• Sabra Health Care REIT Picks Up the Transaction Pace

    Sabra Health Care REIT is ramping up its senior care M&A activity and its SHOP exposure, set to exceed the $1 billion in investments it spent in 2025. The REIT completed several transactions during the first quarter, with investments closed year to date totaling $206.1 million, with an estimated initial cash yield of 8.0%. The pipeline... Read More »
  • Clarion Partners Continues Growing

    Clarion Partners is continuing on its acquisition streak, adding Legacy House of Avondale to its portfolio. The 169-unit Class-A assisted living/memory care community is in the Phoenix, Arizona MSA, with a strong operational footing. Clarion Partners further expanded its relationship with MorningStar Senior Living through the deal, partnering... Read More »
  • Blueprint Handles Virginia Deal

    A publicly traded company engaged Blueprint to sell a value-add independent living community in a growing submarket of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1987, the 122-unit community could benefit from investments in the physical plant. It was also not stabilized.  A competitive market generated multiple bids in multiple rounds and improved... Read More »
  • Public REIT Acquires Full-Continuum Communities

    A pair of full-continuum seniors housing communities that sit approximately 10 miles apart traded in Northwest Arkansas. Village on the Park Bentonville in Bentonville and Village on the Park Rogers in Rogers offer a total of 208 independent living, assisted living and memory care units. Each community also offers contiguous land for further... Read More »
  • VIUM Capital Leads HUD LEAN Mid-Year Rankings

    HUD’s fiscal year 2026 hit the halfway point on March 31, and so far VIUM Capital is leading the way in closed 232 loans and by total loan volume with 41 transactions and $598.0 million in volume, respectively. That represents 22% of the program’s closed loans in the first half of the fiscal year and 19% of the total volume. And 32 of VIUM’s HUD... Read More »
Capital One strikes twice

Capital One strikes twice

Showing off its wide array of services, Capital One announced two transactions this week across two health care sectors. First, in seniors housing, Allison Holland originated and provided a 12-year $11 million Fannie Mae loan to refinance a 72-unit assisted living community in Homosassa, Florida (about 60 miles north of Tampa). The community was built in 2009 and features a choice of studio, one- or two-bedroom units. Ms. Holland arranged the 12-year term for the borrower to take advantage of the current low interest rates. Then, in home health care, Capital One served as administrative agent and lead bookrunner for a $65 million senior secured credit facility to finance the acquisition of... Read More »

HUD grows

HUD just made things a little easier for owners of seniors housing and care properties to refinance through the HUD LEAN program. There were a couple of notable changes to the program. First, when facilitating a partner-buyout on a property and the borrower takes out a bridge loan to finance it, they can refinance that loan immediately with HUD, with certain caveats, including timelines for buyback provisions. The second notable change is a new system for determining debt seasoning. If a HUD loan is less than or equal to 60% loan-to-value (LTV), then there is no debt seasoning requirement. Between 60% LTV and 70%, there is no seasoning required as long as at least 50%of the existing bridge... Read More »

Reaching the Pinnacle…deal

Avalon Health Care Group, a Utah-based senior living company with a large presence in the West, entered the Oregon market in a big way, acquiring Pinnacle Healthcare and its 10 skilled nursing facilities in the state. Located in Corvallis, Eugene, Grants Pass, Medford, Roseburg and Woodburn, the portfolio consists of 1,108 beds and will increase Avalon’s footprint to 49 centers with 5,532 beds across seven Western states. The transaction details were not disclosed, but Avalon plans to transfer the lease agreements and begin operating the facilities in early 2017. Read More »
Transaction teamwork

Transaction teamwork

Marcus & Millichap sent a veritable army into Norwood, Ohio to arrange the sale of two skilled nursing facilities. Mark Myers, Joshua Jandris and Charles Hilding, plus Stan Folk, Joel Dumes and Steve Anevski out of M&M’s Cincinnati office and Peyton Stanforth out of the Chicago O’Hare office, represented the seller, a private family investment group, in the transaction. The lease was ending for the tenant operator, which was interested in building new facilities. So, Messrs. Myers, Jandris, Hilding and Stanforth procured the buyer, a real estate investment trust with a large presence in the region that leased the facilities to a new third-party tenant. Built 25 years ago, one of... Read More »

Going up in downtown

A well operating CCRC in Buffalo, New York looking to expand needed quick financing to take advantage of building a new independent living campus on the site of a former acute care hospital in downtown Buffalo. Built in 1999 by Episcopal Church Home & Affiliates, the CCRC features 243 IL units and patio homes, as well as enriched housing and skilled nursing beds. Over the years, it has consistently enjoyed high occupancy across all levels of care under its not-for-profit management. HJ Sims has had a relationship with the CCRC since providing seed capital for its initial development in 1996, and so was a natural fit to finance this new expansion project. After site demolition and... Read More »
Age before location

Age before location

Highlighting a growing issue for the country’s aging skilled nursing facility inventory, a facility’s regional advantage may not matter much for owners of facilities in high barrier-to-entry markets looking to maximize value. Surprisingly, the Northeast region, because of its higher average income, property values and barriers to entry, saw the highest average cap rate of any region in 2015, at 13.3%. This is up 70 basis points from the average in 2014 of 12.6%, and up 90 basis points from 2013, when the region averaged the lowest cap rate in the country. Conversely, the North Central region, which has seen tremendous growth in skilled nursing development (buoyed by Mainstreet’s pipeline),... Read More »
Changes at HCP, Brookdale, Genesis

Changes at HCP, Brookdale, Genesis

Earnings season brings more than just earnings to the surface for some companies. What can I say? It has been quite a week, and we are only at Wednesday. On Monday subscribers received my initial take on HCP’s announcement about spinning out its HCR ManorCare portfolio into a new REIT. Maybe management thought it was necessary, but I really think we are going to be hearing some negative news in the future, and if so, it will make HCP’s decision look better. Just look at the performance of Genesis Health in the first quarter, which sent its share price plummeting by 20% yesterday. One problem is that with the HCR portfolio representing more than 25% of HCP’s revenues, with it gone,... Read More »
Closing by Clousing

Closing by Clousing

With the help of Brad Clousing of Senior Living Investment Brokerage, Sabal Financial sold its 41-unit assisted living community in Cumming, Georgia. Previously, Sabal had purchased the note on the non-performing property in a large portfolio sale from Synovus Bank, but has subsequently foreclosed on the asset. The community was built in 1997 and managed by Oaks Senior Living, which is owned by the Salabarria family. Under Oaks management, the community actually was performing well, with a 23% operating margin and 80% occupancy, despite the ownership change and bankruptcy. The purchase price came to $3.3 million, or $80,488 per unit, with an 8% cap rate. The buyer, a Midwest-based regional... Read More »
Arbor Acquisition

Arbor Acquisition

Aron Will is at it again. Through a national bank, Mr. Will of CBRE secured a $38.9 million five-year bridge loan, with three years of interest only and a sub-200 basis point spread over 30-day LIBOR, for an institutional client. The financing went towards funding the acquisition of The Arbor Terrace Portfolio, which includes two 101-unit assisted living/memory care communities (each with 71 AL and 30 MC units) in the Atlanta, Georgia market. Both communities opened in the fourth quarter of 2015 and are leasing well. The Arbor Company manages the portfolio. Read More »
The weight of the cap rate

The weight of the cap rate

In the last couple of years, we have started looking at cap rates based on the size of properties and portfolios acquired. In weighting cap rates by size, we avoid the issue of the cap rate for a 180-bed facility sale being weighted the same as the cap rate for a 60-bed facility sale. Some people believe that a weighted average cap rate is more reflective of a true cap rate average because the dollar value of the portfolios and larger facilities sold can dominate the overall market. But in the last 15 years (as long as we have been tracking it), there has largely been no significant difference between the weighted and un-weighted average cap rate, just that in peak value years, the... Read More »

Bankruptcy breeds opportunity

After an exceptionally busy month for Texas M&A (details included in the upcoming issue of The SeniorCare Investor), we have one more. Highland Capital Management’s Cornerstone Healthcare Group was the stalking horse and ultimate buyer of a bankrupt not-for-profit senior care company with two senior living communities in Texas and one in Tennessee. The target, UGHS Senior Living, was actually profitable but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2015 after its not-for-profit parent University General Health System filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2015 and its creditors were seeking repayment through various UGHS subsidiaries, including UGHS Senior Living. The... Read More »