task to predict accurately given the flux on that matter, providers also are welcoming a new head of CMS, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was confirmed by the Senate last week. There is some uncertainty on how the Trump Administration will treat healthcare providers overall, specifically in the senior care industry, with some positives coming from the end of the minimum staffing mandate and an overall friendlier business climate, versus the threat of increased scrutiny on Medicare and Medicaid spending with respect to fraud and abuse potentially contributing to falling revenues. When reading the tea... Read More »