HCP Places $259 Million Secured Financing

LONG BEACH, CA-HCP Inc. has placed $259 million in secured financing on 21 of the health care property REIT’s senior housing assets, with Fannie Mae buying the debt. HCP says that the assets are cross-collateralized and the debt carries a seven-year term at a fixed interest rate of 5.83%.

Grandbridge Real Estate Capital LLC of Charlotte, NC–one of the largest full-service commercial and multifamily mortgage banking companies in the nation–arranged the financing. Grandbridge is a Fannie Mae DUS lender.

The new financing deal follows a recent first-quarter earnings report in which Jay Flaherty, chairman and CEO of HCP, pointed out that the Long Beach-based REIT “followed up 2007, the most successful year in HCP’s 23-year history, with the most successful start to a new year in the company’s history.” HCP posted FFO growth per share of 12%, closed asset dispositions of $336 million and raised equity proceeds of $560 million.

HCP owns properties in five categories within the health care segment: senior housing, medical office, life sciences, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Last August it made one of its largest acquisitions, the $2.9-billion purchase of Chicago-based Slough Estates USA Inc. in a deal that greatly expanded the healthcare REIT’s life sciences holdings.

In acquiring Slough, which was wholly owned by Britain’s publicly traded Segro plc before HCP bought it, the Long Beach-based healthcare REIT took title to 83 properties totaling 5.2 million sf. That 5.2 million sf includes the Genentech and Amgen corporate campuses in San Francisco. In HCP’s latest quarterly conference call, company executives said that the REIT expects to fund $90 million of development and expansion projects this year, principally in the life sciences sector. Latest public filings show that the company’s portfolio totaled 721 properties at the end of the first quarter.