• Strawberry Fields REIT’s 2025 Growth

    Strawberry Fields REIT reported its 2025 operating results, noting that it was the best year since its inception more than 10 year ago. The company posted significant increases in FFO and AFFO, and it completed more than $110 million in several new acquisitions. Its portfolio now includes 131 skilled nursing facilities, 10 assisted living... Read More »
  • Owner/Operator Exits SNF Sector

    An independent owner/operator exited the skilled nursing sector through its divestment of Sunrise Country Manor, which has 80 beds in Milford, Nebraska, and features a mix of private and semi-private units. It maintained an 83% occupancy rate at the time of the sale. A regional operator looking to expand its footprint in Nebraska acquired the... Read More »
  • Assisted Living Providers Join Forces 

    Majestic Residences recently expanded its footprint, adding 17 assisted living communities and six in active development, through its acquisition of Avendelle Senior Living. Avendelle will be integrated into the Majestic Residences platform, with Avendelle’s corporate team retained. The combined organization will operate under the Majestic... Read More »
  • Investor Secures Financing and Acquires Class-A Community

    BWE’s Seniors Housing Capital Markets Team sold and financed The Capstone at Station Camp, which sits in the Nashville, Tennessee MSA. Built in 2021, the Class-A assisted living and memory care community comprises 100 units in Gallatin. It is operated by TerraBella Senior Living.  BWE represented the seller, Hunt Midwest. The buyer was a... Read More »
  • Multiple SNFs Sell in Separate Transactions

    A large skilled nursing company sold its 181-bed skilled nursing facility to a private investment firm based in New York, exiting South Carolina in the process. The buyer had an existing skilled nursing footprint, and will be leasing this facility to a regional operator. The building was older, built in the 1980s, and was around 80% occupied at... Read More »

Seniors Housing Weekly Update- Are LTACs Gaming The System?

June 9, 2015. 60 Seconds with Steve Monroe. A new study appeared that seems to indicate patient discharges are influenced by the timing of Medicare reimbursement… Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal came out with a story on how it appears that patient discharges at long-term acute care hospitals (LTACs) have been timed to reimbursement payments. Specifically, to maximize those payments. The story was based on a study that appeared in the journal Health Affairs and had been reported on previously. Apparently, what the authors of the study noticed is that when the reimbursement methodology changed, between 2005 and 2010 for full implementation, there was a significant spike in the... Read More »

Seniors Housing Weekly Update- Survey Says Cap Rates Will Remain Stable in 2015

June 2, 2015. 60 Seconds with Steve Monroe. A recent survey concludes that cap rates will not be decreasing this year, but expectations were lower than in the previous year… Senior Living Valuation Services just released the results of its annual survey regarding cap rates. Based on 62 surveys returned, the decline in what the respondents believe cap rates will do in the next 12 months was larger than in previous years. This is surprising, because cap rates declined significantly in 2014, according to our statistics, so we would not expect a meaningful change this year. The difference is that our stats are based on actual deals, compared with what the respondents think will happen in... Read More »

Seniors Housing Weekly Update – Legal Wrangling With CCRCs

May 26, 2015. 60 Seconds with Steve Monroe. One CCRC lost a legal battle with regard to its dining room policies. Other ramifications?… Legal Wrangling With CCRCs The American Seniors Housing Association recently issued a legal brief on a fair housing settlement involving a CCRC. The Justice Department had filed a complaint against a CCRC that had restricted use of the main residential dining room to the residents of the independent living units. This restriction also applied to spouses of an IL resident who were in the skilled nursing unit. Having personally spent a lot of time in a CCRC, I know that many residents don’t like to be reminded of what the future will be like for them,... Read More »

Medicaid Managed Care Coming To You

May 19, 2015. 60 Seconds with Steve Monroe. The skilled nursing community had better get ready for the managed care tsunami… Is now the time to talk about Medicaid managed care? When managed care first entered the skilled nursing world, it was viewed as somewhere between private pay and Medicaid, but closer to the former in terms of daily rates. But that was in its infancy, and that was not involving Medicaid managed care plans. States are getting slammed with the expansion of Medicaid enrollees, and when the federal government’s commitment to cover the additional costs begins to decrease next year, watch out. The managed care companies will be very different from state Medicaid... Read More »

Brookdale Occupancy Declined As Expected

Brookdale Senior Living was no different from the rest of the market, posting sharp drops in first quarter occupancy. When we wrote the May issue of The SeniorCare Investor, we had to make some assumptions before Brookdale Senior Living announced its first quarter earnings. One assumption was that its occupancy rates had dropped given everything else we had heard in the market. Our assumptions were right. The legacy Emeritus properties posted a 110 basis point decline from the fourth quarter of 2014, and a whopping 200 basis point decline from a year ago. The legacy Brookdale properties dropped 80 basis points sequentially and 110 basis points from a year ago. This was not good news, but... Read More »

REIT Shares Under Pressure Again

Rising interest rates are sending health care REIT shares down, but will it last? The timing could not be worse. What am I talking about? The recent rise in interest rates and its impact on REIT share values, not to mention looming acquisitions. The 10-year Treasury rate hit a low of 1.65% in February, which most people did not think was sustainable. It has now risen by a third, or 55 basis points, to 2.20%. That is a huge percentage change in rates, even though still quite low from an historical perspective and much lower than the jump in the spring of 2013 that sent REIT share prices plunging by 25%, which was a big overreaction. Easy for me to say. But with the recent rise in rates,... Read More »