First few Article Sentences
National Overview
Expanding health systems and aggressive investor demand for medical office buildings drove another active quarter in Puget Sound healthcare real estate. The national sales picture is equally strong, for all commercial real estate and for medical office in particular. Real Capital Analytics (a subscription-based data and analytics firm) is one of our go-to sources for national and trends, and they reported the following in US Capital Trends: The Big Picture (April 2015) “2015 is off to a great start with quarterly sales up 45% year over year on volume of $129 billion. The office sector led activity on $33.5 billion of sales followed closely by the Apartment sector at $33.0 billion for the quarter. The industrial sector posted the strongest overall gains, up 95% year over year. Sales volume is up across all property types, though the retail and development site sectors saw growth only in the single-digits.”
At Real Capital Analytics, medical office properties (my sole focus) are included but not typically reported separately in the general office report. However, US Capital Trends: First Quarter 2015 did report some dramatic numbers for medical office: the volume in Q1 2015 is up 118% over Q1 2014, the number of medical properties sold is up 83%, the average price per square foot is up 36%, and the cap rate is down to 6.5% (down a little more than 1% from Q1 2014). The most common buyer type for these properties in Q12015 was the publically traded REIT, snapping up nearly half (about 46%) of the available medical office buildings.