Bain to Target Assisted Living, Memory Care in New $1.5B Fund

The senior housing portion of private investment firm Bain Capital’s new $1.5 billion, Harvard University-backed real estate fund will likely include new investments in assisted living, memory care and active adult developments with help from existing partner Capitol Seniors Housing.

The fund, which recently surpassed its original billion-dollar goal, will focus on real estate classes such as senior housing, self-storage, life science and labs. Co-founded by Mitt Romney in 1984, Boston-based Bain Capital has about $105 billion in total assets under management today.

On the senior housing side, the new fund is expected to include new assisted living and memory care development as well as “active living” properties, according to Scott Stewart, founder and managing partner of Washington, D.C.-based Capitol Seniors Housing, which serves as an investment partner with the fund.

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“While we help them with one corner of the business, which is seniors housing, they’ve got a lot of other ambitious projects with the rest of that fund,” Stewart told Senior Housing News. “It is a value-add fund and it’s targeting mid- to high-teen returns.”

The two companies will work collaboratively to identify senior housing opportunities under the new fund. It’s not yet clear how much of the fund will go toward senior housing, and Bain didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from SHN.

“The beauty of the relationship is that they’ve got some smart real estate professionals over there,” Stewart said. “It’s not a situation where we just slide them a pro forma or an investment draft and say, this is the deal we want to do.”

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Capitol Seniors Housing’s relationship with the private equity firm is not new. Bain inherited the relationship in 2017 when Harvard Management Company agreed to spin out its 22-member real estate team to the private equity firm.

Capitol first began working with the Harvard Management Company in 2010, and completed numerous projects with it over the years. The company opened six communities this summer, all of which started with Harvard Management Company and finished with Bain.

Capitol has grown steadily during that time, with 38 operational communities today, four under construction and four more in pre-construction throughout the U.S.

Bain Capital isn’t Capitol Seniors Housing’s only capital partner, as the company also works with The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that’s also based in D.C. Along with Bain and Carlyle, Capitol has acquired or developed more than 100 senior housing communities, representing the deployment of $2.5 billion in investment capital over 15 years.

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