• Berkadia Secures Large Portfolio Refinance

    Berkadia closed $627.2 million in agency financing for Project Raven. Project Raven is a 35-asset seniors housing portfolio with 4,395 independent living, assisted living and memory care units. The portfolio spans 15 states. Austin Sacco, Steve Muth, Garrett Sacco and Alec Rosenfeld handled the financing on behalf of an institutional borrower.... Read More »
  • What Does Brookdale’s Proxy Fight Cost?

    It seems that hardly a day goes by without yet another SEC filing by Brookdale Senior Living detailing why its slate of Board candidates is far better for shareholders than the slate submitted by activist investor Ortelius Advisors. But how much are they spending on this? It would be nice to know, and we are sure shareholders would rather have... Read More »
  • Do We Hear $30 Per Hour as the New Minimum Wage?

    We know we have the People’s Republic of California, and after New York’s Democratic Party primary, we may have the People’s Republic of New York City by November. The surprise winner of the primary was 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani. He is a self-professed Socialist, and more. In addition to free bussing, freezes on apartment rents, higher taxes on... Read More »
  • BMO and TCG Refinance Florida CCRC

    BMO’s Healthcare Real Estate Finance group acted as sole lender on a real estate term loan refinancing for La Posada, a Class-A, 333-unit CCRC in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Originally opened in 2014 and with a major renovation and addition completed in 2018, the campus offers independent living (245 units), assisted living (30 units), memory... Read More »
  • The Lenders Roundtable: A Capital Markets Update

    On Thursday, June 26th, Managing Editor of The SeniorCare Investor Ben Swett sat down with a group of expert panelists to dive into the evolving financing process of M&A deals. Panelists included Dave Boitano, EVP & CIO of LTC Properties, Cary Tremper, President & CEO of Tremper Capital Group, and Patrick Gilbreath, Sr. Relationship... Read More »
60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Here We Go Again

60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Here We Go Again

Investigate, investigate, investigate. Regulate, regulate, regulate. Why not assist? Why not help? Why not try to understand? Liz, Ron and Kirsten, of U.S. Senate fame, have asked the GAO to investigate the assisted living industry and to see if federal oversight is needed. Really? Are we going down this road again? How did that work out for the nursing home industry? As we know, the assisted living sector is predominantly private pay, unlike nursing homes, but the senators are using information from state Medicaid agencies to back up their claims. I suppose I could see them investigating any assisted living community that is receiving Medicaid funds to make sure the money is wisely spent,... Read More »
Sonida Senior Living Grows For The Future

Sonida Senior Living Grows For The Future

The last to report 2024 earnings in our sector, Sonida Senior Living turned in a decent fourth quarter, but maybe not as good as they were hoping for. They are looking to the future, however, and not past performance, and are gearing up for growth.  While the same-community occupancy of 86.6% in the fourth quarter is certainly above average for the industry, the year-over-year increase of just 70 basis points was below average. Many providers are still putting out census growth numbers that will not be sustainable as communities begin to stabilize, so increasing by 70 basis points in the future will look pretty good. But we are not there yet, especially with new development still way... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: The Demand for SNFs

60 Seconds with Swett: The Demand for SNFs

We had a fantastic webinar last week that covered our recently published valuation statistics from The Senior Care Acquisition Report but also how valuations, the lending environment and M&A strategies are changing in 2025, so far. Jason Punzel of Senior Living Investment Brokerage, Steve Munn of VIUM Capital and JP LoMonaco of CBRE joined me for the discussion and all had fascinating and useful takeaways on the current state of the market. I ended the webinar with a question about what type of property each panelist would purchase themselves, if they had the equity to finance the rest of the acquisition with debt. Although much of the webinar centered around the seniors housing... Read More »
60 Seconds with Steve Monroe: Here We Go Again

60-ish Seconds with Steve Monroe: So, What’s Goin’ On?

While I did not make it to the NIC Spring Conference last week, my colleagues Ben and Steph were there to meet and greet the record crowd. The crowd included a lot of smiling faces. Some takeaways included the expectation that liquidity is returning and that we will see bigger deals this year. Also, lenders will be putting out more cash in 2025 than in 2024. All of this bodes well for the M&A market.  There was, however, some concern about what the Trump Administration is doing, and what the impact will be on seniors housing and care. And there should be concern. Even though the labor situation has improved, my guess is that there will be fewer low-wage workers around given some... Read More »
Sonida Senior Living Grows For The Future

Brookdale Bucking Historical Trend

Brookdale Senior Living announced its February occupancy results, and it was better than we expected. Month-end occupancy has now increased for three straight months since November. At the end of February, occupancy was 80.8%, marking the seventh straight month that it has topped 80%, and up 20 basis points from the end of January. As you know, the winter months are usually terrible for census, and this year the strong flu has not helped. But Brookdale has succeeded, nonetheless. Weighted average occupancy in February increased by 10 basis points to 79.3%, and that seems to be stuck in a holding pattern as it has hardly budged for six months. The share price jumped by 3.6% on the news on a... Read More »
Sonida Senior Living Grows For The Future

Activists Are Knocking On Brookdale’s Door

Not to toot our own horn (sorry), but very recently we predicted that Brookdale Senior Living’s growing percentage of owned properties would attract activist investors yet again. That, and the continued poor performance of its share price.  It has now happened, again. Ortelius Advisors, which controls approximately 1.3% of Brookdale’s common stock, announced a slate of candidates for the Board that it will propose at Brookdale’s annual meeting later this year. Ortelius, like many other investors, has grown tired of the unfulfilled promises made and slow turnaround at the company, especially compared with the rest of the industry.  The slate being proposed by Ortelius includes six... Read More »