• National Real Estate Investment Group Acquires 24-Property Portfolio

    Ikaria Capital Group announced the successful funding of a $270 million term loan and $30 million preferred equity investment for a national private healthcare real estate investment group to support the acquisition of a 24-property skilled nursing and seniors housing portfolio located in the Pacific Northwest. First Citizens Bank led the bank... Read More »
  • The Zett Group Sells Idaho Portfolio

    A trio of small, well-performing assisted living communities in rural Idaho sold with the help of Blake Bozett and Spud Batt of The Zett Group. The pair represented a mom & pop who were looking to retire after nearly 25 years of operating. Terri and Carl Pendleton built the first 16-unit assisted living community in Gooding, Idaho, and added... Read More »
  • JV Buyer Acquires Two Communities From Separate Sellers

    Helios Healthcare Advisors structured the sale and arranged joint venture equity for the acquisition of two assisted living/memory care communities in Alabama on behalf of separate sellers. Helios was initially engaged by the Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast to identify a buyer that would preserve the legacy of Murray House Assisted... Read More »
  • Detroit Redevelopment Sees Senior Apartment Conversion

    KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment provided $43.6 million in construction loans and arranged $7.6 million in permanent loans for the acquisition and rehabilitation of Lee Plaza in Detroit, Michigan. The 15-story, Art Deco historical landmark will be converted to affordable senior apartments. The building will include a total of... Read More »
  • Montana Not-For-Profit Secures Bond Financing

    Ziegler announced the closing of Immanuel Living at Buffalo Hill’s $50.88 million Series 2025ABC bonds through the City of Kalispell, Montana. The Montana not-for-profit operates a senior care community in Kalispell, Montana, that is located on a 13-acre campus with 171 independent and assisted living units as well as 155 licensed skilled nursing... Read More »

Private investor sees potential

A pair of skilled nursing facilities in Texas that pulled in more than $12.5 million in total revenue but only retained approximately $500,000 in EBITDA (an operating margin of just 4%) presented an appetizing turnaround opportunity to buyers when it was put on the market. Owned by a public REIT and leased to a third party operator with which the REIT had a larger relationship, the properties included a 160-bed facility in Houston and a 149-bed facility in Mesquite. In addition to their low occupancy (collectively at 75%) and quality mix (at just 15%), the facilities also had age going against them, with the Houston facility built in 1970 and the Mesquite facility in 1977. However, to a... Read More »

Memory care refinance

A recently built 43-unit memory care community in Vancouver, Washington refinanced with an $11.87 million Freddie Mac loan, which came out to $276,100 per unit. Developed and managed by Koelsch Senior Communities, the property is the third in Vancouver, ninth in the state of Washington and 23rd community overall in seven states for Koelsch, which was founded in 1958. Cathy Voreyer of Wells Fargo Multifamily Capital handled the transaction. Read More »

Seniors Housing Occupancy Still Not Strong Enough

The third quarter showed some positive movement for seniors housing occupancy, but not positive enough, especially with construction starts. Well, well, well, what are we to make of the third quarter occupancy and construction stats that came out from NIC last week? The good news was that sequentially, occupancy at stabilized assisted living properties increased by 25 basis points to 90.5%, but was still down 68 basis points from a year ago. That means that the summer uptick that we had been hearing about may not have been as strong as many had thought. One issue we have is that the third quarter sequential occupancy growth for the top 99 MSAs was at the low end for the past seven years,... Read More »

Glenview Gardens blooms

What a difference a year makes. When Kandu Capital acquired Glenview Gardens in August 2014, the 119-unit independent living community was in bad shape, with an occupancy of 56%. The property was losing money too, on just $98,000 of monthly revenues. So after spending $5.5 million, or $49,100 per unit, to purchase the community, Kandu also spent an additional $1 million to both renovate the community and convert 36 units to assisted living. Kandu’s affiliate, Bloom Senior Living, also took over operations. After a little over a year, occupancy is up to 89%, and cash flow turned positive on $193,000 of monthly revenues. Plus, seven IL units had to be taken off line during the conversion... Read More »

ARC goes strategic

Before its three most recently announced deals, American Realty Capital Healthcare Trust was one of the larger buyers in the long-term care industry, averaging about $52 million per transaction since its first transaction in the sector at the end of 2012. However, it has been a different story so far in 2015, with the REIT averaging about $13 million per transaction. The three recent deals highlight this possible shift even more so, including $10.2 million, or $255,000 per unit, for a 40-unit memory care community in Brookings, Oregon, $4.8 million, or $97,450 per unit, for a 49-unit assisted living community in Richmond, Kentucky, and $6 million, or $206,900 per unit, for a 29-unit memory... Read More »

High-acuity community to be built

Aron Will, together with Jim Sellers and Tim Prouty, of CBRE arranged a $25.03 million construction loan for a joint venture between The Freshwater Group and Kayne-Anderson to build a 129-unit/135-bed senior care community in Tucson, Arizona. The loan, placed through a regional bank, featured a three-year floating rate term which then converts to a three-year mini-perm loan. Kayne-Anderson will provide institutional equity for the project, while Watermark Retirement Communities will operate the finished community, which will consist of five buildings with assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing services. For the assisted living, it will be fully licensed Directed Care, the highest... Read More »

Anthem adding ninth property

Anthem Memory Care is expanding its memory care offering in its third state of operations with plans to build a 66-unit community in Murrieta, California. Founded in 2008, the company already has a presence in the Denver metro, with four communities, and a property in Chico, California, and recently announced that it is developing three properties in Chicagoland in a joint-venture with LTC Properties. Now, Anthem has broken ground on its ninth property in Murrieta at a cost of $12.6 million, or $190,900 per unit. That figure is on the low side for California, which averages $260,000 per unit to build memory care or assisted living/memory care communities, according to our data (which... Read More »

Solana sets sights on San Francisco

A California real estate investment company growing its senior living portfolio recently added its third property, a 61-unit assisted living community in Castro Valley, California for $8 million, or $131,100 per unit, with a 9% cap rate. The Solana Company, which also specializes in acquiring hospitality properties, was founded by Steve Barklis and Gary Elam, both with decades of experience in sourcing, developing and asset managing commercial real estate investment properties. Earlier this year, Solana acquired a 72-unit independent/assisted living community in Sacramento, California for $6.85 million, or $120,100 per unit, in a joint venture with Brickstar Capital. The company also... Read More »

NHI’s new CEO

National Health Investors (NHI) has found its new CEO following the much publicized departure of its former chief executive, Justin Hutchens, who took over the CIO job at HCP (and dare we say the top job in a few years?). Effective October 5, Eric Mendelsohn was tapped as NHI’s CEO after already serving as interim CEO since the beginning of August. Before joining NHI as Executive Vice President of Corporate Finance in January 2015, Mr. Mendelsohn was previously at Emeritus, where, as SVP of Corporate Development, he led the way in such large transactions as the $3 billion joint venture with Blackstone and the $278 million Summerville merger. Our congratulations to Eric, well... Read More »

The Buzz at NIC

With record attendance (again), the buzz continued to be positive, despite some looming concerns. Well, what can I say after my 25th annual NIC conference? I could talk about the record number of attendees, the building, buying, investing and financing buzz. But did anyone notice, just one block from the hotel, the vacant lot for sale with banners waving in the wind, proclaiming “Senior Living Site Available.” I’m not kidding. People were there to do deals, make new contacts and expand existing ones, and for the newbies, to try to get a better understanding of the seniors housing and care sector. But the NIC organizers had a new program, called NIC Talks, and for this conference the theme... Read More »

Third quarter posts record M&A results

There has never been a busier third quarter for mergers and acquisitions in the history of the seniors housing and care market. In Q3:15, there were a total of 87 publicly announced transactions (including both U.S. deals and a few Canadian deals), a 23% increase over the Q2:15 and a 2% increase over Q3:14. Keep in mind that the NIC Conference began at the end of the third quarter, so we have to assume that press releases on September 30 closings were delayed. The catch is that while the number of transactions has increased, the Q3:15 dollar volume of $4.1 billion is significantly down from last year’s third quarter total of $9.7 billion, a 58% drop. For more details on the third quarter... Read More »