Lending volume ticks upward heading into 2022 – Business Daily News – McKnight’s Senior Living

With vaccination rates and occupancy increasing in senior living and care communities, bankers are seeing lending volume increase as well, Brian Heagler, senior vice president at KeyBank, said during a National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care Senior webinar Thursday.

“We certainly recognize that the senior housing industry is one that is dynamic. It’s growing,” said Heagler, noting that the bank has had a dedicated group focused on long-term care for more than 20 years. He said the future is “very bright and very big.”

The bank tends to be slightly more cautious in lending to ground-up developers and new clients, Heagler said, in favor of acquisitions and expansion projects. One notable exception, KeyBank Senior Mortgage Banker Morgin Morris added, is an uptick in HUD development and expansion projects.

“Historically, this has been viewed as a really long process, and the Davis-Bacon wages have just driven folks away,” Morris said. “Those factors are still there — they’re constant — but with longer entitlement periods, supply chain issues, subcontractor rates are going through the roof, those variables are shifting and people are re-engaging with us on that front.”

The 1931 Davis-Bacon Act requires the payment of prevailing wage rates to all laborers and mechanics on federal or federally-assisted construction contracts.