• Regional Owner/Operator Enters New State

    A regional owner/operator looking to enter the state of Indiana acquired Smith Farms Manor, an independent living community in Auburn, about 30 miles south of the Michigan border. Built in 1998, the community features 51 units and is well maintained. It sits on an attractive four-acre campus down the street from Parkview DeKalb Hospital and off... Read More »
  • Skilled Nursing Portfolio Gets New Operator

    Evans Senior Investments secured a new lease for a skilled nursing portfolio in Tennessee on behalf of an institutional owner. The portfolio features four assets and was operating below 70% occupancy with margins under 10%. Despite that performance, ESI secured a lease $3 million above in-place cash flow, reflecting the operational upside that... Read More »
  • Seniors Housing and Care M&A Remains Elevated in Q1:26

    The number of publicly announced seniors housing and care acquisitions in the first quarter of 2026 reached 231 deals, based on new acquisition data from LevinPro LTC. This represents a 19.8% decrease from the 288 transactions disclosed in the fourth quarter of 2025, but a 25.5% increase from the 184 deals in Q1:25.   “It was always going... Read More »
  • Clarion Acquires Again in Colorado

    Two years after opening a 160-unit seniors housing community in Centennial, Colorado (Denver MSA), MorningStar Senior Living announced an expanding relationship with Clarion Partners, a leading real estate investment company and specialty investment manager of Franklin Templeton, in its acquisition of MorningStar at Holly Park. The community... Read More »
  • Brookdale’s Summer Test Ahead

    Brookdale Senior Living reported its March occupancy results, and it unfortunately took another step in the wrong direction. We will get a better read when peers report first-quarter results and when NIC MAP releases its next tranche of occupancy data, but at this point, it seems as though Brookdale will need a particularly strong performance... Read More »
M&A in May Falls Flat

M&A in May Falls Flat

Despite the positive occupancy news coming out of seemingly every earnings announcement in May, buyers held back this month, announcing just 26 transactions. To be fair, that total beat’s February’s 25 publicly announced transactions (albeit being a 28-day month), and tied January. But it was off of March’s 29-deal tally and April, when a “whopping” 32 deals were announced.   We know that plenty of both buyers and sellers are waiting for a three- to six-month period of sustained occupancy and NOI growth before either risking the purchase or getting the desired price. But with a surge of deals closed at the end of April, we also thought a certain barrier had been broken and... Read More »
CCRCs Still Leading In Occupancy

CCRCs Still Leading In Occupancy

Ziegler just came out with its quarterly analysis of occupancy trends for CCRC (LPCs) in conjunction with the NIC MAP data, and while census is still slipping, the sub-sector has fared better than the other components of the senior living spectrum. The data set used includes 1,134 CCRCs in both primary and secondary markets, as defined by NIC MAP. It is not clear how the other 800 or so CCRCs have performed.  All CCRCs posted an average occupancy rate of 84.3% in the first quarter 2021, a drop of 720 basis points from the first quarter of 2020. While somewhat shocking, that performance is better than assisted living and skilled nursing. And, starting from an average... Read More »
Senior Care M&A Tanks In Q1

Senior Care M&A Tanks In Q1

After a strong fourth quarter, senior care M&A activity cooled off this winter. We thought that after 59 seniors housing and care M&A transactions were announced in December 2020, a monthly record, we had returned to some kind of “normal” in terms of dealmaking. Well that just didn’t happen in the first quarter of 2021, when despite widespread vaccination of the senior care population investor activity cooled to just 77 publicly announced deals. That is just a preliminary total but is well off Q4’s total of 127 deals. M&A in the skilled nursing sector especially slowed down, accounting for just 32% of the deals announced during the quarter. But it makes sense. If various... Read More »
Bifurcation Between Stabilized and Non-Stabilized SNFs Grew in 2020

Bifurcation Between Stabilized and Non-Stabilized SNFs Grew in 2020

In some ways, the pandemic only rubbed salt in the wound in terms of occupancy across skilled nursing facilities nationwide. Average census across the skilled nursing industry was already languishing between the mid- to low- 80% range before the pandemic temporarily shut the doors to many facilities, paused elective surgeries and sent more post-acute patients home to recover. These problems adversely affected the older, mostly-Medicaid facilities and were only made worse in 2020.   That means digging out from the pandemic will be a tougher assignment, and buyers paid accordingly in 2020, averaging $55,300 per bed for non-stabilized facilities reporting occupancy lower... Read More »
Senior Care Leading Indicators

Senior Care Leading Indicators

There has not been a lot of good news, but given some leading indicators, the next development boom may be a bit further out than we had expected four months ago. Our focus for the past 12 months has been on the coronavirus pandemic and what it has done to seniors housing and care occupancy rates. We are also on record as stating that getting back to pre-pandemic census levels may take up to four years, partly because we expect development to ramp up again when developers eye the post-2025 demographics. But something else has been happening that may keep some builders away. First, the 10-year treasury rate has more than doubled in the past seven months. Yes, 1.36% is still attractive, but... Read More »
Senior Care M&A Tanks In Q1

Ventas Census Hits Low

Things will definitely start to get better as the vaccine finishes its roll out in senior living communities, but even more ground will have to be made up as a result of the continued deterioration in census in the past few months. Ventas, which just released its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 results, has not been immune to these declines, yet they see the light at the end of the tunnel.  On a same-community basis, the senior housing operating portfolio (SHOP) occupancy level dropped by 870 basis points in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter last year, to a low of 79.6%. This is a total of 377 communities. But when the Canadian communities are removed (68... Read More »