• 60 Seconds with Swett: October Smashes M&A Record

    We were predicting a record-breaking end to the year in terms of M&A activity, but we are not sure we expected a 100+ deal month, with 110 transactions and counting. Just to put that in perspective, the previous record for any month was 77 deals in October of last year, and only four months had previously broken the 70-deal barrier. So this... Read More »
  • Newmark Ends October with Portfolio Closings

    Newmark announced a flurry of transactions at the end of October involving various institutional firms. The largest was a portfolio of seniors housing communities in the Northeast known as “Stars and Stripes.” Word on the street is that the portfolio sold for north of $800 million, and that a sub-portfolio was valued at more than $1 million per... Read More »
  • Stacked Stone Acquires Missouri Portfolio

    Stacked Stone Ventures announced the purchase of a seven-community assisted living/memory care portfolio in Missouri for $71 million, or $212,600 per unit. Totaling 334 units and 405 beds, the Oak Pointe portfolio was developed between 2015 and 2020 by an investor group called ClearPath Senior Housing, which included Jeff Binder of Senior Living... Read More »
  • Blueprint Sells Georgia Community to LTC Properties

    LTC Properties divested seven skilled nursing facilities through two separate deals for $122 million in October. In those transaction announcements, the publicly traded REIT noted that it intended to redeploy proceeds for the acquisition of newer, stabilized SHOP assets. It looks like that’s what the publicly traded REIT did in Georgia at the... Read More »
  • MIG Announces Two Closings

    Montgomery Intermediary Group announced a couple of transactions at the end of October. First, Andrew Montgomery sold a 120-bed skilled nursing facility in southern Illinois in a value-add deal. Built in the 1960s and 1970s, the facility had a roughly 50% Medicaid census, with between 30% and 35% private pay and 5% to 10% Medicare. It was losing... Read More »
What Do The REITs Know?

What Do The REITs Know?

When the Big Three healthcare REITs (Ventas, HCP and Welltower) largely divested their skilled nursing portfolios in the past few years, it prompted questions about the industry’s health. The exodus was kicked off in August 2015 by Ventas, which spun out most its skilled nursing/post-acute care portfolio into a separate REIT, Care Capital Properties (which just this month agreed to merge with Sabra Health Care REIT). Then, effective November 1, 2016, HCP followed suit, in a spin-off of its troubled HCR ManorCare assets (over 320 properties) into Quality Care Properties. Finally, after over a year of denying any such move, Welltower sold a 75% stake in 28 Genesis Healthcare-operated... Read More »
The Big Deals Are Upon Us Again

The Big Deals Are Upon Us Again

Sabra Health Care REIT and Care Capital Properties announced their merger in a somewhat negative SNF market for REITs. When I wrote the lead story for the May issue of The SeniorCare Investor talking about the return of the “Big Deal” to the market, I hope you didn’t think I had any inside information. Just days after it was published, Sabra Health Care REIT and Care Capital Properties announced their merger. I had written that a REIT buying a smaller REIT could make sense, except that one of the problems with that type of deal is that you end up with a certain amount of unwanted assets. That said, the transaction makes a lot of sense for both REITs. Separately, their cost of capital was... Read More »
Divest in the Southwest

Divest in the Southwest

A joint venture between Westport Capital Partners and Integro Healthcare Consulting is swapping two seniors housing assets located in the Southwest. First, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the JV is selling a 99-unit independent living/assisted living community with a checkered past to Sabra Health Care REIT for $22 million, or about $220,000 per unit. In addition, there are 46 individually-owned condos. Originally conceived as an IL for-sale condominium complex geared towards those in the LGBT community, the property opened in 2008 during the Great Recession, and had a difficult time leasing up under inexperienced ownership. The joint venture between Westport Capital Partners and Integro... Read More »
The REIT Recovery

The REIT Recovery

Back in mid-February, it looked as if the world of healthcare REITs had collapsed, with no end in sight. Almost every healthcare REIT hit a new low in a span of a few days, but it has been a vastly different story in the six months since then. The average healthcare REIT stock has jumped in price by about 50% since mid-February, with a range between 27% (Care Capital Properties) and 78% (Sabra Health Care REIT). While that means the higher-yielding REITs have dropped down from double-digit yields, the range of dividend yields is still a healthy range of 4.1% to 8.5% (at least for investors). Price pressure will certainly pop up again if the Fed does increase rates next month, but no one is... Read More »

Build it and sell it

Carmel, Indiana-based seniors housing developer Leo Brown Group sold two of its recently completed Indiana communities to an undisclosed private equity investment fund for $44.8 million, or $240,591 per unit. The price is a step up from a previous transaction from Leo Brown, when the developer sold a fully occupied, three-year old 140-unit senior living community in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Sabra Health Care REIT for $23.8 million, or $170,000. Included in the 2016 sale was an 81-unit community in Avon and a 105-unit community in Indianapolis. Both will continue to be operated by Traditions Management, an affiliate of Leo Brown. Cody Tremper of Greystone Real Estate Advisors handled the... Read More »