• 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 »

Mainstreet Does Canada….Again

Perhaps one of the most dynamic firms in the senior care market, Mainstreet is at it again with a new publicly traded platform in Canada. Its last Canadian entity was sold to Health Care REIT (now Welltower) last year for a tidy profit. Using its recently announced acquisition of a portfolio of skilled nursing facilities in the Chicago market, Mainstreet has agreed to do a reverse merger with a shell company that is publicly listed in Canada that, when completed, will take the new name of Mainstreet Health Investments (MHI). And guess who will be the CEO of the new entity? None other than Zeke Turner, Mainstreet’s founder and CEO. MHI plans to buy skilled nursing, assisted living and... Read More »

Slumping Ventas

Investors did not like what they heard about Ventas for the third quarter, despite an earnings beat. So, when we first heard that Ventas was announcing that third quarter earnings were going to exceed estimates, we thought, ho-hum, so what else is new, they always beat estimates. The press release was glowing about all the accomplishments during the quarter. They revised guidelines for the full year slightly upward. I didn’t get a chance to listen in live to the earnings call, but I did notice how the share price dropped by 5%. What, on an earnings beat? And then it dropped a little more. It was the revenue miss and concerns about growth that sent investors to the exits. Since then, there... Read More »

The Name Game

In the last couple of days, two big players in the seniors housing industry announced name changes. First, Thomas DeRosa, CEO of Health Care REIT, announced in a letter to employees that the REIT would be renamed Welltower. Despite this change, the company will still trade under its ticker symbol “HCN” on the New York Stock Exchange. And then following this announcement, the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) unveiled its new name, Argentum. Derived from the Latin for “silver,” the new brand will reflect the organization’s expanded focus on “expanding senior living” for the “silver generation.” While Health Care REIT’s announcement seems to have come out of left field, the ALFA... Read More »

Health Care REIT looking North, again

In its existing RIDEA joint venture with Revera, Inc., Health Care REIT purchased Regal Lifestyle Communities, a Toronto-based operator of 23 independent living communities with more than 3,600 units. The joint venture, with HCN owning 75% and Revera 25%, will pay CAD$12.00 per share (a 27.1% premium), or approximately US$623 million ($173,100 per unit), for the portfolio, assuming CAD$359 million (US$ 291.9 million) of debt with a weighted average interest rate of 3.8% and an average maturity of four years. The initial cash yield is expected to be 6.1%, with HCN investing US$248.8 million in the transaction. The communities, located in Ontario (13), Quebec (7) and one each in British... Read More »

The largest just got larger

The largest provider of skilled nursing in the country, Genesis HealthCare, increased its facility ownership to 23% of its inpatient sites with the acquisition of 24 skilled nursing facilities with 3,056 total beds for $240 million, or $78,500 per bed. The facilities, owned by Revera, Inc. and generating approximately $280 million in 2014 revenue, are located in New Jersey (8), Vermont (5), Washington (3), Connecticut (2), Massachusetts (2) and one each in Maryland, Virginia, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Under the agreement, Genesis will acquire the real estate of 20 of the 24 facilities, and will enter into long-term lease agreements with Health Care REIT for the remaining four. In the... Read More »