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SALEM, OR-Holiday Retirement Corp., one of the largest owner and operator of senior housing in the world, has agreed to sell its 299-property, 35,000-unit North America portfolio to a private equity firm. The buyer is New York City-based Fortress Investment Group, the controlling shareholder of publicly held Brookdale Senior Living. Industry sources put the sale price at between $6 billion and $6.5 billion; Holiday's 2005 annual sales were $1.02 billion.

Holiday's controlling shareholder is William Colson, who also owns Colson & Colson Construction Co., which builds facilities for Holiday. Industry sources tell GlobeSt.com that the sale allows Holiday to unravel multiple individual partnerships that owned many of the properties in the portfolio. Although not spelled out in Friday's announcement, sources say the agreement calls for Holiday to continue to operate existing facilities and for Colson & Colson to continue to develop new facilities for Fortress. Neither Colson nor an executive from Fortress could be reached Tuesday for comment.

Jim Moore of Moore Diversified Services, a well known industry consultant based in Forth Worth, TX tells GlobeSt.com that the rumored pro forma capitalization rate on the deal of between 6% and 7% is well below the 8% to 9% that has been typical in the industry until recently. "Capitalization rates for senior housing portfolios have typically been higher than traditional real estate investments because it is thought of as being more complicated," Moore says. "But in the last 18 months they have gone down dramatically."