Blueprint Launches Capital Markets Practice, Announces $1B in Deal Volume

Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors is launching a capital markets practice, the Chicago-based senior housing and health care real estate brokerage announced on Wednesday – a move intended to expand the firm’s business solutions for clients and capitalize on a capital markets landscape still bifurcated by Covid-19.

Leading the practice will be Alex Florea, who joined the firm as a director in November 2017 from Care Capital Properties (CCP), after that former health care real estate investment trust was acquired by Sabra Health Care REIT (Nasdaq: SBRA).

Florea joined CCP shortly after the REIT was spun out from Ventas (NYSE: VTR). During his tenure there, he worked with CCP’s CFO on planning and execution support on raising over $1.2 billion of capital within its first 11 months, post-spinoff. He also worked at Ventas as a financial analyst from May 2013 through November 2013, and was a director of strategy and business development at Enlivant, the Chicago-based senior housing owner and operator, from November 2013 to August 2015.

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Launching a new service arm during an extreme event comes with risks, but with capital markets still imbalanced due to tighter loan underwriting and a lack of bridge lending and competition shifting to a more full-service model, the time was right to make the move, Florea told Senior Housing News.

“Blueprint has remained focused on our core business of sell-side advisory,” he said. “But the markets evolved where [clients] expect it, and it can be useful.”

After the pandemic’s “peak volatility” last spring, which saw debt and equity providers retreat to the sidelines, deal underwriting adapted with the arrival of new investors – private equity, in particular – looking to deploy capital toward distressed assets. Blueprint rode out the early wave to post 72 transactions totaling over $1 billion in deal volume last year, which the firm attributes to adapting its model to focus on market demand.

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Adding a capital markets practice is intended to build on that momentum.

“Now, when we’re negotiating a deal on behalf of the client, we’re negotiating with the full weight of Blueprint behind it,” Florea said.

The capital markets landscape remains in flux, but having the new service arm will give Blueprint and its clients flexibility and, more importantly, stability until the pandemic is under control, which Florea believes will occur in late 2021. Until then, securing capital will remain hit or miss.

“The best way to be successful is really to broaden your net and go out to more people than you would have before,” he said.

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