Healthpeak’s Return To Senior Housing Underscores Hot M&a Market For Reits

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In 2021, Healthpeak Properties (NYSE: DOC), then awash in challenges related to Covid-19, practically exited senior living. Now, the REIT is back, and the move has implications for the health of the industry.

Earlier this week, the company announced the formation of Janus Living, a real estate investment trust (REIT) spin-off launching with 34 senior housing properties in Florida, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago and the Washington, D.C. area. The company aims to acquire and build communities under RIDEA management structures.

The company is planning an initial public offering (IPO) for the new REIT and will serve as its external manager while holding “substantial majority interest” in it. Its pipeline of acquisition opportunities for Janus currently sits at about approximately $675 million of investments already under signed letters of intent or purchase agreements.

Healthpeak – once known as HCP – is considered among the “big three” health care REITs, along with Welltower (NYSE: WELL) and Ventas (NYSE: VTR), and its return to senior housing signals an active M&A market ahead as all three companies seek to grow their senior housing operating portfolios this year.

That the REIT substantially exited senior living industry – selling billions of dollars worth of communities since 2021 – and then dove back in four years later speaks to the big growth opportunity that investors and owners see ahead with the oldest baby boomers turning 80 this year.

I believe that Healthpeak, along with Welltower and Ventas, will continue to aggressively look for acquisition targets this year, especially as new development remains frozen for now. The REIT “SHOP-ing spree” was fervent in 2025 as substantially all of the REITs that transact in senior housing added communities and operating partners to their growing operating portfolios, and I think Healthpeak’s re-entry into the industry is an indication that those trends will continue and perhaps even accelerate this year given that there are still many properties on the market left to change hands.

While Janus Living is starting relatively small compared to its other REIT peers, with 15 continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) and 19 senior housing communities in its total holdings, Healthpeak is not a small player with more than 520 medical office buildings and 115 lab properties in its portfolio. The company is also no stranger to senior housing, and it has the purchasing power and liquidity to upsize its holdings to that end in short order.

This is not the first time Healthpeak has spun off part of its portfolio into a new company. In 2016, the company spun off its skilled nursing and assisted living assets into a company known as Quality Care Properties. Two years later, the segment was acquired by Welltower and ProMedica in a joint venture.

In this members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze the recent Healthpeak news and other deals and offer the following takeaways:

• Inside Healthpeak’s senior housing history
• Why Healthpeak is again interested in growing its senior housing holdings
• What Healthpeak’s return to senior housing means for M&A in 2026

Return to senior living comes after $4 billion selloff 

With its formation of Janus Living, Healthpeak is returning to senior living, believing that substantial growth and value lies ahead. But the company has not always had such an upbeat attitude about the industry or its immediate fortunes.

Just before the Covid-19 pandemic and months before it changed its name to Healthpeak, the REIT was a significant holder and acquirer of senior living properties with 92 communities leased under triple-net agreements and 128 in a senior housing operating portfolio (SHOP) segment, according to a 3Q19 financial disclosure.

At the time, the company was in the midst of a senior living revamp, with expectations that the strategy would bear fruit in the years to follow. Then came Covid-19 and all its disastrous effects.

Although company leadership stressed the communities were not substantially underperforming in 2020, then-CEO Tom Herzog said the REIT was preparing to sell communities ahead of what he saw as a “bumpy ride” ahead for the senior living industry.

The company began selling the portfolio in chunks. Less than a year later, Healthpeak had made substantial headway on its $4 billion selloff and redeployed the proceeds from those sales back into its medical office and life sciences segments. By the third quarter of 2021, the company had slimmed down to just 15 CCRCs and nine senior housing properties.

In the years that followed, Healthpeak reported positive operational trends and stronger entrance fee revenue for its portfolio of CCRCs, and expanded multiple campuses. The company’s major CCRC operating partners include LCS, which manages 13 such communities for the REIT.

In 2023, Healthpeak merged with Physicians Realty Trust in an all-stock transaction which was at the time valued at approximately $21 billion.

Based on recent comments from leaders of other publicly traded senior housing REITs, I don’t think it’s a big mystery as to why Healthpeak is jumping back into the senior housing industry with its Janus Living spinoff.

Since 2023, substantially every major senior housing and care REIT has latched onto SHOP segments and RIDEA management structures, including National Health Investors (NYSE: NHI) and LTC Properties (NYSE: LTC), which had before the pandemic expressed some skepticism regarding the management format.

Low construction starts mean fewer new entrants in the immediate future, and in 2026 demand from the baby boomer generation is quickly – and finally – rising. Eager to make their own destinies, REITs are taking an ever-growing role managing and overseeing operations with their SHOP partners.

Companies like Welltower and Ventas now have sophisticated tools to help operators perform in their markets, and a belief that REITs can best compete in the industry with deep regional portfolios and strongly aligned operating partners.

As CEO Scott Brinker noted in the company’s announcement of the Janus Living spinoff, the launch and IPO “is intended to enable Healthpeak to … more effectively pursue our active pipeline of senior housing acquisition opportunities.”

I took note of the fact that Healthpeak stated Janus will pursue “accretive acquisitions and other value-creation initiatives.” That is also a strategy other REITs are undertaking in 2026 as they look to assemble portfolios of well-performing communities by buying them at discounts to replacement cost.

Return of Healthpeak underscores REIT SHOP-ing spree trend

To me, the biggest takeaway from Healthpeak’s return to senior living is how it underscores the feeding frenzy underway for well-performing properties. A company the size of Healthpeak does not just get back into an industry after a somewhat dramatic $4 billion exit, and to me that speaks to an almost irresistible acquisition opportunity that leaders of REITs see right now.

As I tuned into earnings calls in 2025, again and again I heard themes of how REITs have essentially the wind at their backs for future acquisitions. Communities are still trading at discount to replacement costs, and that has resulted in REITs placing increasingly large bets on growing their senior housing businesses.

Last fall, Welltower announced a “transformative” shift toward senior living with a $14 billion deal to acquire more than 700 communities. Three days later, Ventas announced that its SHOP comprised more than half of its annual NOI thanks in part to its $2.2 billion slate of acquisitions in 2025.

“We believe that re-doubling our efforts in the seniors housing business represents the surest and fastest path to achieving our mission of elevating both the resident and site-level employee experience, while also enhancing our opportunity to deliver long-term compounding of per share growth for our existing investors,” Welltower CEO Shankh Mitra said after the company’s blockbuster acquisition last year.

In many cases, REITs are buying up groups of communities that aren’t actually part of the same portfolio, with the intention of piecing them out to different regional partners. These kinds of transactions are driving a higher number of total deals – in September 2025, there were 733 publicly traded deals, compared to 717 and 518 in 2024 and 2023, respectively.

To me, the Healthpeak-Janus Living spinoff only points to a potentially more active M&A year ahead. I think that the opportunity must be extremely strong to attract a company like Healthpeak back off the sidelines, and believe that this will be a defining year for the industry reshaping itself.

Not only does it signal a hotter M&A market, but more potential buyers competing for deals, a trend that could drive up bids and help sellers and operating partners access capital via dispositions.

I am also struck by the company’s name. Although I am unsure if this is the direct inspiration for it, Janus was the Roman god of beginning, transitions and endings, among other things. In effect, Healthpeak’s return to senior living could be the beginning of a new period for M&A. And while this is yet to be seen, it also could signal that Covid’s lingering effects on industry growth are finally starting to end.

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