Private equity firm IRA Capital has formed a $500 million closed-end fund meant to target medical properties and senior housing assets across the country.

The fund is meant to focus on acquisition, development and financing of “well-located healthcare assets in high barrier-to-entry and supply-constrained markets”according to an Aug. 12 press release. The release noted that the company plans to focus on core-plus, value-add and repositioning opportunities.

Azhar Jameeli, managing director of portfolio management for the fund, told Senior Housing News at least half of the fund will be allocated for senior housing, with the strategy focusing on select high barrier-to-entry “gateway” markets across the country.

“We want to be in very affluent, very high-barrier-to entry markets,” Jameeli said. “It just happens to be that that footprint is the coastal West Coast and the coastal East Coast.”

Jameeli added that the company’s growth strategy is “agnostic” and may include a variety of properties and growth strategies, from acquisitions to new developments. But he noted that “a lot of the developments … don’t pencil” right now given the wider macroeconomic challenges in 2023.

“We actually are looking at one development right now. But … it’s more of [an] exception,” he said.

Irvine, California-based IRA Capital previously acquired for $106 million two 80-unit assisted living and memory care communities from Capital Health Group, with Elegance Living slated as the operating partner. At the time, the company had targeted as much as $1 billion for growth in the senior housing industry.

But Jameeli added this $500 million fund is different from the company’s previous plans. The current fund will be used for high barrier-to-entry locations nationwide, with particular focuses on the east and west coasts. And IRA Capital will have the discretion internally to make decisions on the fund’s overall strategy.

IRA Capital is planning to leverage its history with healthcare real estate to benefit the fund. In January 2020, IRA sold a 19-property portfolio for $300 million to Welltower (NYSE: WELL), and in August 2021 it sold a 29-property portfolio for $620 million to Nuveen Real Estate.