June 28, 2006—GE Healthcare Financial Services (Chicago, Ill) announced Monday that it has signed an agreement with Formation Capital LLC (Alpharetta, Ga) to purchase six senior housing portfolios worth $1.4 billion—including 186 nursing homes, comprising over 20,000 beds, according to a story in Modern Healthcare’s Daily Dose newsletter. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, and will bring GE Healthcare Financial Services’ investments in health care real estate to more than $4 billion.
Half of the purchased properties are in Florida; the others are spread across 20 states, from Massachusetts to Indiana. GE will provide asset management services to the facilities, but individual locations will continue to be operated by their present providers through long-term leases.
“This is the first of hopefully many acquisitions we will make in the health care real estate sector,” John Cobb, senior managing director for GE’s real estate segment, told the Daily Dose. “Our goal is to grow both debt and equity. We’re exploring many different avenues of investment.”
The deal marks GE’s largest real estate investment to date. GE Healthcare Financial Services, which has more than $15 billion of capital in the health care market, now finances 5 of the top 10 nursing home operators and 5 of the top 10 assisted living companies.
