It’s a highly competitive environment when it comes to healthcare real estate out West, so say InterFace Conference Group’s Healthcare Real Estate West panelists. One of the central themes of the day-long conference, which was held March 6 at the Omni Los Angeles and attracted 219 attendees, was the pent-up property demand from investors. However, most panelists agree the opportunities are somewhat limited due to a lack of new product and the long-term holding pattern many healthcare investors have adopted. “You have all this demand, yet transaction volume is staying flat,” said Darryl Freling, managing principal at MedProperties Realty Advisors and moderator of the 2019 Outlook panel. “Where’s the bottleneck? So much is held by healthcare systems and they’re not letting go because clearly there’s just so much demand.” Shane Seitz, fellow panelist and senior vice president at CBRE, doesn’t see this level of trading picking up, at least not with the current healthcare supply. “REITs don’t get incentivized to turn over their product,” he noted. “They buy and hold. They treat it just like the nonprofit health system does. They want to have it forever. We also have foreign and domestic groups coming in. They historically invest in funds, …
