• 60 Seconds with Swett: Getting Realistic with New Development

    The positive mood at the NIC Fall Conference was contagious, as dealmakers were looking forward to a potential record-breaking fourth quarter. We at LevinPro are also gearing up to cover a new elevated level of M&A activity and pricing in the coming months, with our updated valuation tool better accounting for today’s market and the estimated... Read More »
  • NHC Responds to NHI

    National Healthcare Corporation, the tenant of 32 of National Health Investor’s skilled nursing/senior care facilities and three independent living communities, is disputing NHI’s determination of default after the landlord formally notified the operator that it was in default and must cure the default within 30 days to avoid an Event of... Read More »
  • REIT Acquires High-Quality Continuum of Care Community

    Blueprint facilitated the sale of a Class-A seniors housing community in Jasper, Georgia. Built in 2022, The Lodge at Stephens Lake includes 83 units of independent living cottages, assisted living and memory care. It is adjacent to a large active adult development and benefits from significant planned residential and commercial growth. At the... Read More »
  • Legend Senior Living Adds Allentown-Area Asset

    A Class-A, well performing property outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, traded to a joint venture between Legend Senior Living and a new capital partner. Legend previously operated The Vero at Bethlehem, which opened in July 2023 and stabilized within 18 months. At the time of marketing, the 124-unit assisted living/memory care asset achieved... Read More »
  • CFG’s Senior Care Financing Activity

    Capital Funding Group financed more than $86 million across six transactions from early to mid-August. The transactions supported two memory care communities, four skilled nursing facilities, and one psychiatric hospital in Missouri, California, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia on behalf of nationally recognized borrowers, one of which is a... Read More »
Biden Administration Wants More SNF Transparency

Biden Administration Wants More SNF Transparency

The Biden administration is at it again. While he had just a passing reference to skilled nursing in his State of the Union address, Joe Biden is back at it now. They are continuing with the mantra that after private equity firms buy nursing homes, the mortality rate increases by 10%. However, they do not say why and what other influences there may be, such as higher acuity rates, which would by definition result in more deaths. Private equity firms always try to get their operators to increase the Medicare census in facilities they purchase because that is where the profits are, not in custodial care Medicaid patients. This is partly why there is an increase in taxpayer spending after a... Read More »
Good News For Ventas, and Seniors Housing

Good News For Ventas, and Seniors Housing

Ventas just released its fourth quarter earnings as well as full-year 2022, and its seniors housing portfolio is looking up. Year-over-year same-community performance improved in all categories. Average occupancy increased by 140 basis points to 82.5%. While this is not a great increase for a 12-month period given the lows they were coming from, we’ll take it. Same-community cash net operating income increased year over year by 19.1% to $150.5 million, and the operating margin expanded by 220 basis points to 24.5%. Now, this is not even close to the old days, but a nice pickup. We believe, however, that these numbers include the various government payments which are going away, so the... Read More »
Good News For Ventas, and Seniors Housing

Baier’s Brookdale Butcher Block

On Friday the 13th (kind of cute, isn’t it), Brookdale Senior Living announced some major C-Suite changes, including the removal of Steven Swain as EVP and CFO effective February 24th, with the current Chief Accounting Officer taking over those roles while remaining the CAO. In addition, Kevin Bowman is out as EVP of Community Operations (basically the COO) effective January 12th. The two division VPs for the East and West will now report directly to CEO Cindy Baier. We are not sure what happened, but this seems a little like blaming these two senior executives for the 50% plunge in Brookdale’s share price as a result of the recent dilutive equity raise. We don’t know where this equity... Read More »
Omega Healthcare Investors Working through It

Omega Healthcare Investors Working through It

Omega Healthcare Investors just provided an operator update, and the REIT will be working through some lingering problems for at least another year, if not longer. Perhaps the biggest problem remains Maplewood Senior Living, a Connecticut-based provider of assisted living and memory care services that is located about 10 miles from our Connecticut HQ. We tried to reach out to the founder several years ago, trying to be “neighborly,” but our efforts were ignored. Maybe they could have received some good advice. The company’s initial developments were on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, in the high-income neighborhoods of Fairfield County. Now, these areas are known to be high-barrier-to-entry... Read More »
Brookdale Senior Living Reports December Occupancy

Brookdale Senior Living Reports December Occupancy

Sometimes no news is good news. After two straight months of declines, Brookdale SeniorLiving reported that December’s month-end occupancy remained flat with November at 78.1%.That can be considered good news since we are in the beginning of what could be a terrible fluand COVID season. In addition, weighted average occupancy remained flat from November to December at 77.0%,after dropping by 20 basis points in November. If they can hold the line for the next threemonths, the company could start to see some improvement in the second quarter. Weightedaverage occupancy peaked in October at 77.2%, while month-end occupancy peaked inSeptember at 78.4%. So far this year, after a dismal 2022,... Read More »
Welltower Controversy?

Welltower Controversy?

Back when Welltower announced its agreement to let health system ProMedica Senior Care off the hook with its leases for 147 nursing facilities, leases that were drowning in red ink for ProMedica, we joked about it because, 1) we had just written that not-for-profit ProMedica’s board could not let the red ink flow for much longer, and 2) the new joint venture partner called Integra was not one of the commonly known “Integras” in senior living or health care, and there are many of them. But we did discover the relationship between Welltower’s Integra and an entity called Perigrove, which claimed to be an institutional investor with years and billions of dollars of investments under its belt.... Read More »