• 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 »

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 »

Pay up in Richmond

So far this year, there have been six announced seniors housing transactions valued higher than $300,000 per unit, compared with 16 in 2014. And of the top six deals this year, Griffin-American Healthcare REIT-III was the acquirer in two. First was the company’s acquisition of two senior living communities in Nebraska for $66 million, or $300,000 per unit, announced back in June. But more recently (and at a higher cost), Griffin-American purchased a 186-unit senior living community in Richmond, Virginia, for $64 million, or $344,000 per unit. Built 16 years ago, the community provides 108 units of IL, 60 AL units and 18 memory care apartments, and boasts a greater-than-96% occupancy. The... Read More »