Our Health Care Real Estate Briefing is your comprehensive summary of weekly health care real estate highlights currently happening across the nation.
1. CMS issued guidance for skilled nursing facilities (“SNFs”) on how to deal with visitors during the pandemic. States can require visitors to be tested before entering the SNF so long as rapid testing is available and if a rapid test isn’t available, the visitor must be allowed to visit the resident so long as the visitor doesn’t report any COVID-19 symptoms per Hall Render.
2. West Virginia legislators voted against repealing its Certificate of Need law for health care facilities. Patch Adams supported the bill by saying the CON law makes it difficult to open new hospitals that benefit the public per News and Sentinel.
3. Goldman Sachs is predicting the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates five times in 2022 and three times in 2023 per Reuters News Agency.
4. Skanska issued its 4Q 2021 Construction Market Trends Report. Material costs are up significantly from a year ago. Steel is up 118%, fuel is up 50%, freight is up 34%, construction spending is up 13.8% for public health care projects and 5.2% for private health care projects and roofing products/structural steel continue to require long lead times.
5. Senior Housing News published the results of its Lument senior housing survey. A majority of respondents expect occupancy rates to rise in 2022 for assisted living, active adult and memory care facilities – 60% predict an increase in senior housing construction starts and 55% said their company plans to buy new senior housing assets in 2022.
6. UC Davis Health is moving forward with its new $3.8B, 14-story hospital tower after the UC Regents approved the design, price tag and received commitments. The project will provide opportunities for underserved businesses and members of the community and the new tower will include 1M sf, 332 beds and will be LEED Gold Certified per the Sacramento Business Journal.
7. UChicago Medicine announced plans to build a $633M hospital for cancer patients on the South Side of Chicago per the Chicago Sun-Times.
8. The University of Miami is planning an 11-story, 222K sf cancer treatment and research facility on its Miami campus per the South Florida Business Journal.
9. University of Rochester Medical Center is working on a $227M medical campus at the former Marketplace Mall in Rochester, NY. The health system will repurpose a former Sears store and one wing of the mall into a 350K sf health care campus per The Wall Street Journal.
10. Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. acquired the last piece of the Tanforan Mall in San Bruno, California and it now controls most of the 44-acre mall. Alexandria plans to redevelop the mall into a 2M sf campus per The Real Deal.
11. Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. acquired two office buildings in Woburn, Massachusetts consisting of 440K sf for $124.7M. Alexandra owns other parcels nearby and plans to build a “mega campus” per the Boston Business Journal.
