A Message From The Editor
It’s been a great 30 years writing The SeniorCare Investor… It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing my retirement effective the end of this year when I will qualify for Social Security payments. I have had a good run for the past 30 years writing about the seniors housing and care industry, and while some of you may miss my musings, I am sure others will not. If you can believe it, when I got in this business in 1986, I was also brokering senior care properties. Unfortunately, not as many as I would have liked, so I turned to my pen, which over the years became my keyboard. And boy did I enjoy writing some of the stories. As you know, I liked to call it like I saw it,... Read More »SLIB’s successful sale
A New York-based buyer hopped across the border to Connecticut to acquire a 162-bed skilled nursing facility. Built in the 1970s, the facility was lagging slightly in census and quality mix from historical levels. The seller was a regional operator, which enlisted the help of Toby Siefert, Nick Cacciabando and Pat Byrne of Senior Living Investment Brokerage to handle the transaction. Read More »Building Boston
Aaron Rosenzweig, Jim Dooley and Rick Swartz of Cushman & Wakefield recently arranged $16.3 million in construction financing and joint venture equity for LCB Senior Living and Blue Moon Capital Partners to develop an 80-unit senior living community in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Located about 35 miles west of Boston on a 5.4-acre site, the three-story building will feature 60 independent/assisted living units (though all AL-licensed) and 20 memory care units. C&W arranged a five-year loan at 65% loan-to-cost, provided by M&T Bank. At an estimated cost of $25 million, or $310,000 per unit, the project is expected to break ground this month, with an opening scheduled for... Read More »Assisted Living “Lite” Or Not
Whether you think you operate your assisted living community under a hospitality model or a healthcare model, there will only be more health care in the future. Recently, there have been some stories in the senior care media about the hospitality model for assisted living compared with the healthcare model. That was a big debate in the late 1990s when 20 assisted living companies went public as some companies didn’t want to be labeled as “healthcare” companies, with all the regulatory and reimbursement baggage that comes with it. Some preferred to call the hospitality model “assisted living lite.” In fact, the founder of Sunrise Senior Living was famously quoted as saying Sunrise did not... Read More »
Phoenix rises
There has been an uptick in seniors housing and care construction in the Phoenix area in just this year. First, Mainstreet announced its first development in the state of Arizona, breaking ground in mid-February on its 94-bed skilled nursing/assisted living facility at a cost of $21.9 million, or $233,000 per bed. The facility also is the first to be operated by Mainstreet Health, the developer’s new operating company. Then, Love Funding announced that it provided a $15 million bridge loan to finance the construction of a 90-unit assisted living/memory care community in the adjacent town of Peoria. The private pay community, which will feature 58 memory care units and 32 assisted living... Read More »Enlivant lives on!
Enlivant, the Chicago-based owner/operator of assisted living communities, recently purchased a memory care community and an AL/MC community, both located in Georgia. Enlivant is the successor company to the former Assisted Living Concepts, which has been in the news of late when its former CEO Laurie Bebo’s case against the SEC was recently rejected by the Supreme Court. Back to the deal, the 42-unit memory care community (which has some high acuity units too) in Rome was built in 1999, while the community in Cedartown was built in 1991 with 29 AL units, plus 20 MC units added in 2014. Under its ownership by the seller, Winthrop Senior Living, the occupancy had varied over the years, but... Read More »Yuba to be kidding me
A Southern California-based real estate entrepreneur is selling their remaining seniors housing asset, a 71-unit assisted living/memory care community in Yuba City, California that it purchased over 10 years ago. The acquisition was meant to be a turnaround opportunity (the facility was built in 1993), with the buyer bringing in a third-party operator and spending over $1 million in capital improvements since 2008. Today, occupancy is around 91%, and the community is operating at roughly a 34% margin on $2.9 million of revenues. The new owner, a real estate investment and management firm, is growing its seniors housing portfolio, with this deal representing its twelfth acquisition in the... Read More »Changes at the top
There has been a lot of mobility in the seniors housing C-suite lately (Kai Hsiao stepping down as CEO of Holiday Retirement earlier this year, Doug Korey heading over to LTC Properties, the recent Brookdale Senior Living shuffle, etc…), and yet another job change was announced at the end of March. HCP’s Chief Financial Officer, Timothy Schoen, is leaving the company to become President of BioMed Realty, a life science real estate company based in San Diego that was recently purchased by real estate funds managed by Blackstone for approximately $8 billion. Mr. Schoen had been with HCP since 2006 and has served as Executive Vice President since 2009 and CFO since 2011. Mr. Schoen will... Read More »Time To Move Forward
Activist shareholders can distract management from focusing on growth and cash flow, and maybe Brookdale and Capital Senior Living can move forward in peace. Don’t you just hate distractions. Andy Smith at Brookdale has had to deal with a bunch of activist shareholders for the past year while trying to right his ship. Larry Cohen of Capital Senior Living had his activist several years ago, who then went on his board and became aligned with management’s goals. In round two this year, he has come to agreement with another one, Lucas Advisors, known by some as the trust fund baby hedge fund. Capital has agreed to appoint a new independent Board member, consulting with Lucas on the... Read More »
