Greene Park Capital has launched its first senior living investment platform with an alumni of American House Retirement Communities and its parent company Redico at the helm.
The global health care real estate investment firm announced Tuesday that Kevin Carden is slated to lead a newly formed senior living investment platform. The company has a headquarters in Chicago and in the UK.
This is the first time Greene Park has created a dedicated platform for senior living communities, according to Greene Park Capital Co-Founder and Managing Partner Jason Simmers
“Think of this as another business line that’s dedicated to senior living and with an executive who’s seasoned and has the background to lead a large platform and build it,” Simmers told Senior Housing News.
Carden comes to the role after working as senior vice president of acquisitions for American House and parent company Redico from 2014 until 2022. Before that, Carden was senior vice president corporate finance for Ziegler Investment Banking for 12 years.
At the heart of the company’s senior living investment strategy is a focus on finding and partnering with quality operators and scaling with them.
“We have made good headway identifying operators with the right growth and quality orientation that we can acquire properties with and grow with,” Carden told SHN.
The company will seek to target investments across the senior living continuum from active adult to memory care, and Carden expects there will initially be more opportunities in assisted living and memory care due to industry trends in the previous few years.
The company does not currently plan to invest in skilled nursing properties, he added.
Greene Park is open to opportunities across the country, and Carden stressed that operator quality is often a better indicator of success than market conditions.
“You can have an operator that can do well in a bad market and vice versa,” he said. “It is all about the operator.”
Carden said he will be flexible with the size and scope of deals with operating partners. For instance, he is willing to take on both portfolio-sized deals and one-off opportunities.
“There are certain deal sizes that most institutional investors won’t even answer the phone for, and we can do [them] right now because we’re new and we can be more flexible,” he said.
As the company has scored the market for deals and assembles its portfolio, Carden said he has seen the bid-ask spread narrowing.
“A lot of current operators and owners are very excited about where we are and the growth prospects and the acquisition opportunities that are out there,” Carden said. “I do see the spread [narrowing], and I would agree that in six months it’s going to be even closer than it is today.”
By leading the new investment platform, Carden is also getting somewhat of a do-over. He recalled how there were “great acquisition opportunities” in the late 1990s — opportunities he did not see at the time.
“The acquisition opportunities that we had — and that I was trying to sell in the early 2000s — those that were able to hold on until 2004 or 2005, they did well,” he said. “And I think we’re in a very similar situation now.”
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