• Ensign Announces Eight Acquisitions

    April showers apparently brought The Ensign Group acquisitions this May, as the publicly traded provider announced eight separate deals, including four where its captive REIT Standard Bearer Healthcare REIT acquired the real estate. Two of the deals in Kansas and Arizona were profiled here, with Senior Living Investment Brokerage handling the... Read More »
  • SLIB Handles Kansas and Arizona Deals

    In The Ensign Group’s recent slew of acquisition announcements, it was revealed that the provider was the buyer in two transactions that were handled by Senior Living Investment Brokerage. First, Nick Cacciabando, Jeff Binder and Ryan Saul were engaged by a local owner in its divestment of its only senior care facility.   Hillside... Read More »
  • Newmark Announces Two Transactions

    The team at Newmark announced a couple of closings, including the sale of an eight-property seniors housing portfolio located across the country. Dubbed Project Kandy, the portfolio features 1,024 total units of independent living, assisted living and memory care, with an average age of 14 years.  In addition, Newmark sold a seniors housing... Read More »
  • Fortress Investment Group Purchases in Arizona

    Marcus & Millichap was engaged by a private, family office merchant builder in its divestment of a fully stabilized seniors housing community in Arizona. Built in 2019, Inspira at Arrowhead comprises 165 independent living, assisted living and memory care units in Glendale. Nick Stahler, Hamid Panahi and Steve Gebbing of Institutional... Read More »
  • CFG Secures Bridge Refinance for Ohio Portfolio

    Capital Funding Group announced the closing of a $65 million bridge loan to support the refinance of nine senior care facilities in Ohio. The portfolio includes one independent living community, one assisted living community, and seven skilled nursing facilities totaling 709 beds. The financing was closed on behalf of a nationally recognized... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Two Cheers for the SNF Rate Bump

60 Seconds with Swett: Two Cheers for the SNF Rate Bump

CMS came out with its final skilled nursing facility payment rates for fiscal year 2024, and the sector will benefit from a 4.0% net increase, or approximately $1.4 billion, in Medicare Part A payments. That is up from the initially proposed 3.7% net increase and reflects a 6.4% net market basket update to the payment rates. There were a couple of negative adjustments that brought the net rate increase down, including a negative 2.3% decrease as a result of the second phase of the PDPM parity adjustment recalibration. That reduction came as no surprise, as PDPM was meant to be budget neutral and has been a net-benefit to many SNFs since the 2019 implementation. But to the SNF advocates... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Two Cheers for the SNF Rate Bump

60 Seconds with Swett: What Still Needs to Be Done to Solve the Staffing Crisis?

Will the senior care industry ever solve its labor issues? Before the pandemic, overdevelopment led to high levels of staff poaching in certain markets and rising wages to combat it. Then the pandemic, plus the government checks that kept many workers at home, led to more severe staffing shortages and the necessity for temporary staffing agencies to fill the gap, at exorbitant prices. It was around that time when we hosted a webinar tackling the staffing crisis in senior care and the potential solutions, with panelists Barb Clapp, who had just taken the helm at Dwyer Workforce Development, and Steve LaForte of Cascadia Healthcare, which LevinPro LTC subscribers can watch here. Nearly two... Read More »
60 Seconds with Monroe: SNF Industry Needs To Police Itself

60 Seconds with Monroe: SNF Industry Needs To Police Itself

As many of you would suspect, I am no fan of New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James. She politicizes too many things and definitely has a partisan agenda, and one which I do not favor. But after reading through the 300-page court filing against Centers Health Care and related companies, as well as its owners, well, I found myself agreeing with her. The cases involve the poor “care” of residents in a few New York nursing homes, as well as the alleged misuse of $83 million of Medicaid and Medicare funds for other purposes, including, allegedly, the purchase of a large stake in the Israeli airline, EL AL. Money is fungible, and one cannot distinguish between cash from private... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Two Cheers for the SNF Rate Bump

60 Seconds with Swett: Q2:23 M&A Activity Rebounds Above 100 Transactions

The M&A market rebounded, sort of, in the second quarter of 2023, rising to 110 publicly announced transactions, compared with 99 in the first quarter. Considering the economic shock of fast-rising interest rates, and how many deals died in all stages of the transaction pipeline last fall, the volume was actually impressive. Most of the dealmakers we talk to say that their pipelines are healthy, albeit moving slower and with more difficulty than before. We are still way down from the 147 transactions recorded in the second quarter of 2022, which annualized would have resulted in nearly 600 deals for the year. But a lot has changed in a year, clearly.  We are missing the larger... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Two Cheers for the SNF Rate Bump

60 Seconds with Swett: What Will the Boomers Want?

The baby boomers have been referenced as the reason for investors to enter the seniors housing market for more than a decade, even though we are still several years away from the front end of them aging into the vast majority of seniors housing communities. But there is no guarantee that boomers will move into seniors housing, especially if new tech can better solve for health care, activities of daily living, property maintenance and socialization in the home, not to mention economic factors that may prevent seniors from selling their homes or may impact their savings and investment accounts to render seniors housing services unaffordable to them. Beyond all that, what if the current... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Persistence of Higher Capital Costs

60 Seconds with Swett: The Persistence of Higher Capital Costs

After the Fed held interest rates steady following 10 consecutive increases but left the door open for potentially two additional increases this year, you can’t help but think, what has gone as planned, or as predicted, in the last several years? Very little, unfortunately. Inflation has persisted in the economy, and rates will have to remain elevated for longer than earlier projections. Sounds a little familiar to the overly optimistic predictions of a seniors housing occupancy and margin recovery, post-pandemic, which is taking longer to materialize, and may never happen in many markets. We’re just saying that a little more conservatism may be needed in people’s projections or proformas... Read More »