• 60 Seconds with Swett: Navigating the Next Five Years in Seniors Housing M&A

    Are we entering the golden age of seniors housing? Next year, the first baby boomers will start turning 80, and with the current lack of new construction, occupancy rates are already rising before the real demographic wave hits. Many investors, both veterans and those new to our space, will feel pressure to grow their seniors housing holdings to... Read More »
  • Blackstone Sheds Another Asset from Its Seniors Housing Portfolio

    Blueprint handled a couple of sales in Florida and Nevada. The first in Florida involved a global private equity firm selling a 145-unit assisted living and memory care community in Boca Raton, Florida. Ben Firestone, Dillon Rudy and Jacob Ghel of Blueprint facilitated The Atrium at Boca Raton’s ownership transfer. The community presented certain... Read More »
  • CareTrust REIT Establishes SHOP Platform

    Three Texas seniors housing communities with 270 assisted living and memory care units were acquired by CareTrust REIT, Inc. The publicly traded REIT purchased the communities for $40 million, or $148,100 per unit. This marks the first investment of CareTrust’s SHOP platform. The communities were 86% occupied at the time of acquisition and will... Read More »
  • Ensign Grows Through Separate Transactions in Three States

    The Ensign Group, Inc. increased its portfolio through three separate acquisitions in Kansas, Arizona and Colorado. The publicly traded provider expanded its growing Midwest footprint through its Kansas acquisition of the real estate and operations of Willow Point Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, a 45-bed skilled nursing facility in Kansas... Read More »
  • Developer/Operator Divests to PE Firm

    A developer and operator sold Rivertown Ridge, a Class-A seniors housing community in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming, Michigan, to a private equity firm. This community, built in 2020, features 152 units of independent living, assisted living and memory care, and has exhibited strong performance.  The seller, Redstone Homes, was... Read More »
Buyers’ SNF opportunity

Buyers’ SNF opportunity

The recent trends of the 10-year Treasury Rate and the average skilled nursing facility cap rates have provided a lot of flexibility for buyers in how they price their acquisitions and negotiate with lenders. After rising from its low in 2012, the average 10-year rate was slowing increasing through 2014 and then dropped a bit in 2015 to a three-year low. But, for the past four years, the 10-year Treasury rate, which has long been thought of as “risk-free,” has averaged 2.5% or lower, or more than 200 basis points lower than during the last market peak of 2006 to 2007. What is interesting to follow is the spread between the 10-year rate and the average skilled nursing cap rate. Nearly 10... 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 »
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 »

Breaking barriers

If skilled nursing facilities sold on average at an all-time record high price of $85,900 per bed, then how did the average 2015 cap rate hold up to history? Well, according to the 21st Edition of The Senior Care Acquisition Report, the average cap rate for skilled nursing transactions dropped 20 basis points to 12.2%, which is the second lowest average ever (12.1% was the lowest ever at the last market peak in 2007). Traditionally, the average skilled nursing cap rate has reliably ranged between 12.0% and 13.5% for most of the past 20 years, regardless of swings in interest rates and changes in financial markets. But with two consecutive years of sub-12.5% average cap rates (2014 was... Read More »

SNF cap rates fall

The average price paid for skilled nursing facilities has largely leveled off at around $75,000 per bed, coming to rest at $74,100 per bed for the four quarters ending Q2:15, down from $76,600 per unit in 2014. But while prices have stayed largely the same, the average cap rate fell 40 basis points to 12.0%, a new record low. In the past 14 years (looking at calendar years), the previous record-low came at the top of the previous bull market in 2007 at 12.1%. And the rate at which the average cap rate has fallen is also stark, falling 100 basis points from 2013’s average. But if the overall trend this year has been that the market is cooling down from an especially frothy 2014, why are cap... Read More »