• Publicly Traded REIT Acquires in Colorado

    The Walker & Dunlop Seniors Housing team started the year off strong, with two closings in January. W&D first represented a major Georgia-based not-for-profit health system in the divestment of three skilled nursing facilities totaling 448 beds. Despite their rural locations, operational challenges and capital expenditure needs, W&D... Read More »
  • East Coast Owner/Operator Acquires First NJ Community

    Evans Senior Investments facilitated the sale of The Heritage Assisted Living, an assisted living and memory care community in Hammonton, New Jersey. ESI was engaged by the independent owner and lender of the property and procured six competitive offers from institutional capital and regional owner/operators. The ultimate buyer was an East Coast... Read More »
  • California-Based Owner/Operator Acquires Note

    An international bank engaged Blueprint to oversee the sale of its interest in a 180-bed skilled nursing facility in the Santa Rosa area of Northern California. The mortgage on the facility was in default despite the facility’s strong historical operating performance and occupancy. It demonstrated extremely high top-line revenue,... Read More »
  • Welltower to Acquire NorthStar Healthcare

    Welltower and NorthStar Healthcare Income announced that NorthStar Healthcare has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by an affiliate of Welltower, in an all cash transaction with an approximate enterprise value of $900 million, or around $185,000 per unit. Under the term of the merger agreement, NorthStar Healthcare’s... Read More »
  • PE Firm Divests in Oregon to Local Owner/Operator

    A nationally recognized institutional private equity firm engaged Blueprint to oversee the sale of two high-performing seniors housing communities totaling 344 units in Oregon. The communities are Evergreen Senior Living, which is in Eugene, and Timber Pointe/Woodside Senior Living, which sit on the same campus in Springfield. Built between 1996... Read More »

Brookdale Provides Update

Brookdale Senior Living just released its occupancy update for February, and our first take was that things need to be better than that. Then, we remembered our late 2020 analysis which showed that assisted living occupancy has never increased in the first quarter for each of the past 10 years. Therefore, we should not expect too much this quarter. In this light, Brookdale’s census outlook is not too bad. From January to February, the weighted average occupancy dropped just 10 basis points to 73.3%. Even better, the month-end occupancy increased by 20 basis points from the end of January to 74.4%. The problem is that census at the end of September was 74.2%, so we have seen little overall... Read More »
Sabra Issues Business Update

Sabra Issues Business Update

This difficult winter is sparing few owners and operators in terms of occupancy and labor expenses. So, Sabra Health Care REIT was not alone in its latest quarterly earnings report, and in fact, things could have been worse. First, Sabra entered into a definitive agreement to amend its master lease with Avamere, effective February 1. This reduced annual based rent by roughly 30% to $30.7 million, or an annual run rate reduction of $0.06 per diluted common share. As a condition to the amendment, Avamere has paid past due rent for December 2021 totaling $3.6 million and has agreed to pay January 2022 rent totaling $3.7 million by March 25, 2022. Sabra does have the opportunity to recapture... Read More »
Ventas Announces Q4 Earnings

Ventas Announces Q4 Earnings

Ventas announced its quarterly and annual earnings report, and we were interested to learn that the REIT has acted on nearly two-thirds of its seniors housing portfolio via acquisition, disposition, development, lease resolution or operator transaction since 2020. The pandemic spared few communities, so that level of portfolio management really required all hands on deck. And the pain isn’t over for many properties, unfortunately, with more distress almost certainly set to hit the market in 2022. That will mean even more dispositions, value-add acquisitions and lease/operator restructurings from Ventas.  Activity in 2021 included nearly $2.6 billion in acquisitions of independent... Read More »
The Ensign Group Reports Another Solid Quarter

The Ensign Group Reports Another Solid Quarter

The Ensign Group did not disappoint yet again with its latest quarterly results. The senior care provider reported an increase in GAAP diluted earnings per share of $3.42 for 2021, an increase of 11.8% over the prior year, while adjusted EPS rose 16.3% year over year to a record-high $3.64. Consolidated GAAP revenues increased by 9.5% to $2.6 billion in 2021, with GAAP net income reaching $194.7 million for the year, an increase of 14.2% compared with 2020. Those are all healthy increases in a year of numerous operational headwinds, with large companies especially susceptible to high employee turnover and stagnant census. That is the beauty of the decentralized operating model that Ensign... Read More »
Ventas Announces Q4 Earnings

Brookdale Month-End Occupancy Falls in November

The brevity of Brookdale Senior Living’s occupancy update said a lot: there was not much good news to report. After eight consecutive months of increases, month-end occupancy decreased by 20 basis points from 74.5% in October to 74.3% in November. There could be numerous reasons for this, from the Omicron variant to the onset of the flu season to a staffing shortage, but demand clearly did not overcome these factors in the month of November. And these headwinds are not getting better anytime soon. Brookdale expects to continue publishing monthly occupancy through December 2021 reporting, so we could learn whether this decline is a blip or a trend.  Brookdale did... Read More »
NIC Data Shows Slow Occupancy Recovery

NIC Data Shows Slow Occupancy Recovery

According to most recent aggregated NIC data, occupancy in the third quarter rose to 80.1%, after having stagnated in the previous two quarters at 78.7%. It’s great to see this positive movement, but we are still a long way away from pre-pandemic occupancy levels, and we would have hoped to see more growth heading into the holiday and flu season. This average is also not an indicator of how other institutional operators and REITs are performing, or the industry as a whole, but there are just no other comprehensive sector-wide statistics out there. As we reported last month, Sabra Health Care REIT, Inc. disclosed a 716-basis point increase in occupancy between February and July 2021. Senior... Read More »