A California-based real estate investment trust is purchasing a dozen properties out from under a troubled Texas operator now mired in bankruptcy.
In early April, Sabra Healthcare officially unloaded 28 facilities in Louisiana and Texas for more than $282 million, cutting ties with Senior Care Centers. Meanwhile, another landlord, CareTrust REIT, acquired 12 of the properties for $211 million.
“These were some of the best assets in the portfolio, and we think our operators are going to do really well there,” CareTrust Chairman and CEO Greg Stapley told McKnight’s. “These were not the assets that put those guys into bankruptcy.”
San Clemente, CA-based CareTrust first announced April 2 that it had completed the acquisition of 12 skilled nursing and continuing care retirement communities in Texas and Louisiana. An affiliate of BM Eagle Holdings LLC purchased the properties from Sabra and simultaneously sold them to CareTrust.
Priority Management Group took over operation of the eight Louisiana facilities from Senior Care Centers, while Southwest LTC will assume control in Texas. New contracts do not include rent escalators, which had weighed down the former tenant.
Sabra settled its own legal dispute with SCC in early April after gaining approval from a Texas bankruptcy court judge. Under the terms of the agreement, Dallas-based SCC — once the largest skilled nursing operator in Texas, which filed for bankruptcy in December — must make payments of $9.5 million to its former landlord.
Seven of the remaining 10 SCC properties owned by Sabra were set to be rented out to another operator under a 12-year, triple-net master lease starting May 15. They’ll generate annual rent of $5.7 million. The other three were expected to be sold in the coming months, officially ending Sabra’s relationship with its once-largest tenant.
From the May 1, 2019 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
