• Senex Foundation Divests SNFs to Owner/Operator

    Vince Viverito, Jason Punzel, Jake Anderson and Taylor Graham of Senior Living Investment Brokerage were engaged by Senex Foundation, a Denver, Colorado-based owner/operator, to help with the disposition of a four-property portfolio and recently closed the second tranche involving two skilled nursing facilities in Nebraska. The deal included the... Read More »
  • 60 Seconds with Swett: The REITs’ Acquisition Appetite

    With most of the Q1 earnings results in, we’ve been sifting through a lot of good news on occupancy growth, resident rate increases, expanding NOI margins and the phenomenal long-term outlooks. But our main takeaway had to be the major M&A plans that almost every publicly traded company has completed so far this year and plans to close... Read More »
  • Sonida Senior Living Reports Q1 as CNL Deal Reshapes Portfolio

    Sonida Senior Living reported its first quarter results after becoming the eighth largest seniors housing owner toward the close of the quarter. The company completed its acquisition of CNL Healthcare Properties, a public, non-traded REIT that owned 69 seniors housing communities, bringing Sonida’s owned portfolio to 153 owned properties and... Read More »
  • Alta Senior Living Secures Refinance

    At the end of 2021, Alta Senior Living acquired Tequesta Terrace Senior Living (at that time, Village of Tequesta, Tequesta Terrace), a 106-unit assisted living/memory care community in Palm Beach County, Florida. After executing its value-add capex, operational turnaround and lease-up plan, Alta engaged Blueprint to run a full debt process. A... Read More »
  • All-Cash Skilled Nursing Deal Closes

    An undisclosed buyer acquired a 99-bed skilled nursing facility in Ohio through an all-cash transaction after the seller’s senior lender pushed for an exit. Stan Klos III of 3G Healthcare Real Estate handled the deal. An initial buyer walked away from the deal after a conversion from a lease-only structure was declined by the lender. Another... Read More »
Skilled Nursing Facilities Are Not Prisons

Skilled Nursing Facilities Are Not Prisons

Apparently, The New York Times thinks people are “held” in nursing facilities, at least in South Dakota. I don’t know if any of you caught yesterday’s front-page headline in The New York Times, but it really got me mad. The headline was, “Thousands Are Held Wrongly In Nursing Homes.” Held? Are they talking about prisons? I know no one wants to be there, but they are not “held.” The article was about South Dakota, where apparently people who should not be in a skilled nursing setting are there because there are no other options. At least none that will be paid for by someone else. One resident told investigators that when friends came to take him out for a ride, they had to sign... Read More »

The Growing Memory Care Market

Memory care is a growing need, and it has been the focus of a lot of new development. But it can be risky as well. Last week I talked about the first quarter occupancy and new construction stats, but today let’s focus on memory care. This has been an area of heightened investment interest because there are fewer memory care units in the market then AL and IL and, unfortunately, the need for memory care will only increase, and may increase at a faster pace than traditional assisted living. Some providers are even seeing an increase in the “young” population with memory care or other dementia-related issues, and I am talking about under 70 years old and not just retired NFL players. It is a... Read More »

Occupancy, Rates And Discounting In Seniors Housing

The recent NIC MAP data on occupancy, development and rate growth can be interpreted in many ways. So, what are we really to make of the NIC MAP data for the first quarter? Most of the data was viewed positively, despite a smallish decline in occupancy from last year’s fourth quarter. Absorption levels have been increasing, according to the data, and construction starts as a percent of existing supply declined from both the fourth quarter and the year-ago quarter. Does this mean that the much-feared over-building threat has dissipated? Hardly, as one quarter’s worth of data does not present a strong trend, and it is possible the small decline in starts was related to the chaos in the... Read More »

The Future of the 40-Year Old SNF

Nearly half of the skilled nursing facilities in the U.S. are 40 years old and older, and that is going to be a big problem? Have you ever wondered what is going to happen to all those skilled nursing facilities that were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and look it? Some are even older, although I hope most of them have had some sort of renovation over the years. These “old” nursing facilities are going to struggle over the next 10 years, if they are not already struggling today. They are usually small from a square feet per bed basis with a high Medicaid census. Many would have difficulty taking care of high acuity subacute patients. And I suspect most would not be sought after in any kind... Read More »

Assisted Living “Lite” Or Not

Whether you think you operate your assisted living community under a hospitality model or a healthcare model, there will only be more health care in the future. Recently, there have been some stories in the senior care media about the hospitality model for assisted living compared with the healthcare model. That was a big debate in the late 1990s when 20 assisted living companies went public as some companies didn’t want to be labeled as “healthcare” companies, with all the regulatory and reimbursement baggage that comes with it. Some preferred to call the hospitality model “assisted living lite.” In fact, the founder of Sunrise Senior Living was famously quoted as saying Sunrise did not... Read More »

Time To Move Forward

Activist shareholders can distract management from focusing on growth and cash flow, and maybe Brookdale and Capital Senior Living can move forward in peace. Don’t you just hate distractions. Andy Smith at Brookdale has had to deal with a bunch of activist shareholders for the past year while trying to right his ship. Larry Cohen of Capital Senior Living had his activist several years ago, who then went on his board and became aligned with management’s goals. In round two this year, he has come to agreement with another one, Lucas Advisors, known by some as the trust fund baby hedge fund. Capital has agreed to appoint a new independent Board member, consulting with Lucas on the... Read More »