• Sabra’s Q4 Deals Push 2025 New Investments to $450 Million

    Sabra Health Care REIT released its fourth quarter results. On a year-over-year basis, same-store cash NOI increased 12.6% for the fourth quarter of 2025, while the 2025 quarterly year-over-year average increase was 15.0%, inclusive of the stabilized facilities formerly operated by Holiday Retirement.  Its Q4 acquisitions brought the... Read More »
  • CareTrust Closes 2025 with 169 New Property Investments

    CareTrust REIT came out with its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 earnings and is continuing on its growth trajectory. In Q4, the REIT added 19 properties to its portfolio, comprising 14 triple-net leased skilled nursing facilities, two triple-net leased seniors housing communities and three SHOP communities, all totaling $561.5 million in... Read More »
  • Separate Sellers Divest in Florida

    Berkadia announced two seniors housing closings, both involving communities in the Sunshine State. First, Berkadia represented a Maryland-based private equity investment firm in its divestment of a 130-unit independent living, assisted living and memory care community in the Jacksonville, Florida MSA. The asset was built in 2015. Ross Sanders,... Read More »
  • Idaho IL/AL Community Receives HUD Financing

    Berkadia secured $27.5 million in financing for a seniors housing community in Idaho. The asset comprises 191 independent living and assisted living units, and was 97% occupied at the time of closing. Bianca Andujo and Steve Muth closed the financing through HUD’s 232/223(f) program for a first-time Berkadia client based in Tennessee. The loan... Read More »
  • Welltower Releases Strong Results, Again

    Welltower announced its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results, which reflected a strong year, as anticipated. Investors seemed to agree, with shares rising to an intraday high of 5.9% above the prior close the day following the release, before finishing up 3.5%.  In the fourth quarter, the REIT saw 400 basis points of average occupancy... Read More »

Seniors Housing Occupancy Still Not Strong Enough

The third quarter showed some positive movement for seniors housing occupancy, but not positive enough, especially with construction starts. Well, well, well, what are we to make of the third quarter occupancy and construction stats that came out from NIC last week? The good news was that sequentially, occupancy at stabilized assisted living properties increased by 25 basis points to 90.5%, but was still down 68 basis points from a year ago. That means that the summer uptick that we had been hearing about may not have been as strong as many had thought. One issue we have is that the third quarter sequential occupancy growth for the top 99 MSAs was at the low end for the past seven years,... Read More »

NHI’s new CEO

National Health Investors (NHI) has found its new CEO following the much publicized departure of its former chief executive, Justin Hutchens, who took over the CIO job at HCP (and dare we say the top job in a few years?). Effective October 5, Eric Mendelsohn was tapped as NHI’s CEO after already serving as interim CEO since the beginning of August. Before joining NHI as Executive Vice President of Corporate Finance in January 2015, Mr. Mendelsohn was previously at Emeritus, where, as SVP of Corporate Development, he led the way in such large transactions as the $3 billion joint venture with Blackstone and the $278 million Summerville merger. Our congratulations to Eric, well... Read More »

The Buzz at NIC

With record attendance (again), the buzz continued to be positive, despite some looming concerns. Well, what can I say after my 25th annual NIC conference? I could talk about the record number of attendees, the building, buying, investing and financing buzz. But did anyone notice, just one block from the hotel, the vacant lot for sale with banners waving in the wind, proclaiming “Senior Living Site Available.” I’m not kidding. People were there to do deals, make new contacts and expand existing ones, and for the newbies, to try to get a better understanding of the seniors housing and care sector. But the NIC organizers had a new program, called NIC Talks, and for this conference the theme... Read More »

Decker joins Board of Directors

Brookdale Senior Living announced that its Board of Directors appointed Daniel Decker as a Class I director and as the Non-Executive Chairman of the Board, effective October 1. Mr. Decker previously served on the boards of several REITs and other seniors housing companies, including Omega Healthcare Investors, Sentio Healthcare Properties, Health Care REIT (now Welltower) and Forum Group. Recently, he joined with KKR and Beecken Petty O’Keefe & Company to acquire the operations of Sunrise Senior Living in 2013. Mr. Decker will succeed Jeffrey Leeds in his position as Non-Executive Chairman of the Board. Read More »

Riding Into NIC With A Market Disconnect

With the 25th annual NIC Conference upon us, the public markets seem to be crashing, and Brookdale Senior Living will be topic number 1. If you can believe it, this will be my 25th straight NIC annual conference. Yes, every one of them since the first one in Washington, D.C. when there were maybe 500 attendees. I happened to be one of the plenary speakers, giving the state of the skilled nursing market report. The funny thing was, the NIC organizers had to send someone to “check me out” to see if I was legit. Well, I hope over the last 25 years I have been successful in establishing my legitimacy. But you never know. As we all arrive today in Washington, perhaps the biggest topic will be... Read More »

Mourning Granger Cobb

We mourn the passing of Granger Cobb, the former CEO of Emeritus and Board member of Brookdale Senior Living. Granger spent almost his entire career serving the needs of the elderly, starting with his first company, Cobbco, Inc. While he lost his fight against cancer, his spirit will live on in the senior living professionals he nurtured over the past 30 years. He is survived by his wife of 31 years and two daughters. A celebration of his life will be on October 24. Read More »