• Sabra Health Care REIT Picks Up the Transaction Pace

    Sabra Health Care REIT is ramping up its senior care M&A activity and its SHOP exposure, set to exceed the $1 billion in investments it spent in 2025. The REIT completed several transactions during the first quarter, with investments closed year to date totaling $206.1 million, with an estimated initial cash yield of 8.0%. The pipeline... Read More »
  • Clarion Partners Continues Growing

    Clarion Partners is continuing on its acquisition streak, adding Legacy House of Avondale to its portfolio. The 169-unit Class-A assisted living/memory care community is in the Phoenix, Arizona MSA, with a strong operational footing. Clarion Partners further expanded its relationship with MorningStar Senior Living through the deal, partnering... Read More »
  • Blueprint Handles Virginia Deal

    A publicly traded company engaged Blueprint to sell a value-add independent living community in a growing submarket of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1987, the 122-unit community could benefit from investments in the physical plant. It was also not stabilized.  A competitive market generated multiple bids in multiple rounds and improved... Read More »
  • Public REIT Acquires Full-Continuum Communities

    A pair of full-continuum seniors housing communities that sit approximately 10 miles apart traded in Northwest Arkansas. Village on the Park Bentonville in Bentonville and Village on the Park Rogers in Rogers offer a total of 208 independent living, assisted living and memory care units. Each community also offers contiguous land for further... Read More »
  • VIUM Capital Leads HUD LEAN Mid-Year Rankings

    HUD’s fiscal year 2026 hit the halfway point on March 31, and so far VIUM Capital is leading the way in closed 232 loans and by total loan volume with 41 transactions and $598.0 million in volume, respectively. That represents 22% of the program’s closed loans in the first half of the fiscal year and 19% of the total volume. And 32 of VIUM’s HUD... Read More »
Sonida Senior Living Gets New Life

Sonida Senior Living Gets New Life

It is well known that the recovery from the pandemic is taking longer than many had expected, and that after the initial surge in occupancies starting in the second quarter of 2021 the rate of growth has slowed, even with the recent suppression of new construction and openings. All of this is impacting the capital markets, especially as interest rates keep rising. We have repeatedly stated that the industry needs to fix its capital structure. The logjam of borrowers and creditors fighting and not coming to terms that are workable for both sides needs to burst. TPG Capital and Sabra Health Care REIT could not come to any agreement with Fannie Mae over $485 million in debt on their Enlivant... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Q2:23 M&A Activity Rebounds Above 100 Transactions

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: Supreme Court Decision Hits Public SNFs

60 Seconds with Swett: Supreme Court Decision Hits Public SNFs

So much of the ire against skilled nursing facilities (personal, political and in the media) has been directed towards privately-owned facilities, and mainly their ownership those they deem as “private equity”, because of their great sin of caring for nursing home patients at a profit, and often not even at one. However, a recent Supreme Court ruling is now opening up public SNFs to the threat of lawsuits on the basis of civil rights violations. After the wife of a patient with dementia in a county-owned SNF in Indiana sued alleging he was unnecessarily chemically restrained and  involuntarily transferred without their consent, which would be violations of the Federal Nursing Home Reform... Read More »
Brookdale Senior Living Occupancy Jumps in May

Brookdale Senior Living Occupancy Jumps in May

After struggling in the first quarter, which historically has been the industry norm, Brookdale Senior Living posted an increase of 40 basis points in weighted average occupancy in May (compared with up by 70 basis points in May 2022), and 50 basis points for month-end occupancy (compared with up by 90 basis points in month-end 2022). That is the good news. The bad news is that weighted average occupancy in May was still just 76.6%, the same as in January. So far, weighted average occupancy has increased by 50 basis points in the second quarter (two months). This compares with an increase of 100 basis points in the first two months of the second quarter of 2022, and 160 basis points for... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Supreme Court Decision Hits Public SNFs

60 Seconds with Swett: Welltower Increases Guidance

Welltower came out with a business update for June, and there was some good news on the financial front, particularly in regard to labor cost trends. First, the REIT was able to raise guidance for both its 2023 net income attributable to common stockholders and 2023 normalized FFO on the back of better-than-expected operating results in its SHOP portfolio and a bolstered balance sheet.  Operationally, the REIT reported that same-store RevPOR continued to grow at a faster rate than ExpPOR in the first quarter of this year, the fifth consecutive quarter of margin expansion. This was helped in part by agency labor expense as a percentage of total compensation dropping to 3.4% in the first... Read More »
Diversified Healthcare Trust – Not So Fast

Diversified Healthcare Trust – Not So Fast

It has been nearly two months since Diversified Healthcare Trust announced its merger with Office Properties Income Trust, two REITs basically controlled by external manager RMR Group. This was about the most self-serving transaction we have seen in a long time. But at least one DHC shareholder is not going to stand by. Flat Footed LLC, which with its affiliates owns about 7.4% of DHC’s shares, wants shareholders to vote against the deal, believing DHC should be (will be) worth between $9 and $10 per share if they let their SHOP portfolio continue to improve. The shares closed May 31 at $1.36 per share. That is a huge valuation differential, and it all seems to rest on DHC’s management’s... Read More »