• WesBanco Launches New Healthcare Vertical

    WesBanco Bank recently launched its dedicated healthcare vertical, under the leadership of Suzanne Myers as EVP-Commercial Healthcare Director, and is already off to the races with a handful of senior care transactions closed. The strategic initiative will provide financing across the continuum of care, including seniors housing, skilled nursing,... Read More »
  • LTC Properties Acquires Class-A California Community

    JLL Capital Markets completed the sale of Loma Clara, an 89-licensed-bed, Class-A seniors housing community in Morgan Hill, California. JLL’s Seniors Housing Capital Markets team marketed the property on behalf of the seller, Steadfast Senior Living, and procured the buyer, LTC Properties. The REIT acquired the community within its SHOP segment... Read More »
  • Not-for-Profit Divests Texas Standalone MC Community to Family-Owned Company

    Matthew Alley of Senior Living Investment Brokerage announced another Lone Star State deal, selling a 20-unit memory care community in Sugar Land, Texas. Built in 1998, the community was the only seniors housing asset of a not-for-profit organization, which decided to divest. It was 80% occupied but losing around $30,000 a year on $1.26 million... Read More »
  • Owner/Operator Purchases Vacant Community for Reopening

    Blueprint was engaged to market a 100-unit vacant assisted living community located 10 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio, that had been taken offline following operational challenges. The community sustained profitability during prior operations. Blueprint generated four competitive offers from sophisticated owner/operators with proven capabilities... Read More »
  • Frank Cassidy Officially Nominated as FHA Commissioner

    Frank Cassidy, most recently a Walker & Dunlop senior managing director of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Finance where he originated loans for multifamily, nursing home and seniors housing properties, has been officially nominated by President Trump as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the HUD. He... 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 »

60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: The Ensign Group Does It Again

I opened my email yesterday and a good industry friend sent me The Ensign Group’s second quarter earnings results with the question, Scam? I can understand his disbelief, as I have also thought there may be some monkey business with the company and its superior performance, especially during the pandemic. I could not find anything. One equity analyst asked, what’s not to like? Double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth, sequential and year-over-year occupancy growth, average daily revenue is up and management increased its guidance for the rest of the year. And remember, Ensign owns and operates skilled nursing facilities, a sector still under tremendous financial pressure. How did... Read More »

60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Investors Need Some Straight Talk

I know we live in a litigious country, and public companies have their teams of lawyers and PR consultants to protect them, telling them to disclose a minimum amount of information. But don’t you think it is time for some straight talk? I do. We are coming out of the pandemic distress, slowly for some and not as slow for others. Butwith census growth not what it was in the second and third quarters of 2021, let’s admit that this will be a long slog. We need both large census increases combined with margin increases. We will not get both as long as labor costs keep rising and inflation levels remain at 40-year records. And it is doubtful we will get back to the census levels of 2014-2015... Read More »
The Rise of Active Adult

The Rise of Active Adult

We’ve talked about the new active adult sector a lot lately because a lot of people are talking about it. First, several years ago, our inboxes began filling with announcements of groundbreakings for this new product type, and as those accelerated in the last couple of years, we started to see more acquisitions of the communities, which had in many cases reached 100% occupancy in a matter of months. More seniors housing and multifamily investors took notice, and as construction slowed throughout the pandemic and as operators dealt first with COVID then with lower occupancy and labor costs, the sector was seen as a supremely safe investment. And we had to agree. But as the sector begins to... Read More »