Skilled Nursing Drives Record Month for Greystone’s Bridge Loan Volume

Greystone & Co.’s health care bridge loan volume hit a record high of $103.22 million in August, accounting for 39% of the company’s year-to-date health care volume.

That compares with with a total volume of $128 million in health care bridge loans for Greystone for the entire year of 2017. As of August 2018, the New York-based real estate lending, investment, and advisory company’s health care team has closed $262 million in loans.

And of that $103.22 million in August, about 95% went to skilled nursing deals, Greystone & Co. managing director for bridge finance Luann Gutierrez told Skilled Nursing News. A couple of the properties were assisted living, and one was board-and-care — which provides a level of care between assisted living and independent living — but the bulk of the August dollars were reserved for skilled nursing and post-acute care.

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Year-to-date, Greystone’s health care team has made 20 loans, 12 of which consisted of loans to skilled nursing, Gutierrez said.

The increased volume is due in part to a $750 million real estate debt fund that Greystone closed with investors earlier this year. The fund invests in debt financing across a various commercial real estate properties, and Gutierrez said it allowed the company to lower pricing and gave it the ability to lend more dollars.

“We always had to be very selective with what we could do because we had limited capital,” she told SNN. “[The fund] gives us more of an ability to grab more of the business that comes our way.”

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That said, lending has been strong across the board this year, notably for loans insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development — and transactions in general have been flowing as real estate investment trust activity continues apace. That ongoing activity in the skilled nursing space is another factor in the health care team’s record, Gutierrez said, adding that everyone she knows in the space both inside and outside Greystone has seen increased business.

“I think right now, we’re in a part of the cycle where a lot of the loans that were booked four or five years ago are reaching maturity,” she said. “So now it’s time for them to be refinanced, or … sometimes the owners have held them for the period of time that they intended, and the properties have appreciated in value, and they want to sell them.”

Written by Maggie Flynn

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