Four aged care homes sold for $90M in landmark OpCo/PropCo deal
$90m Bolton Clarke aged care deal signals investor rush
- Big transaction: Four Queensland homes sell for $90.2 million
- Sharp pricing: Deal struck at under $200,000 per bed
- Long leases: Bolton Clarke secured on 25-year triple net agreements
- Capital surge: Investors piling into aged care real estate assets
The four facilities, all under long-term leases to operator Bolton Clarke, fetched a combined $90.2 million.
Sold freehold following an off-market Expression of Interest campaign by Clarence Property, the aged care homes are: -
- Buderim Views (120 beds, in Buderim, 100km north of Brisbane),
- Glasshouse Views (99 beds, Beerwah, 80km north of Brisbane),
- SandBrook (109 beds, Burleigh Waters, 90km south of Brisbane) and
- Seaton Place (128 beds, Cleveland, 30km east of Brisbane).
Each home has a 25-year triple net lease, with options to extend, with Australia's largest Not For Profit aged care operator, Bolton Clarke.
The sale price amounts to less than $200,000 per bed. According to Clarence Property, the sale represents a 57% discount to replacement cost.
Clarence Property Aged Care Fund closed fully subscribed earlier this year, and the deal has already settled. The Fund has a 22-year Weighted Average Lease Expiry (WALE) and is forecast to pay distributions of 7.1% per annum in year one and an average of 7.5% over five to seven years.
Clarence Property CEO Simon Kennedy said, "The strong investor demand reflects the quality of the underlying assets, the covenant strength of Bolton Clarke, and the compelling long-term fundamentals of the aged care sector which is a structurally undersupplied asset class."
Clarence Property Aged Care Fund is managed by Clarence Property Corporation Ltd, founded more than 30 years ago by property manager Peter Fahey. Today the fund has more than $900 million under management.
The four homes were formerly owned by McKenzie Aged Care, which sold their portfolio to Bolton Clarke, including the transfer of some homes and management rights of others, three years ago.
Marcello Caspani-Muto, Sales & Leasing in Seniors Living, Healthcare & Social Infrastructure, with the transacting agent CBRE, told The Weekly SOURCE, the transaction was the largest OpCo/PropCo transaction in four or five years.
In 2021, Australian Unity's Healthcare Property Trust acquired three aged care properties for $93.7 million from McKenzie Aged Care, and leased them back to the then operator.
Marcello expects to see more freehold aged care sales in the next few years.
"The amount of capital, both private and institutional, that we're seeing in the last 12 months that want to invest in aged care real estate ... is substantial," he said.
