The dollar volume of senior housing and care properties changing hands dipped slightly in the third quarter of 2017—but nearly half of all deals that quarter involved skilled nursing properties or portfolios.
About $2.5 billion worth of such acquisitions were publicly announced during the second quarter of 2017, according to the most recent statistics from Irving Levin Associates. That’s a far cry from the second quarter’s blockbuster volume of $9.7 billion and a smaller drop from last year’s Q3 volume of $3 billion.
Although private-pay senior housing has proven a popular sector for buyers in recent years, 46% of the targeted acquisitions in the third quarter were skilled nursing facilities or portfolios, an increase from 43% in the second quarter.
“Despite all the headwinds facing the skilled nursing sector, there is still tremendous investment appetite for the sector,” said Steve Monroe, managing editor of The SeniorCare Investor and editor of The Senior Care Acquisition Report, in a statement. The Senior Care Acquisition Report includes Irving Levin’s data.
Overall, 71 public deals took place in Q3, a slight dip when compared with Q1 and Q2’s deal totals of 76 apiece.
“There had been a noticeable absence of large transactions in the market until the second quarter, but the market returned to the ‘new normal’ by the third quarter,” Monroe said.
The quarter did have some sizable transactions, however. Chief among them was Sabra Health Care REIT’s (Nasdaq: SBRA) acquisition of a 49% equity interest in a joint venture that owns 183 senior housing communities. Those properties are managed by Chicago-based operator Enlivant.
Sabra also made its first major skilled-nursing deal since merging with Care Capital Properties when it bought 24 SNFs for a total of $430 million last month.
Written by Tim Regan
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