Ventas Closes Over $800m In Senior Housing Deals With $2.5b Investment Target In 2026

Ventas (NYSE: VTR) is moving full speed ahead on senior housing acquisitions and investments, with over $800 million closed and a target of $2.5 billion in 2026.

The REIT is aggressively expanding its senior housing operating portfolio (SHOP), which as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 comprises 53% of the company’s annual net operating income (NOI).

Giving the company’s leaders confidence in that strategy is the fact that its senior housing operating partners have steadily grown occupancy and revenue over the last few years.

“We expect SHOP to produce our fifth consecutive year of double-digit, same-store cash NOI growth, with occupancy, rate, and margin all showing healthy, year-over-year, increases,” Debra Cafaro, CEO of Ventas, said during the Chicago-based real estate investment trust’s (REIT’s) fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call on Feb. 6. “Our number-one capital allocation priority remains U.S. senior housing.”

Ventas’ $800 million investment in 2026 is spread across seven transactions, and brings Ventas’ investment total in the last 12 months up to $4.8 billion. According to Justin Hutchens, executive vice president of senior housing and chief investment officer, Ventas sees “a broader and more diverse set of potential transactions in the market across a range of investment profiles.”

To keep its pipeline full Ventas is seeking investments that “combine durable, in place cash flow and growth with the potential to generate attractive, risk adjusted returns,” Hutchens said.

“There’s plenty of activity overall in the U.S., and we’re getting more than our fair share of that,” he said.

As it has grown in the U.S., Ventas’ number of holdings in Canada have shrunk from totaling about 30% of the REIT’s senior housing operating portfolio (SHOP) a few years ago down to 16% today.

Normalized funds from operations in the fourth quarter were $0.89, up 10% year over year.

BMO Capital Markets Analysts Juan Sanabria and John Kim wrote that Ventas’ SHOP segment growth is steady with solid revenue per occupied room (RevPOR).

The REIT’s stock is priced at $82.55, up 3.4% from the previous close.

Ventas brings momentum of ‘right market, asset, operator’ into 2026

At the heart of Ventas’ investment thesis is a strategy that its leaders have dubbed “right market, right asset, right operator.” In a nutshell, the REIT has a playbook of operational insights supported by lots of data with which it supports its operating partners.

The REIT added 11 communities to its SHOP segment in the fourth quarter of 2025 representing 1,443 units and an average cost of about $209,000 per unit, according to its latest financial disclosure.

Ventas secured half of the roughly $800 million it has invested so far in 2026 and subsequent to the end of 4Q25 through off-market transactions, according to Hutchens. He said the company has consistently acquired properties below replacement costs, but he has seen some opportunities where prices are trending closer to replacement.

“We’ve had some really nice, high-quality, newer communities that you’re buying at closer to replacement costs. We have, we have others that are way below still,” he said during the call Friday.

In an interview after the call, Hutchens told SHN that he believes the company has the wind at its back in 2026 given multiple gains in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Average occupancy for the REIT’s 746-community SHOP segment registered at 88.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a gain of 230 basis points versus 4Q24. The segment’s cash NOI margin in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 28.2%, a gain of 160 basis points compared with the same period in 2024. RevPOR increased 8% in that time, ending the fourth quarter at $5,332.

The company’s 651 U.S.-based properties have “been a growth engine for us, both organically and externally,” Hutchens said. Likewise, the company’s 84 properties in Canada “deliver terrific care and services and financial results.”

Ventas’ $800 million investment total will be just a start of its expansion in 2026, Hutchens said. The company is specifically seeking to buy larger communities with a continuum of care. The company’s last 12 months of senior housing transactions have spanned 44 deals, with communities around 12 years old on average. Ventas kept the existing operator in 38 of the 44 deals.

“Our platform is really built to manage a large number of operators. We have 43 in our SHOP portfolio today, and we’ve been also buying relatively newer product,” Hutchens said. “We’ve been improving the quality of the portfolio as we’ve been growing.”

While Ventas has acquired some communities near or north of the 90% occupancy watermark, Hutchens said he sees even more room ahead for improvement in many of them.

“If you’re 90% you have 10% to go. And when you have markets that are projected to go all the way to 100% occupancy over the next few years, that’s a very reasonable expectation,” he said during the earnings call. “We really like the portfolio positioning and the opportunity to grow occupancy.”

More capital sources have deployed dollars in senior living in the last year, which has increased competition for assets, Hutchens said. Due to the size and presence of Ventas, he added it hasn’t slowed them down and there is a “drifting down” in cap rates.

“I would describe the pipeline as growing. It’s certainly becoming larger,” he said. “We’re seeing more mid-sized deals … there’s more opportunities than we had a year ago.”

‘We like acquisitions’ over development

Ventas is no stranger to development, but the company still is highly favoring acquisitions in 2026.

In order to get back into development, Hutchens believes that average senior living rents would have to be as much as 20% to 30% to support “even a relatively modest development yield.” Because of that dynamic, Hutchens said he thinks only “ultra-premium” new-build projects will move forward in the near future, “and that’s a product that is so differentiated in terms of price, when they enter a market … they’re well positioned to be the price leader.”

“It’s still going to take some time. Rents need to catch up, and when they do … you have a three-year runway, and when that supply opens, you’re hitting this tremendous amount of demand,” Hutchens said on the call.

Although the senior living industry has struggled to develop middle-market senior housing communities at scale, Hutchens isn’t worried that Ventas’ operating partners will struggle to attract residents to their communities.

For one, the company has partners with mid-market brands at various points across the continuum. And according to Ventas management, On average, residents can afford to stay in communities within the portfolio for 6.7 times longer than industry averages, based on income and net worth relative to cost of care, according to supplemental material for investors.

The post Ventas Closes Over $800M in Senior Housing Deals With $2.5B Investment Target in 2026 appeared first on Senior Housing News.