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Within the final two years, a number of senior dwelling institutional buyers and regional monetary companies have launched new brokerage, funding and lending platforms, which I consider is an indicator of the trade’s enhancing monetary well being.
Final month, I wrote about how a “excellent storm” is unlocking the following senior dwelling M&A cycle and indicators of an improved transaction market are plentiful. Occupancy this 12 months continues to climb on account of an inflow of demand from the child boomer era.
In 2025, that’s translating into “extra institutional curiosity in seniors as an asset class than there ever has been,” BWE Nationwide Director of Seniors Housing and Care Ryan Stoll lately informed me.
BWE launched a senior housing funding gross sales platform in 2023 after efficiently constructing a senior housing debt and structured finance platform two years earlier.
In the meantime, senior dwelling possession teams have shuffled their working companions to enhance efficiency and drive income and margin progress. I consider this has set the stage for an funding local weather that’s crammed with larger acquisition alternatives and a method for homeowners and operators to seek out higher alignment in operations and monetary outcomes.
That mentioned, excessive demand and enhancing working fundamentals don’t alone spell success for buyers. A latest cautionary story of investing in senior dwelling lies with Impressed Healthcare Capital (IHC) and the operations platform it launched in 2023, Volante Senior Dwelling.
Senior Housing Information discovered this week that personal fairness agency Impressed Healthcare Capital is winding down Volante Senior Dwelling and transitioning its communities to different third-party operators. Whereas it’s unclear precisely what led to that call, the agency is also underneath “regulatory evaluation” by the Securities and Change Fee (SEC) and is “actively participating with an funding financial institution to discover potential strategic alternate options.”
Even with out figuring out the specifics of the state of affairs, I feel it’s protected to say senior dwelling buyers wish to keep away from an identical consequence as they embark on investing in and launching related platforms in senior dwelling. And in order keen as they’re, I additionally consider corporations poised to deploy extra {dollars} in senior dwelling should heed these examples and watch out and intentional about their plans.
On this week’s unique, members-only SHN+ Replace, I analyze latest strikes by institutional and regional funding teams diving into senior dwelling and supply the next takeaways:
– Monitoring latest exercise by new funding, brokerage and lending teams
– Why new teams getting into senior dwelling M&A will drive the sector ahead in 2026
– Cautionary tales for buyers to study from
New companies benefit from funding momentum
In 2025, Senior Housing Information tracked a number of teams getting into or deepening their publicity within the senior dwelling trade, all with the objective of ramping up in anticipation of a extra energetic transaction market forward.
In February, former White Oak Healthcare Companions and Lancaster Pollard executives Jason Dopoulos and Ken Gould based Ikaria Capital Group. The corporate is launching the lending platform in anticipation of brokerage and funding automobiles spinning up.
“We’re not backed by a bigger agency or insurance coverage firm however we felt comfy within the deal circulate, the soundness of the sector and we are able to self-sustain 20 employees in a startup section and there’s sufficient M&A exercise for us to work on,” Dopoulos lately informed me.
In Might, AEW ramped up its senior housing lending platform, with the platform noting a perceived “financing hole” in senior dwelling funding, in line with a report by PERE Credit score.
Final month, Macquarie Asset Administration launched Well being Wave Companions, a brand new senior dwelling funding platform led by former Ventas (NYSE: VTR) chief John Cobb. In its first 12 months, the platform goals to deploy between $300 million and $500 million to spend money on “prime quality properties” and work with regional operators that regional operators which have a superb monetary and operational observe document
Over the past 24 months, Macquarie has seen each elevated demand, mixed by robust working efficiency from senior dwelling operators.
“We consider that these elements, in addition to the rise in growing older inhabitants make it an opportune time to launch Well being Wave Companions,” Cobb informed me.
Extra companies increasing investments, brokerage and lending providers in 2025 is a “constructive signal” for the longer term well being of the senior dwelling transaction market, he added.
“We’re seeing vital alternatives because the market continues to develop,” Cobb informed me.
Earlier this month, The Kiser Group launched a brand new senior housing brokerage enterprise, with longtime senior dwelling finance veteran Mark Myers on the helm to deal with all property varieties in senior dwelling. On the time of the launch, Myers famous that the sector was at a “pivotal level.”
BWE’s platform launch two years in the past was meant to draw new buyers and convey new capital into the area, amid robust investor sentiment and document deal exercise since 2024. For context, the senior dwelling trade in 2024 had 703 publicly introduced offers, a 26% improve from 2022 when senior dwelling M&A beforehand peaked, in line with Irving Levin Associates.
BWE has closed or is within the means of closing roughly $2.4 billion in 2025, composed of 75% debt transactions and 25% in funding gross sales.
This week, Stoll informed me that “no less than” 5 teams concerned in transactions dealt with by BWE are new to senior housing funding, together with institutional teams which are “excited to develop” on debt-related transactions. This comes as bigger institutional companions have been monitoring senior housing “for his or her first entry or re-entry into senior dwelling funding,” Stoll added.
These teams deepening or launching senior dwelling funding alternatives certainly level to this second as pivotal with child boomers starting to enter communities nationwide.
Schooling central to increasing senior dwelling funding pool
For years, senior dwelling stakeholders have warned that new entrants into the senior dwelling trade should act with intention and cautious function, or else they might misstep. Though senior dwelling looks as if an actual property play on the floor, its operational nature can journey up corporations unfamiliar with its intricacies.
That’s the reason educating potential buyers performs an integral half in shaping the state of the senior dwelling funding market.
Dopoulos informed me that “it takes time to teach” new investor teams that haven’t but made the bounce into senior dwelling.
“These teams are used to a few of these elements and an quantity of those teams haven’t deployed in our sector and that could be a big alternative,” Dopoulos informed me.
Stoll informed me BWE plans to carry conferences with rankings companies later this 12 months to deliver extra publicity to senior dwelling funding choices.
“I feel it’s getting them comfy with operational threat and the panorama of operators and what asset varieties work,” he mentioned.
For instance, teams concerned with industrial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) – a sector sometimes concerned in expert nursing financing – are actually exhibiting potential curiosity in senior dwelling, Stoll informed me.
“We now have teams which are all in favour of teaming up with us to teach these ranking companies to try to faucet into one other supply of liquidity,” he added.
Dopoulos believes the trade is “firstly” of a interval of robust funding as widespread growth stays stalled.
“It looks like, over the following 5 years, we’re lastly hitting the entrance wave of a number of the demand we’ve been speaking about for 20 years,” Dopoulos mentioned.
Some new teams getting into the trade or deepening their funding, lending and brokerage choices are taking the technique of investing in a platform and letting operators do what they do greatest. However I additionally suppose these buyers might want to truly know the enterprise of senior dwelling, or else they might underestimate how far their investments can go or what’s concerned in serving older adults.
In the previous few years, there have been a handful of corporations that put money and time right into a rising platform, solely to reverse course a number of years into these plans. For instance, industrial actual property investor and operator Waterton in 2023 transitioned all of Pathway to Dwelling’s managed communities to different senior dwelling operators after having acquired a controlling stake within the operator solely 4 years prior.
Waterton, which had invested in Pathway for years earlier than shopping for a controlling stake within the firm, made the transfer “on account of market circumstances and elements,” in line with CEO and Co-Founder David Schwartz.
Impressed Healthcare Capital wound down its Volante platform in an identical method final week, and the corporate mentioned it did so to “strengthen our monetary place and maximize values.”
That’s to not say that both Waterton or Impressed Healthcare Capital didn’t have expertise and well-thought plans in senior dwelling. However I assume that neither firm anticipated to need to again off these plans so shortly after their preliminary funding.
I feel the senior dwelling trade is at a pivotal level as extra funding teams enter the sector. Extra corporations swimming within the pool means a much bigger, higher and extra resilient transaction market – however provided that these corporations heed the teachings of those that have come earlier than them.
