Nixon Peabody’s multi-disciplinary Senior Housing and Care team is a national leader providing a full range of legal services and solutions to owners and operators of senior housing and care communities, and their capital providers. Our clients benefit not only from our broad service capabilities and international footprint, but also from our deep experience in—and understanding of—the business of housing and caring for seniors. This experience, coupled with our active participation in leading industry organizations, gives us critical knowledge of current and emerging issues and opportunities in the field. Whether it’s handling day-to-day general legal and risk management matters for a nonprofit continuing care retirement community (CCRC), or representing investors in billions of dollars of multi-national portfolio transactions, we work hard every day to build on our reputation as a trusted legal advisor to those shaping the future of senior care services.
When you hire Nixon Peabody for a senior housing and care matter, you are hiring lawyers who truly understand your business and have the experience to help you identify and mitigate its many risks. Our firm of approximately 700 lawyers in 17 cities throughout the world gives us a position of strength, and an invaluable depth of capability and resources. Our team’s dedication to the industry results in practical, yet creative solutions for our clients that add value in every engagement, however simple or complex.
Senior Housing and Care Services
- Affordable senior housing
- Development, zoning, and permitting
- Dispositions
- Dispute resolution
- Equity and debt financing
- Government relations
- Health services
- In-depth due diligence investigations
- Joint venture agreements
- Labor and employment
- Litigation
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Portfolio structuring
- Regulatory approvals and issues
- Risk management
- Tax structuring and issues
Senior Housing and Care Clients
We have represented nearly every type of stakeholder involved in the senior housing and care industry, encompassing international, national, regional, and local participants. Clients include:
- Asset managers
- REITs (public and private)
- Nonprofit organizations
- Investors (domestic and foreign)
- Lenders
- Bond underwriters and issuers
- Providers (IL, AL, SNF, CCRC, Memory Care)
- GPs and LPs developing/investing in affordable senior housing
- Home health agencies
- Trade organizations
Senior Housing and Care Experience
Our experience spans the entire continuum of senior care, and involves all property and asset types, as well as ancillary businesses, such as home health. Some of our representative recent engagements include:
- Represented the seller in the sale of a 162-unit senior housing complex located in Santa Rosa, California. The complex provides independent and assisted living services to seniors. Nixon Peabody handled complex negotiations on the initial purchase and sale agreement that involved a sale/leaseback structure for California licensing purposes, as well as a sale of the improvements and assignment of the land’s ground lease.
- Represented a foreign investor in the sale to other foreign investors of equity interests in a U.S. venture owning several portfolios of regional shopping malls valued at $800M, together with the sale of a $26M unsecured loan to the joint venture.
- Counsel to a publicly traded REIT in its acquisition and leasing of a $70M continuing care retirement community.
- Serve as outside General Counsel to the largest continuing care retirement community in metropolitan Boston handling its day-to-day legal affairs and mitigating operating risks.
- Represent a regional health care lender financing the acquisition, development, and expansion of seniors housing campuses (independent living, assisted living, and continuing care retirement communities) throughout New England.
- Counsel to a publicly traded domestic REIT in its acquisition and development of a $140M mixed-use property in Boston involving difficult structuring, permitting, and title issues.
- Represented, as Assistant Special Counsel, the Boston City Council in its approval of the development of a $700M convention center.
- Represented a foreign investor in two acquisitions and a disposition of a New England seniors housing portfolio valued at $890M, and counseled client on a range of asset management matters throughout the ownership period.
- Serve as primary counsel to the largest owner of multi-family units in the U.S. in the workout and disposition of investment interests in projects throughout the country, having closed in excess of 800 transactions.
- Counsel to a leading New England based nonprofit owner and provider of seniors housing and care in structuring and executing an expansion strategy focused on development of several new campuses.
- Represented a buyer/operator in its acquisition of three skilled nursing facilities, handling complex CHOW matters.
- Represented an international investor in the complex workout and sale of real estate holdings throughout the U.S. of $1.3B of multi-family portfolios, requiring coordination with exits from European and Asian holdings.
- Counsel to a U.S. developer, owner, and operator of a seniors housing portfolio situated throughout the Northeast in joint venture, development, regulatory, and financing matters.
- Represented a leading asset manager in sales of large-scale affordable multi-family apartment complexes throughout the U.S.
- Represented the General Partner in the sale of its interests in a five-property multi-family portfolio valued at $81M requiring, in particular, the resolution of debt assumption and guaranty issues.
Senior Housing and Care Industry Involvement
Attorneys on our Senior Housing and Care team are among the most active lawyers in the industry. We have provided leadership to several organizations in the industry, serving on boards, committees, and task forces, and helping them accomplish their important work. We have also delivered presentations for the following organizations, among others:
- The Erickson School of Aging Studies at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County
- Hebrew SeniorLife
- National Investment Center for the Senior Housing and Care Industry
- LeadingAge
- Rogerson Communities
- Assisted Living Federation of America
- Hearth, Inc.
- Massachusetts Assisted Living Facilities Association
- Institute for Professional and Executive Development
- Senior Living Management LLC
- Johns Hopkins University
Accolades
Members of our team, and our firm, have distinguished themselves in the legal community and are consistently recognized in leading and internationally acknowledged publications such as Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America, and The Legal 500.
- Real Estate partner Justine Wilcox is recognized in Chambers USA and The Best Lawyers in America for her real estate work.
- Lawrence DiCara, a real estate partner and former member and president of the Boston City Council, is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, as well as the Massachusetts edition of Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters publication.
- Real Estate partner Colette Dafoe is ranked in Chambers USA as a Rising Star.