Senior Housing Transactions in 2015: Deals Up, Dollars Down

By: Rick Englebright.  Last year, there were 354 publicly announced acquisitions which represented an increase of seventeen percent (17%) from 2014. Although the overall number of acquisitions increased, the number of acquisitions breaking the $500 million mark was down and there were only 111 portfolio deals which represented a decrease from the previous year. The fourth quarter of 2015 also set a record of 105 publicly announced acquisitions in senior housing and care which marks a high-water mark for fourth-quarter activity (an increase from 88 in the fourth quarter of 2014). Despite the increase in activity, the value of the acquisitions has clearly declined with the total for 2015 ($13.97 billion) being much lower than the acquisition total for 2014 which was $25.5 billion. Also, the total dollar value of the transactions in the fourth quarter of 2015 was $2.2 billion, compared with $8.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014. Clearly the market shifted from larger, high dollar portfolio transactions to smaller deals in 2015.