• Public REIT Divests to Owner/Operator

    Blueprint facilitated the sale of a Massachusetts skilled nursing facility on behalf of a public REIT in the senior care sector. The REIT determined that the facility was a strong candidate for sale due to its location. Plus, the former operator was switching focus to other assets in its mutual portfolio.  Purpose-built in 1982 with... Read More »
  • Development Company Acquires Through Membership Buyout

    A Missouri-based real estate developer engaged Blueprint to facilitate its membership buyout of a joint venture partner. Brooks Blackmon, Ben Firestone and Lauren Nagle handled the transaction. Four years ago, the firm was brought on to raise capital, ultimately sourcing an institutional capital partner to develop a private pay seniors housing... Read More »
  • 60 Seconds with Swett: Previewing Our Capital Markets Conversation

    We know that the capital markets have made the biggest impact on M&A activity and property valuations in the last several years, changing the size of possible deals, the makeup of the properties sold and the buyers that could actually buy. Now that the capital markets have substantially improved and are getting better, barring a sudden and... Read More »
  • Seller Exits Seniors Industry with Divestment to REIT

    A single-asset seniors housing owner is exiting the industry with the sale of their property in Murrieta, California. Built in 2016 and 2018, Renaissance Village Murrieta has 142 units of assisted living and memory care in three stories. It was operating just below 70% occupancy, so there is plenty of room for a new owner to improve performance... Read More »
  • Deal Closes Following Buyer Withdrawals

    After a long process that saw multiple buyers pull out from the deal, the sale of Sarah Neuman Skilled Nursing Facility in Mamaroneck, New York, has closed with the help of Mark Myers at Kiser Group. Owned by a religious not-for-profit organization, The New Jewish Home, the facility features 301 beds and was losing money. Myers had previously... Read More »
Pricing Age in Skilled Nursing Facilities

Pricing Age in Skilled Nursing Facilities

There are plenty of issues that come along with the aging of the skilled nursing facility inventory. Older facilities require more capex to keep operations up to snuff, have trouble attracting the coveted Medicare and private insurance patients, and often have far fewer private units but more three- or four-bed wards. In addition, it has to be more difficult attracting and retaining staff at an older facility, especially when a newer facility often comes with more bells and whistles in addition to newer technology that makes those employees’ jobs easier. Where would you rather work? So, in the M&A market, how did those older facilities fare compare with the newer ones? Well, there was... Read More »
Another Valuation Metric for the 2018 Seniors Housing M&A Market

Another Valuation Metric for the 2018 Seniors Housing M&A Market

In a year when both the assisted living and independent living average cap rates rose, how did the sectors’ average Gross Income Multiples (GIM) change year over year? Well, they accordingly fell off their 2017 levels, mirroring their changes in cap rate, according to The Seniors Housing Acquisition & Investment Report. The average independent living GIM fell to its lowest point in five years at 5.0x, while the assisted living GIM dropped 70 basis points to 3.2x, also a five-year low. The difference between the sectors can be explained by the higher risk of owning assisted living communities. The IL market, on the other hand, has seen far less new construction and more stable occupancy... Read More »
How Did Buyers Value Cash Flow in Seniors Housing M&A in 2018?

How Did Buyers Value Cash Flow in Seniors Housing M&A in 2018?

For the seventh year in a row, there was a perfect correlation between the age of seniors housing communities sold and their average net operating income per unit, according to the Seniors Housing Acquisition & Investment Report. This makes sense, given that the newer communities should better reflect the current demand (by unit size, amenities, etc.) and require less capex to maintain their competitiveness. Newer communities also have an easier time attracting good staff and charging higher rents. Those newest communities (built after 2013) had an average of $19,700 per unit of NOI, relatively consistent with recent levels. The next subset of properties built between five and 10 years... Read More »
What About the CCRC M&A Market?

What About the CCRC M&A Market?

The CCRC (or LPC) acquisition market, which we highlighted in the First Edition of The Seniors Housing Acquisition & Investment Report, is the thinnest of all the major sectors of seniors housing and care. The number of potential buyers is smaller, the lender and investor pool is smaller, and the number communities for sale each year is smaller. Because the market is not very active, we have grouped our statistics in two-year intervals (with the exception of the three-year period before the Great Recession) to minimize the impact of outlier sales at both extremes. Anecdotally, we have heard that the CCRC market is possibly faring the strongest of the seniors housing sectors. There has... Read More »
How Occupancy Impacted 2018 Assisted Living Values

How Occupancy Impacted 2018 Assisted Living Values

As we’ve mentioned several times, 2018 was a tough year for assisted living occupancy, as new development took its toll on a number of markets. Low occupancy often leads to lower operating margins and less cash flow, especially when operators feel the need to heavily discount their rates in order to fill beds, so it’s a serious issue for the industry. In our Seniors Housing Acquisition & Investment Report, “stabilized” means having an occupancy equal to or higher than 85%. And while there are some operators not pleased with their “stabilized” communities occupied in the 80s, it could be worse, and there was clearly a premium paid for existing census in 2018. Stabilized communities sold... Read More »
Older, Struggling SNFs Had More Weight In 2018 Market

Older, Struggling SNFs Had More Weight In 2018 Market

We have historically presented our cap rate analysis on an unweighted average basis, weighting the cap rate for a 60-bed skilled nursing facility and a portfolio of 20 facilities the same in our Skilled Nursing Acquisition & Investment Report (which you can still order here). Many buyers believe that a portfolio should command a lower cap rate than a single-asset sale, but that often depends on the quality of the portfolio and whether there are any stinkers in the portfolio. A weighted average cap rate thus removes this bias. What this has shown is that over time since we started separating out these two averages is that there has been very little difference between the two cap rate... Read More »