Blueprint Healthcare Expands into Medical Office Brokerage

Chicago-based Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors is expanding its platform into medical office brokerage. Medical office veterans Eric Lee and Chris Lashmet will lead the practice.

Blueprint says the addition of medical office buildings helps it provide advisory to the healthcare sector while also serving its core senior living clients.

“Blueprint’s strategic growth plan has always involved diversification into medical office brokerage,” says Steve Thomes, senior managing director and head of business development at Blueprint. “While its resilience during the pandemic played a role in the timing of our deployment decision, it was in our sightline far before COVID-19 was in our collective lexicon.”

Blueprint says its MOB practice will offer many services, including investment sales, sale-leaseback structuring for physician groups, strategic real estate advisory for health systems and investors, joint venture structuring with developers, and capital raising for ground-up development. The company sees crossover opportunities for the firm’s existing client base.

“The team on the seniors housing side has been quick to make introductions where there are crossover opportunities, primarily with REITs and private equity,” says Lashmet, senior director and co-head of medical office. 

While the Blueprint was eyeing MOB long before the pandemic, Lee says the stability and strength of the segment has been proven with rent collections above 95% across the industry and leasing and renewals remaining nearly consistent with pre-pandemic levels. “This has led to some of the larger institutional players to broaden their investment criteria to include medical office, which leads to more and more capital being allocated/invested in the space,” Lee says.

Lee and Lashmet bring a combined 10 years of healthcare real estate experience, primarily with Ventas. Lashmet also spent time at MedProperties Group and AccessAplha Worldwide, while Lee worked at KPMG, according to their LinkedIn pages.

“We joined the Blueprint team in the fall of 2020,” Lee says. “Since then, we’ve built the practice internally, getting our centralized analytics team up to speed, and externally, already developing a robust pipeline with closings scheduled this spring.” 

MOB’s perceived safe and reliable cash flows from the sector have become appealing to many investors.  MOB investment decreased 12.2% year-over-year in 2020 to hit $11.1 billion, according to Colliers. But by comparison, commercial real estate posted a 32% decline in sales volume overall.

Like many sectors, MOB saw an increase in activity in Q4. Sales volume rose from $2.1 billion in Q3 2020 to $3.6 billion. With 67% of total volume in 2020, private equity led the acquisition activity.