• Berkadia Announces Array of Closings

    Berkadia is riding a transaction hot streak, closing 19 property sales in the last 45 days. The activity included a portfolio featuring five assisted living/memory care communities across Utah, Wisconsin and Minnesota sold to Jaybird Capital, an affiliate of Jaybird Senior Living, through HUD assumptions. Jaybird assumed management of the... Read More »
  • Tremper Capital Group Closes Several Financings

    Tremper Capital Group showed off its variety with a series of financings closed for clients across the country. They included a construction loan, an acquisition loan, a bank refinance and a portfolio financing. First, the team closed non-recourse construction financing for an assisted living/memory care community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.... Read More »
  • Upstate New York SNF Trades Between Not-for-Profits

    Joe Knapp of the Knapp-Stahler Group at Marcus & Millichap handled the sale of a skilled nursing facility in upstate New York. The Center For Nursing And Rehab in Hoosick Falls, New York, comprises 82 beds in a single-story building that sits on four acres. It was built in 1954, but renovated in 1979 and 1995.  Apparently, the facility... Read More »
  • Acquisition Financing Closed for Distressed California Community

    Private debt fund and direct commercial real estate lender Wilshire Finance Partners closed an $8.15 million first lien bridge loan for the acquisition and repositioning of a distressed seniors housing community in California. The financing included reserves specifically allocated for capital improvements and operational support during the... Read More »
  • Developer and Operator Secure Construction Financing

    Another new development will soon be underway, with BLDG Real Estate and The Fellowship Family securing financing for a $100 million full-continuum community, Fellowship Wildlight. BLDG Real Estate is a real estate development firm that specializes in design, development and asset execution across multiple product types. The Fellowship Family is... Read More »
The Pennant Group Debut

The Pennant Group Debut

The Pennant Group is The Ensign Group’s latest spin off. If history repeats itself, the new company will succeed. It has been three weeks since The Pennant Group was spun out of The Ensign Group as a separate publicly traded company. This is not Ensign’s first rodeo when it comes to successful spin outs. Five years ago, it spun out the majority of its real estate assets (and mostly skilled nursing) into CareTrust REIT, which has been among the leaders in shareholder return among healthcare-oriented REITs.  As Ensign grew its senior living and home health and hospice business, management decided that shareholders would benefit from higher valuation multiples if these assets were spun... Read More »
Ensign Expands in Idaho

Ensign Expands in Idaho

The Ensign Group grew its Pacific Northwest portfolio with the purchase of a 119-bed skilled nursing facility in Rexburg, Idaho (near the Wyoming border). The facility provides speech, physical and occupational therapy, wound care and dialysis care in addition to traditional long-term care. Pennant Healthcare, Inc., Ensign’s portfolio company based in the Pacific Northwest, will take over operations. No purchase price was disclosed, but the deal included both the real estate and operations, continuing a strategy of Ensign to own more of the real estate in its portfolio. This is the company’s first Idaho deal this year, after it acquired three facilities and 244 total beds in the Gem... Read More »
Ensign Expands Again in Arizona

Ensign Expands Again in Arizona

Serial acquirer The Ensign Group just announced its 10th senior care acquisition of the year, and 20th since the start of 2018. Its latest target was a 100-bed skilled nursing facility in Surprise, Arizona. Newly built, the facility is the seventh added to Ensign’s Arizona portfolio since 2018 and its 31st overall health care property in the state. As usual for Ensign’s Arizona acquisitions, its affiliate Bandera Healthcare will take over operations at the facility. Ensign also acquired the real estate, furthering its goal to own more of the real estate in its portfolio. Read More »
Brookdale Activists Strike Again

Brookdale Activists Strike Again

We disclosed last week that activist investor Land & Buildings (L&B) had nominated Jay Flaherty, former CEO of HCP, Inc., and Jonathan Litt (founder of L&B) for board election at the 2019 annual meeting of Brookdale Senior Living. L&B has just sent an open letter to Brookdale shareholders providing more rationale for the election of these two candidates. Apparently, L&B hired Green Street Advisors to value Brookdale and its real estate assets, and to provide an opinion as to the feasibility of a PropCo/OpCo split of the company, something Litt has been pushing for quite a while now to enhance shareholder value. Not surprisingly, preliminarily they determined that... Read More »
(Most) Senior Care Provider Stocks Shine in H1:19

(Most) Senior Care Provider Stocks Shine in H1:19

[featured in the July issue of The SeniorCare Investor] With the overall stock market posting its best first half of a year since 1997, one would expect that seniors housing and care stocks would also have performed well. The major benchmarks are up 14% to 17% so far this year, and only two of the providers have topped that. Of the larger cap providers, The Ensign Group was the star with a 46.7% price increase in six months, and that was after jumping by 74.7% in calendar 2018. The company just keeps on rockin’, and when it splits into two separate operating companies later this year, one for skilled nursing and one for seniors housing and home health care, the expectation is that the... Read More »