Big Sky Medical Launches $1B JV to Acquire MOBs

Texas A&M Health Hub in Bryan, Texas. Image courtesy of Big Sky Medical

Big Sky Medical has formed a joint venture with an institutional investor to create a medical office portfolio worth $1 billion. Newmark facilitated the formation of the partnership between the Dallas-based company and the off-shore institutional investor that’s new to the sector.

The joint venture will target medical office buildings across the U.S. and was seeded by a more than $400 million medical office portfolio that Big Sky Medical had been aggregating for the past 12 months.

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The seed portfolio includes 24 outpatient medical office buildings and ambulatory surgery centers, totaling more than 1 million square feet and located across seven Southern and Midwestern states in the U.S. The portfolio has high occupancy and a strong weighted average lease term with tenants including Cleveland Clinic, Texas A&M Health Science Center, Novant Health, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, Texas Health Resources and Baylor Scott & White Health.

A Newmark team led by Ben Appel, John Nero, Jay Miele, Michael Greeley, Alex Foshay and Joseph Morris acted as the sole financial advisor for the joint venture, with plans to secure acquisition financing for select assets in the future.

Capitalizing on the MOB momentum

Jason Signor, founder & CEO of Big Sky Medical, said in prepared remarks that the pandemic created more demand for outpatient services and health care, causing strong investor sentiment in the medical office sector. The Dallas-based company was created in 2020 and focuses on medical office buildings that are more than 20,000 square feet and more than 80 percent occupied in the Southwest, Southeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic markets.

Other companies have also jumped onto the momentum that’s being seen in the medical office sector. In January, Artemis Real Estate Partners and Thomas Park Investments teamed up to invest $500 million into acquisitions of core-plus medical office buildings. Before that, Artemis formed a joint venture with Rendina Healthcare Real Estate that was planning to grow a $1 billion medical office building portfolio over the long term.