• Value-Add AL/MC Community Trades

    An institutional owner decided to divest a non-core asset, and engaged Jason Punzel, Vince Viverito, Jake Anderson and Taylor Graham of Senior Living Investment Brokerage to run the sale process. The asset is located in Hillsboro, Oregon (Portland MSA), and features 36 assisted living and memory care units, with 62 licensed beds. It was built in... Read More »
  • Brookdale Divests California Community to Public REIT

    Blueprint was engaged by an institutional, national owner/operator in the strategic disposition of a large rental CCRC in Bakersfield, California. The 20-acre campus was developed in 1999 and provides the whole continuum of care, including independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing across three large buildings and... Read More »
  • Two Midwest Assets Trade

    A couple of seniors housing communities traded in the Midwest, selling to a couple of growing owner/operators. First, in the Indianapolis area, The Kiser Group’s Mark Myers and SVN | Senior Living Advisors’ John Klement led the sale of a 157-unit seniors housing community featuring a mix of independent living, assisted living and memory care... Read More »
  • Assisted Living Portfolio Closes in Wisconsin

    Bob Richards of Senior Care Realty recently completed the sale of a five-property assisted living portfolio in Wisconsin, closing the deal in multiple tranches. Richards had worked with the seller, AC Capital, for 15 years, helping them grow their portfolio over the years. AC Capital also has self-managed the communities for the last decade. Now,... Read More »
  • 60 Seconds with Swett: Here We Go Again

    AARP just published a report on assisted living, and all I can say is, here we go again. It concludes that “the state of assisted living today is cause for concern for many stakeholders. The lack of national federal standards for care centers creates an underregulated space.” It continues on, stating that the “absence of national oversight,... Read More »

An Optimal Size for Skilled Nursing?

As the skilled nursing market evolves, lengths of stay and occupancy decline, and new entrants like Mainstreet change the way we view skilled nursing/post-acute care facilities, what is the ideal size of facility now? Based on 2016 sales according to the 22nd Edition of The Senior Care Acquisition Report, the average size of skilled nursing facilities sold dropped for the first time in three years to 122 beds, and was closer to the historical norm of 120 beds. That fell from 130 beds in 2015, and is the lowest since 2013, when facilities averaged 121 beds. The smallest facility sold in 2016 was 40 beds, compared with 30 beds in 2015, while the largest facility sold in 2016 was 744 beds,... Read More »
The Audience Has Spoken

The Audience Has Spoken

On April 27, The SeniorCare Investor’s Steve Monroe moderated a webinar entitled “Investing in the CCRC and Independent Living Market,” with panelists Breck Collingsworth of Resort Lifestyle Communities, Adam Kane of Erickson Living and Rick Swartz of Cushman & Wakefield. During the wide-ranging 90-minute discussion, which you can listen to here, the panel tackled CCRC valuations, cap rates, the IL/CCRC development market, whether these property types will suffer in the next recession as much as the last one. We also brought in the audience a few times to get their insight. First, we asked which property should have a higher cap rate, 100% independent living or a mix of IL, assisted... Read More »

The Price of Age in Skilled Nursing

We have covered the demise of the 40-year-old skilled nursing facility in articles and webinars over the past few years, and the acquisition market has taken notice. In 2015, 52% of the properties sold were 40 years old and older, which made sense since nearly half the entire U.S. inventory of SNFs are this old. By 2016, however, 52% of the properties sold were between 20 and 40 years old, which in many cases are considered to be relatively “new.” This helps explain why the average and median price per bed jumped so much in 2016. The percentage in the newest category (less than 20 years old) remained relatively similar from 2015 (22%) to 2016 (20%). With the newer skilled nursing... Read More »

Pay Up, Up North

Once again on the seniors housing side, the Northeast region has topped the charts for the seventh year in a row (per the 22nd Edition of The Senior Care Acquisition Report), rising to new heights at $292,900 per unit, up 46% from $201,100 per unit in 2015 and even up 4% from 2014’s average of $281,700 per unit. With its high land values and construction costs, it is not surprising that the Northeast has the highest prices. Plus, the Northeast properties are generally in heavily populated, wealthier areas, driving rents up. The West, dominated by sales in expensive markets such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, not surprisingly was valued second-highest among the regions,... Read More »

Adding Value With Memory Care

Over the last two cycles, an interesting trend has occurred in the valuations of assisted living versus assisted living with a memory care component. At the beginning of bull markets, traditional, standalone assisted living communities typically are priced higher than communities with memory care. Then as the bull market strengthens or peaks, the reverse is true, and assisted living/memory care (AL/MC) communities overtake traditional assisted living. This was never more true than in 2016, the sixth year of this bull market. Communities with a memory care component sold on average for $225,400 per unit, according to the 22nd Edition of The Senior Care Acquisition Report, while AL-only... Read More »

Seniors Housing Occupancy Continues Its Decline

As many people expected, seniors housing occupancy levels declined in the first quarter this year, with assisted living posting larger declines than independent living. According to the recently released NIC MAP data, primarily assisted living communities in the 31 primary markets posted a sequential drop in occupancy of 50 basis points to 87.2%, and a year-over-year drop of 100 basis points. Even though these numbers were sort of expected, there was some hope that the sector was starting to turn things around in the quarter. Not yet. It was a little surprising that half the year-over-year drop came in one quarter, however. On the independent living side, occupancy in the top 31 markets... Read More »