• 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 »

Experienced developers ready to roll out new 20-property pipeline

The Bainum family is well-known in this industry. Stewart Bainum Sr. began building nursing homes in the late 1950’s and eventually formed Manor Care, which was known as a leader in the nursing home business, not only for is size but also for the quality of its homes. In the 1980s, the Bainums pioneered the development of specialized memory care in their nursing homes, and after Manor Care’s merger with HCR, the family invested in a new assisted living/memory care development company, Somerford Corp. About three years ago, Stewart Bainum Jr. approached Don Feltman, who had started working for Manor Care in his sophomore year of college, to assemble a team of experienced individuals from... Read More »

Memory Care slowing down?

Have we begun to see a slowdown in the interest in building memory care? The last few weeks, we have been hearing some rumblings of developers beginning to be even more cautious, if not dismissive, of constructing stand-alone memory care centers or memory care units within assisted living in certain markets. Last week, we wrote of an assisted living community undergoing a $4.5 million expansion, in which the developer planned to nearly double its assisted living capacity, while taking away one memory care unit. What influenced this decision was the number of AL inquiries the developers received, and the fact that the Cleveland, Ohio market already had plenty of new memory care communities,... Read More »

Home is where the Heartis

We’ve written about senior care development in Texas quite a bit recently, but a relatively new brand is making its mark in the Lone Star State. The Heartis brand, developed by Dallas-based Caddis (formerly Caddis Partners), launched in 2013 with the development of Heartis Conroe in Conroe, Texas. Two more communities are set to open next month in Cleburne and Eagle Mountain (Ft. Worth area), and by the end of the year, Caddis will have secured financing (mostly conventional bank financing) for a total of 12 projects. The size and unit breakdowns vary by each community, though currently the company builds a prototype of approximately 78 units (90 beds) with a combination of 54 assisted... Read More »

A new Kansas City senior living project

Sentio Healthcare Properties, with development partner O’Reilly Development Company of Springfield, Missouri, is taking a big step into the Kansas City-area market, with the development of a $22.4 million, 142-unit senior living project (costing $157,747 per unit), The Parkway of Blue Springs, Missouri, expected to open in the summer of 2015. Arrow Senior Living will be brought in to operate, which is a new management relationship with Sentio, though currently operates one of O’Reilly’s communities. Key to Sentio’s move into Kansas City was its local partners, with O’Reilly and Arrow (based out of St. Louis) which helped with obtaining the CON. Sentio, which owns senior housing properties... Read More »

To expand or not to expand with HUD?

Obtaining construction lending for addition or expansion projects from HUD is rare and is difficult. In fact, in fiscal year 2013, the Department insured mortgages for only 3 projects with 398 units, totaling $16.9 million. The time it takes to go through HUD alone, because it is longer than traditional or commercial financing, steers many away from that option. Plus, the property to be expanded must already have a HUD mortgage on it, and it has to be stabilized. But, if you are willing to wait it out, it may be worth it. Governor’s Village, a 48-unit assisted living community which includes 24 units for residents in need of memory care, was built in 2001, but has been itching to expand... Read More »

Budding building boom in Omaha?

When one thinks of overdevelopment in seniors housing, Omaha, Nebraska doesn’t typically come to mind right away. Nonetheless, the effects of the building boom in senior living communities may already be beginning to show in Nebraska’s largest city, with occupancy (we hear) weakening in certain parts of the city. NIC MAP also shows this trend, with penetration rates for independent living and assisted living (which often includes memory care units) at 5.3% and 8.2% respectively. According to NIC, construction for assisted living is also hot in that area, with new construction representing 13.6% of the current inventory in the area. Two Omaha-based developers have recently broken ground on... Read More »

Responsible building is key these days

As a developer, owner and operator, Watercrest Senior Living Group develops its communities with the intent of being in it for the long haul. Uniquely equipped with its own internal market development team, Watercrest uses higher-income thresholds than seen in many typical market studies (with even higher income thresholds to build memory care), and approaches each site by engaging in the local community to identify its specific needs. In the high-income, master-planned community of Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida, the age and income demographics combined with there being no assisted living competition within eight miles of the site suggested the need for a high-end community. So, Watercrest... Read More »

Fast fill-up at a Los Angeles CCRC

When Los Angeles hasn’t seen a new CCRC in 20 years, either there is no demand for one, or the city is starving for one. Clearly with the new Fountainview at Gonda Westside, which presold 92% of its units with 10% deposits in less than nine months, there was a need. Outbidding several other developers, Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging (LAJHA) secured 2.5 acres in Playa Vista, a highly-desirable, master-planned community that had already pre-zoned this land for a senior living community. Numbering at 200 units (176 IL, 12 AL, 12 MC) and 460,000 square feet in six stories, this entrance-fee, not-for-profit CCRC sponsored by LAJHA is the first on the city’s wealthy Westside and the... Read More »

Top Senior Living Developments, 10/9/2014

Top Senior Living Developments Name Type Developer Cost The Springs at Monarch Landing, Naperville, IL Rehab/LTC-96, MC-28 Senior Care Development N/A Tapestry at Woodland Hills, Tulsa, OK IL-140 Avenida Senior Living/Black Oak Partners $18 million Copper Trace, Westfiled, IN SN-104, AL-36 CarDon & Associates $19 million Read More »

Experienced providers get into the assisted living/memory care development market

Newcomer Avanti Senior Living is set to open its first two senior living communities in 2015, with one in Cypress, Texas and the other in The Woodlands, Texas. These two communities, both in the Houston metro area, are the first to come in Avanti’s development pipeline of seven total properties (so far) in Texas and Louisiana. While other developers out there certainly have more properties coming down the pike than this newcomer (especially in Texas), Avanti still stands out among its competitors. Co-founders Tim Hekker (who is also the CEO) and Lori Alford (COO) combined bring over 50 years of experience in the operating world of senior care and a unique perspective to the development of... Read More »

Autumn Leaves develops another memory care community in Atlanta MSA

Autumn Leaves has been getting a lot of press recently, from us and other news sources, as they seem to break ground on a new community every other week or so. On September 9, The LaSalle Group announced that Autumn Leaves of Stockbridge, Georgia was set to open in October (just outside of Atlanta). This announcement comes on the heels of one of their memory care communities opening recently in San Antonio (called Stone Oak), and another San Antonio Autumn Leaves community breaking ground on September 17, to be called Autumn Leaves of Westover Hills. The community in Stockbridge will be the company’s third in the Atlanta metro area (having locations in Sugarloaf and Towne Lake as well),... Read More »