NHP Acquires Southern California Medical Office Building for $74M

February 10, 2010
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons user frenkeib

Nationwide Health Properties Inc. (NHP) has recouped a mortgage loan on the Pomerado Outpatient Pavilion in Poway, Calif., with the acquisition of the property from Pacific Medical Buildings L.L.C (PacMed) in a transaction valued at $74 million.

NHP walked away with ownership of the 172,000-square-foot MOB, while PacMed received cash, 301,599 units of limited partnership interest in NHP/PMB L.P.–an entity in which an NHP subsidiary serves as general partner–and the elimination of the $47.5 million outstanding mortgage loan NHP had previously provided.

Located about 20 miles north of San Diego on the Pomerado Hospital campus, the five-story Pomerado Pavilion opened its doors in 2007, featuring access to parking accommodations via physical link to a 1,170-space parking facility.

NHP’s purchase dovetails with acquisition trends in the MOB market today. While most office buyers are just now slowly easing away from the sidelines, having sat back and waited for the highly anticipated bottoming out of the market, activity among MOB investors began to pick up significantly around mid-year 2009. By the close of the third quarter, there had been a whopping 197 percent jump in sales volume over the second quarter, as per a report by real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis’s Healthcare Capital Markets Group.

While the MOBs have not gone unscathed in the real estate downturn, both lenders and investors remain relatively keen on the sector, and for good reason. The aging baby boomer population alone will require an increase of 25 million square feet of MOB space across the country by the end of 2013, according to a study by real Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services.