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Medical Office Commercial Real Estate Continues To Gain Strength

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Any medical facility likes to hear about improving conditions. That’s exactly what medical office buildings are experiencing: improved fundamentals that make property owners, investors, and operators healthy.

Colliers has a Q3 2022 report on healthcare real estate that covers performance in the top 100 U.S. markets.

“Despite economic concerns and industry challenges, the medical office property sector (MOB) continues to go from strength to strength, setting record highs for asking rents, sales volume, and pricing over the past four quarters,” read the report’s overview. “Demand is outpacing supply, vacancy remains tight, and capitalization (cap) rates have remained relatively stable. As a result, development activity is gaining momentum, reflecting confidence in the sector.”

But it comes with a caveat: the healthcare industry they depend on isn’t feeling so rosy. Pricing pressures are under way, and MOB owners that could mean monitoring and potential course of treatment.

On the plus side, average vacancy in the top 100 metros in the first half of 2022 was 8%. That was 40 basis points below the same period the previous year. The top 10 markets ranging from 6.3% in Boston to Houston’s 12.3%.

Top 100 average Los Angeles had the highest net MOB asking rents at $36.85 per square foot. That was quite the outlier.

“However, none of the other top 10 metros have an average MOB rent higher than $30 per square foot,” the report said. “Boston and New York are the next highest at $26.26 per square foot and $26.19 per square foot, respectively.” Although numbers for the lowest prices in the top 10 didn’t appear, a graph clearly showed that four—Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Philadelphia—were significantly below the national average.

To try pacing demand, construction rose, with completions of 14 million square feet in the four quarters ending with Q2 2022. That was up from the 13.7 million square feet from the previous 12-month period. MOB under construction rose more sharply, from 30.9 million to 37.1 million square feet.

And investor demand was strong at $17.2 billion in the four quarters ending with Q2 2022, the highest on record. Though that was largely due to the last quarter of 2021, which according to an included graph stood far above other quarters.

MOB is largely in a position to weather economic storms, as medical care is something difficult for many people to forego. But practitioners are also eying costs.

“In the face of reduced income and, in some cases, operating losses, some providers are cutting staff despite an overall shortage of employees in the healthcare industry.”

That would suggest real estate overhead will also be under scrutiny.

As an increasing amount of MOB is taken up by larger organizations—hospitals, HMOs, and other big operators—lowering those costs are likely to be on their agendas, and they have fiscal muscle to negotiate hard.

 

Source: GlobeSt.

Sila Zeros In On Healthcare With $1.3B Data Center Portfolio Sale

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With the sale of a 29-property data center portfolio, Sila Realty Trust is exiting the data center space to focus on healthcare.

Sila sold 29 data center properties to Mapletree Industrial Trust, a REIT listed on the Singapore Exchange, for $1.3 billion. The transaction will be completed in one or more closings during Q3 2021.

“This action marks another key step in Sila Realty Trust’s evolution to provide a clear path for the company to pursue a strategy as a pure-play healthcare REIT,” said Michael A. Seton, Sila CEO and president in a prepared statement.

Sila Realty Trust, previously known as Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT II, owned both data centers and healthcare assets before the sale.

As one example of the type of assets it seeks, last September Sila purchased Tampa Healthcare Facility, a 33,822 rentable square foot medical office building constructed in 2015. The building is located on 2.87 acres in Tampa, the second-fastest growing market in Florida and the twelfth-fastest growing market in the US. The facility, which was 100% net-leased to six tenants at the time of the sale, serves as a strategic location for both primary and urgent care, pediatric spinal care, clinical laboratory services and various types of outpatient surgery.

In the release announcing the sale, Seton said the company was focused on acquiring high-quality, well-located assets with a strong and diverse tenant roster.

“All of these attributes are indicative of our existing portfolio combination and we expect this property will serve as a strong complement to our growing asset base,” Seton said at the time.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Sila is focusing on the medical sector. It has held up exceptionally well through the pandemic. While medical office buildings sales volume declined in 2020, it was much less of a drop than the other commercial real estate sectors, according to a report from Colliers.

MOB investment decreased 12.2% year-over-year in 2020 to hit $11.1 billion, according to Colliers, while cap rates fell 20 basis points to 6.5%. By comparison, commercial real estate posted a 32% decline in sales volume overall.

 

Source: GlobeSt.

Kayne Anderson Reportedly Set To Close $2.5B Fund With Eye Toward Medical Office Buildings

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In a move underscoring growing demand for medical office, Kayne Anderson Real Estate is set to close a $2.5 billion fund expected to spend approximately half of its money on the asset class, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing sources familiar with the fund.

While medical office buildings sales volume slowed in 2020, they performed better than most asset classes during the pandemic. A report from Colliers earlier this spring noted that MOB investment decreased 12.2% year-over-year in 2020 to hit $11.1 billion, while cap rates fell 20 basis points to 6.5%. But when compared to overall CRE, which posted a 32% decline in sales volume overall, those numbers look good.

“Cap rate stability reflects the continued desirability of healthcare as it became one of the most essential sectors in 2020,” Colliers said in the report, noting that investors view MOB as safe and durable even in the face of economic shockwaves.

The sector also saw an increase in activity in Q4, with sales volume rising to $3.6 billion from $2.1 billion in Q3.  Private equity investment led acquisition activity last year, accounting for 67% of total volume.

Investors may find, however, that supply will be an issue for the sector this year: aside from new construction, the market has a somewhat limited supply of investable inventory, according to Colliers, with healthcare systems holding nearly two-thirds of all healthcare real estate. The firm notes that with 30 million new square feet of new space expected this year, demand is still expected to outpace supply.

Experts also note that investors looking to repurpose office assets for medical uses should know that “it’s really not that easy,” according to Pete Bulgarelli, president and CEO of Lillibridge Healthcare Services and executive vice president, office, Ventas, who made the comments on CBRE’s ‘The Weekly Take’ podcast. The issue boils mostly down to the way in which physicians deliver care and utilize their space.

There are some headwinds that could slow the asset class’ performance. Medical office REITs could face some disruption as changes like telemedicine continue to change the way care is provided. While the overall impact of telehealth is still TBD, a recent BTIG notes that some features are already becoming clear.

“This trend is partially reorganizing the system by bringing care to the patient rather than the patient to the healthcare while treating them as a consumer,” BTIG analysts wrote. “Recent years have seen a continued push to move care to the lowest acuity setting, and with advancing technology that setting might increasingly be the patient’s home.”

 

Source: GlobeSt.