• WOW! Sonida Senior Living Goes BIG

    Sonida Senior Living just announced what can only be described as a transformational acquisition. Since new management came in, CEO Brandon Ribar and CFO Kevin Detz, Sonida has been on an upward path of improved operations and a balance sheet that has grown stronger. Occupancy has been increasing (87.7% in Q3) and NOI and EBITDA are rising. Spot... Read More »
  • 60 Seconds with Swett: October Smashes M&A Record

    We were predicting a record-breaking end to the year in terms of M&A activity, but we are not sure we expected a 100+ deal month, with 110 transactions and counting. Just to put that in perspective, the previous record for any month was 77 deals in October of last year, and only four months had previously broken the 70-deal barrier. So this... Read More »
  • Newmark Ends October with Portfolio Closings

    Newmark announced a flurry of transactions at the end of October involving various institutional firms. The largest was a portfolio of seniors housing communities in the Northeast known as “Stars and Stripes.” Word on the street is that the portfolio sold for north of $800 million, and that a sub-portfolio was valued at more than $1 million per... Read More »
  • Stacked Stone Acquires Missouri Portfolio

    Stacked Stone Ventures announced the purchase of a seven-community assisted living/memory care portfolio in Missouri for $71 million, or $212,600 per unit. Totaling 334 units and 405 beds, the Oak Pointe portfolio was developed between 2015 and 2020 by an investor group called ClearPath Senior Housing, which included Jeff Binder of Senior Living... Read More »
  • Blueprint Sells Georgia Community to LTC Properties

    LTC Properties divested seven skilled nursing facilities through two separate deals for $122 million in October. In those transaction announcements, the publicly traded REIT noted that it intended to redeploy proceeds for the acquisition of newer, stabilized SHOP assets. It looks like that’s what the publicly traded REIT did in Georgia at the... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Welltower Is on a Roll

60 Seconds with Swett: Welltower Is on a Roll

Welltower came out with its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, and surprise, surprise, it was yet another great quarter, and its share price jumped 3.5% immediately upon the news. It was the tenth consecutive quarter in which same store SHOP NOI growth exceeded 20%, at 21.7% in the first quarter. Guidance for same store NOI growth also rose by 100 basis points to a midpoint of 19.0% for FY2025. On Tuesday’s call, Welltower did mention that SHOP margins remain below pre-pandemic levels, but they may not be for long. Also, that issue currently plagues thousands of communities in this country and was prevalent in the years before COVID too. Perhaps that is why most of what we hear from... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: April Already Passes 50 Transactions

60 Seconds with Swett: April Already Passes 50 Transactions

Tariff turmoil? Volatile and still-high interest rates? Uncertainty surrounding Medicaid spending, labor costs and HUD’s queue length? Seniors housing and care dealmakers have looked past a lot of this noise to announce 50 transactions in the first three weeks of the second quarter, putting the market on track for the busiest M&A period ever. We know we sound like a broken record, but the start of April did feel like we reached a new level of activity, and given the conversations we’ve been having in the last few weeks, the second and third quarters may only accelerate in deal volume. For some sellers, seeing through the January 2025 rate increases was enough to enter the transaction... Read More »
A Message from Steve Monroe on Brookdale: Brookdale CEO Is Out

A Message from Steve Monroe on Brookdale: Brookdale CEO Is Out

While President Trump had a busy weekend changing course on some of his tariffs, the Board of Brookdale Senior Living was busy as well. After serving as CEO of Brookdale for just over eight years, and as CFO for three years before that, Cindy Baier is out as CEO and Board member effective April 13. The share price initially jumped by 10% on the news.  This does not come as a surprise as the company has struggled financially during most of, if not all of, her tenure. To be fair, she inherited a lot of problems from her predecessor, Andy Smith, including expensive leases, a very bad acquisition and too many buildings. And then two years after she became CEO, the pandemic hit. We are not sure... Read More »
Land & Buildings Targets National Health Investors

Land & Buildings Targets National Health Investors

It seems to be the season for activist investors not happy with investment values, but these days, who is happy unless you shorted the entire market on March 31? In addition to what is happening with Brookdale Senior Living, Land & Buildings, no stranger to the senior care industry, has put forward a few board candidates for National Health Investors.  It seems they are not happy with the current board composition and believe there are a few conflicts of interest between board members who own NHI shares as well as shares of NHI’s major tenant, National Healthcare Corporation. L&B believes that the lease payments from NHC are too low, and that with an increase it would benefit... Read More »
Skyline Healthcare Update

Skyline Healthcare Update

Skyline Healthcare’s Joseph Schwartz finally was sentenced for his crimes against the U.S., his employees and his residents. It seems, however, that the punishment does not fit the crime. Sentenced to three years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, plus a $100,000 fine, just does not seem to be enough for what he did. We have always wondered if he was the only one involved in the theft, or did he play the fall guy to keep friends and family out of prison. We may never know, but we have our opinions (don’t we always?). Stealing $39 million of tax withholding funds from his nursing home employees was bad enough, but walking away from about 100 nursing facilities after he... Read More »