Omega Leadership Sees Plenty To Buy As Competition For Deals Heats Up 

Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI) is expanding its senior housing portfolio in 2026, with an eye on value-add communities. The company’s leaders see plenty more to buy despite more competition for those assets.

The Hunt Valley, Maryland-based real estate investment trust (REIT) in the first quarter of the year acquired one senior housing community in Alabama and 13 skilled nursing facilities for $120 million. In the U.K., Omega acquired one care home for $6 million and leased it to one of its operating partners there.

The company’s investment total of $251 million in 1Q26 also included $27 million to fund real estate loans and $97 million of investments in other entities.

Omega owns 929 communities, 360 of which are senior housing communities and care homes in the U.S. and U.K. The segment made up 32.2% of its total revenue as of March 31. The REIT notched net income of $159 million in 1Q26, up from $112 million in the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted funds from operations were also up compared to last year at $260 million, or $0.82 per diluted share, on 315 million weighted-average common shares outstanding, compared to $221 million, or $0.75 per diluted share, on 295 million weighted-average common shares, according to the company’s latest financial disclosures.

Omega’s real estate acquisition activity in the second quarter of the year has thus far totaled about $75 million. Earlier this month, Omega acquired three communities in Rhode Island for about $42 million and assigned them to an operator under a RIDEA management structure. The company also acquired two skilled nursing facilities in Indiana for $33 million.

Omega paired those acquisitions with some asset sales in the first quarter. The company in the first quarter of 2026 sold four skilled nursing facilities for $34.5 million in cash. It is also holding another 19 skilled nursing properties for sale totaling more than $233 million in value.

Omega’s stock is priced at $46.73, down 1.5% from the previous close.

Competition for new assets is heating up as REITs across the U.S. vie for many of the same properties. But President Matthew Gourmand said that he believes the company still has plenty to buy, and that its leaders will be “selective” in the assets they look at and acquire.

“We’re just going to have to be more selective, more creative sometimes, in our structuring, and just be on the road, quite frankly, to find more off-market deals through relationships,” he said during the earnings call Wednesday. “From that standpoint, I think we’re in a pretty good place going forward. But nonetheless, it is pretty competitive.”

Omega is taking a more active approach to seek out senior housing opportunities, and it is relying on the expertise of its third-party operators to take on what it buys.

“We don’t have the level of experience and sophistication of some of our peers who devoted years and significant amounts of money to rolling out various different technologies and have experience in that side of things,” he said. “While we obviously, by our very nature, are extremely focused on what they’re doing and seeking to learn from them and understand from them, I don’t think we’re in a position to necessarily tell them how to run their businesses at this point in time. That’s effectively what we’re hiring them to do on our behalf.”

Given the relative size of its senior housing portfolio compared to skilled nursing, Gourmand said the amount Omega has invested is “unlikely to move the needle much” in regards to net operating income it generates.

“Hopefully that will meaningfully improve over time,” Gourmand said. “Given the relative size of it right now … missing or exceeding expectations is probably going to be limited.”

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